This is from the Egyptian website Albawaba:

“An Islamist Egypt is a fascist Egypt. It is an Egypt that will use the faith people have in Islam as a religion to gain political power and to exclude and alienate all who are different,” says a former pious Muslim who now describes himself as “Godless and free.” …

While some Islamists widely attack liberals and Christians, describing them as “infidels” (some even going as far as justifying their killing), nonbelievers are not even acknowledged, let alone guaranteed rights in an Islamist Egypt.

“The Egyptian people are religious by nature, and there are no atheists,” said Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars, if not the most, a few days ago.

The second article of the new constitution reads: “Islam is the religion of the state, Arabic is the official language and the principles of Islamic Sharia (law) is the main source of legislation.” …

“The Brotherhood themselves do not tolerate atheism. If there was another ruling party with the same constitution, they would not be as strict on atheists as the MB,” an aspiring Egyptian journalist who refers to herself as an “atheist” argues. “Nobody in Egypt made a decision to be an atheist without truly understanding and accepting the consequences.What I am actually worried about are the people who will be mistaken for atheists when all they did was crack a joke or disagree with a popular Muslim figure on a subject.” …

“I am afraid Egypt will slip into a period of ‘medieval Europe’ where the church was the main driving force behind the ignorance, intolerance and abuse to human integrity. History teaches us that there is no progress under religious, dogmatic ideology,” [an Egyptian-Canadian says] .

According to Article 60 of the new constitution, all citizens are required to take religion classes before they apply for university. This is not a new feature in Egyptian schools; religion classes (Islamic and Christian) were always mandatory in all national schools.

It remains to be seen how far the Muslim Brotherhood government will tolerate atheism in newly “democratic” Egypt. Our guess is – not far.

This report is from Al-Monitor, translated into English from Al-Masry Al-Youm (Egypt).

(The picture accompanies the original Arabic article.)

It is incautious to trust information from a source named Al-anything, because there is a long established Arab custom of describing events as the reporter would like them to be rather than as they actually are. But it is also a long established Arab custom to torture prisoners, and we think this description has the ring of truth. For one thing, there doesn’t appear to be gross exaggeration: the torture – mostly heavy beating – is less severe than is common in most Arab and Islamic states.

The report provides a picture of how the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime in Egypt deals with those who hold a different political opinion.

Al-Masry Al-Youm spent three hours in total in the torture chambers established by the Muslim Brotherhood at the gates of the Ittihadiya Palace in the suburb of Heliopolis. [City of the Sun – a name recalling the long centuries when Egypt was ruled by Greeks – ed.] The central torture chamber … is secured with a cordon and iron barriers, where the Central Security Forces (CSF) prevent the access of any persons without the authorization of the Brotherhood.

The torture process starts once a demonstrator who opposes President Mohammed is arrested in the clashes or is suspected after the clashes end, and the CSF separate Morsi’s supporters from his opponents. Then, the group members trade off punching, kicking and beating him with a stick on the face and all over his body. They tear off his clothes and take him to the nearest secondary torture chamber from which CSF personnel, members of the Interior Ministry and the State Security Investigations Services (SSIS) are absent.

Before the interrogation process starts, they search him, seize his funds, cellphones or ID, all the while punching and slapping his face in order to get him to confess to being a thug and working for money.

They ask him why he took to the street, whether he got paid to take part in the protest and whether he supports Mohamed ElBaradei, founder of the Constitution Party, or Hamdeen Sabahi, founder of the Egyptian Popular Current or the dissolved Egyptian Nationalist movement. As long as this person denies the allegations, they beat him and insult his parents. After that, a person will videotape the interrogation and contact the Misr 25 TV channel to tell them about the interrogation and arrest.

After a while, the detainee is transported from the secondary torture chamber to the central one. On his way, the beatings and insults continue. Every time the prisoner encounters a member of the Brotherhood, that person gets in his share of the insults and beatings. They also may collectively insult him before he enters the central room, while a Brotherhood lawyer hands over his national ID card, his funds and his belongings to the SSIS chief. …

The health conditions of some of the prisoners was very bad and they were unable to answer questions. Some of them were bleeding all over their bodies, severely exhausted and not receiving any medical aid. However, some got a bottle of water to drink or something to use to stop their bleeding.

Once 10 people had been arrested, police officers and state security chiefs in the chamber demanded that the three Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the room secure passage for the prisoners to the nearby al-Nozha police station and prevented the Brotherhood members from attacking them again. This all really happened.

So the police and state security can exert some authority, but the Muslim Brotherhood must have its vicious way first.

The report indicates what sort of regime Obama is supporting in Egypt.

*

Political opponents of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have suffered worse atrocities than being beaten to a bloody pulp.

This is from a speech given last September by David Horowitz of the Freedom Center:

In August, the new Egyptian president sacked his military commanders, abrogated the Constitution, and assumed dictatorial powers greater than those possessed by his predecessor,  transforming Egypt into an Islamist state. Opponents of the dictatorship were crucified – literally nailed to crosses – in front of the government headquarters. It was the Brotherhood’s way of dramatizing its intentions to turn Egypt into a Medieval totalitarian state.

At PJ Media, Andrew C. McCarthy makes a well-reasoned, well-substantiated case that it is “time to move on from the GOP”. He argues that the Republican Party “is not remotely serious about implementing limited government policies or dealing with the two central challenges of our age, existentially threatening deficit spending and Islamic supremacism.” The Republicans, since they dominate the House of Representatives, have the power to solve the debt crisis but lack the will. And when it comes to opposing Obama’s pro-Islam policies, “the current crop of Republican leaders has shown no stomach for the fight”. (The whole article needs to be read.)

The Middle East … is aflame. A heavy contributing factor is the American policy of embracing and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamists allies, very much including al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is a committed enemy of the United States. … It considers the destruction of Western civilization from within to be its principal mission in the United States.

In 2011, President Obama launched an unprovoked war in Libya against the Qaddafi regime, which Republicans had been telling us for eight years had mended its ways and become an American ally – such that Republicans in Congress supported transfers of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Tripoli. Obama’s Libya war was guaranteed to put Islamists in power and put Qaddafi’s arsenal at the disposal of violent jihadists. By refusing to foot the bill, congressional Republicans could have aborted this counter-productive aggression – in the conduct of which the administration consulted the U.N. and the Arab League but not the branch of the U.S. government vested by the Constitution with the power to declare and pay for war. Instead, Republicans lined up behind their transnational progressive wing, led by Senator John McCain, which champions the chimera of sharia-democracy – McCain called the Islamists of Benghazi his “heroes.”

That pro-Islamist policy is directly responsible for the heedlessness of establishing an American consulate in Benghazi. It led to the attacks on our consulate and the British consulate, and ultimately to the terrorist murder of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya (weeks after British diplomats had the good sense to leave town).

The scandal brings into sharp relief an alarming fact that has long been obvious: notwithstanding their abhorrence of America and the West, Islamists are exerting profound influence on our government. Known Islamists and officials with undeniable Islamist connections have infiltrated the government’s policy councils; simultaneously, American policy has moved steadily in favor of Islamists – such that the government supports and funds Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that are hostile to us; colludes with these Islamists in purging from agent-training materials information demonstrating the undeniable nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror; collaborates with these Islamists in the effort to impose repressive sharia blasphemy restrictions on our free speech rights; and, we now learn, knowingly misleads the American people on the cause of murderous Islamist tirades, of which the atrocity in Benghazi is only the most recent example.

A few months back, long before these policies resulted in the killing of our American officials in Libya, and even before these policies abetted the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt … five conservative Republicans called for an investigation of Islamist influence on our government. Five members of the House – i.e., less than one percent of the Congress – was willing to stand up and confront a profound threat to American national security. The Republican establishment had the opportunity to back them, to prove that the GOP could at least be serious about a profound threat to our national security. Instead, senior Republicans – the Islamist-friendly transnational progressives to whom the party disastrously looks for foreign policy leadership – castigated the five. Speaker Boehner followed suit.

As the weeks went on, and event after event proved the five conservatives right and the apologists for Islamists wrong, the Republican establishment went mum. When the Islamist empowerment strategy coupled with the Obama administration’s shocking failure to defend Americans under siege resulted in the Benghazi massacre, the Republican establishment was given a rare gift: an opportunity, in the decisive stretch-run of a close presidential contest, to exhibit national security seriousness and distinguish themselves from Obama’s dereliction of duty. To the contrary, Gov. Romney and his top advisors decided to go mum on Benghazi; and congressional Republicans essentially delegated their response to Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham – the very “Islamic democracy” enthusiasts who had championed U.S. intervention on the side of Libyan jihadists in the first place (only after having championed the American embrace of Qaddafi).

This has to stop. The current crop of Republican leaders has shown no stomach for the fight. In fact, notwithstanding that President Obama lost a remarkable ten million votes from 2008 in his narrow reelection last week (i.e., 13 percent of his support), House Speaker John Boehner is treating him as if he has a mandate to continue his failed policies – as if the country and its representatives have no choice but to roll over on the immensely unpopular Obamacare law and concede on feeding Leviathan even more revenue and borrowing authority without deep cuts in spending … ; as if the country shares Boehner’s insouciance about the Islamist threat.

By reappointing Boehner and his leadership colleagues today, Republicans are telling us that their answer to failure is more of the same. They have a right to make that choice, but there is no reason why Americans who are serious about our challenges should follow along. The Republican establishment is content with more government, more debt, and more entanglement with our enemies. When called on it, they tell us they are powerless to stem the tide. But the problem is the lack of will and a sense of urgency, not lack of power. It is time to find a new vehicle to lead the cause of limited, fiscally responsible, constitutional government. The Republicans are telling us they are unwilling to be that vehicle. If that is the case, it is time to move on.

Can the “new vehicle” be anything but a new political party? And what could be its nucleus? The Tea Party? Not if it includes the same enfeebling component of Christians as the Republican Party does. We, of course, would like it to be secular constitutionalist, as dedicated to the cause of individual freedom as the Republican Party was dedicated at its foundation to the cause of freeing the slaves, and as willing to fight for it.

“The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU),”, to quote Wikipedia, “is a nonpartisan non-profit organization whose stated mission is to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

But “not in the case of the Muhammad movie”, Investor’s Business Daily reports, referring to the video film titled “Innocence of Muslims”, which has been absurdly blamed by the Obama administration for Muslim protests and uprisings across the globe, violent attacks on US embassies, and the torture, sodomizing, and murder of US Ambassador Stevens in Libya.

The silly little film had been on YouTube for months without being taken notice of. Then it was found, pounced on and used by Arab media men, politicians, al-Qaeda leaders, and imams to boost an Islamic campaign to put an end to freedom of speech in the West, particularly in the US. And the Obama administration, ever sympathetic if not passionately devoted to Islam, is doing its best to help them achieve their aim.

And they’re not being opposed in this by the ACLU which exists to defend rights and liberties in America.

Here is more from the IBD report:

The ACLU’s executive director failed to release an official statement condemning the outrageous efforts of the White House to deep-six the film including pressuring YouTube to remove its trailer from the Web. …

Not until The Daily Caller contacted the ACLU did it speak out, and only meekly so. It said it was “concerned” about the White House request to censor the “repellant film.”

The ACLU’s strangely muted response contrasts sharply with its militant reaction to post-9/11 measures to crack down on Islamic terrorists.

“The government has gone to extraordinary lengths to squelch dissent (in the Muslim community) — from censorship and surveillance to detention,” it says on its website, complaining it was “encroaching” on the “free speech rights” of Muslims. …

Where is this bias coming from? Muslims. The ACLU now counts at least eight on its national executive staff alone. In fact, a Muslim runs the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, while another heads its National Security Project.

The irony is not lost on Steve Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “The ACLU was founded on the basis that there shouldn’t be any blasphemy laws,” said Emerson … “Yet in the last 10 years, they’ve appointed (to their boards) members of the Muslim Brotherhood who believe in blasphemy laws.”

The top Muslim lawyer in ACLU’s stable is [a Canadian named] Jameel Jaffer, … [who] successfully sued the U.S. to reveal CIA secrets for interrogating terror suspects. …

[Jaffer is] a Muslim activist closely tied to major Muslim Brotherhood figures and front groups. [He] now heads the ACLU’s Center for Democracy after heading its National Security Project.

[He is] pals with Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the Egyptian founder of the radical Muslim Brotherhood .. [who] was denied a visa in 2004.  …  Jaffer successfully sued the U.S. to get Ramadan’s visa restored. …  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lifted the six-year ban in 2009. …

Jaffer has lobbied the Justice Department to remove CAIR and other Brotherhood and Hamas front groups from its blacklist of groups complicit in a criminal conspiracy to raise money for terrorists.

He’s also pressured the FBI to purge names of Muslim terrorist suspects from the no-fly list.

What’s more, Jaffer wants to deny the feds one of its most effective weapons in the war on terror — freezing the assets of terrorist front groups.

He’s also sued to kill the government’s drone program, perhaps its most effective weapon of all.

This is who’s controlling the agenda at the ACLU these days. It was bad enough when the group was run by leftists. Now it’s also run by Islamists.

The purposes of Islam could not be more different from the purposes for which the ACLU was created. Plainly the ACLU no longer exists to protect liberty. It is now run by adherents of a movement which opposes liberty.

Is there an American institution of any importance which has not been infiltrated and corrupted by Islam?

You put Israel in

You put Israel out

You put Israel in

And you shake it all about.

Barack Obama said in a speech to AIPAC that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel.

But that was back in 2008 when Obama was still taking some trouble to woo Jews and other pro-Israel voters to support him.

The present Democratic National Convention omitted any mention of Jerusalem being the capital of Israel.

It also left out old platform statements about the status of Palestinian refugees, and of Hamas as a terrorist organization not to be dealt with or supported in any way. Obviously the guide to these decisions came from Obama whose State Department, since March this year, refused to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and who tried to order Israel to return to its indefensible 1967 borders. He wants to fund UN agencies that accept Palestinians as a member “state”.

Acceptance by Israel of the millions of Palestinians who claim to have been dispossessed when the State of Israel was declared, or a return to its 1967 borders, would be acts of suicide. As Obama must know this, he must desire the consequence. It could hardly be clearer that Obama does not like Israel and likes Islam very much, especially the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is a calf).

But then something happened on the way to the third day of the DNC. Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole came under fierce criticism for making the changes, presumably from quarters they do not want to antagonize. So, according to the Wall Street Journal, the “language describing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” was “swiftly reinserted … in an attempt to defuse controversy on the eve of President Barack Obama’s speech accepting his party’s nomination”.

Convention delegates, by a voice vote, approved a resolution restoring language the party had put in its 2008 platform, as well as earlier ones, referring to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. But the vote was disputed. Three separate voice votes were called, and only after the third was the issue declared decided—and some delegates then booed.

(To our regret, the omission of “God” from the convention, which we praised in a post earlier, was also reversed.)

Far more maliciously and seriously, anti-Israel action is being taken by the Obama administration.

This is from Front Page by David Hornik:

In the same week that 120 “nonaligned” nations of the world were gathered in Tehran to give their blessing to its open genocidal anti-Semitism, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had doubled the number of centrifuges at its underground Fordo site since May, while increasing its stockpile of 20%-enriched uranium to within 50 kilograms of a bomb. All this while continuing to block access — as it has been since November — to its Parchin facility for nuclear-explosives testing.

And that wasn’t all. Even though the IAEA’s findings vindicate all the warnings by Israeli leaders that Iran was exploiting the period of sanctions and diplomatic talks to race ahead toward the bomb, the Obama administration reacted — again — by coming down on Israel rather than Iran.

On Thursday the U.S. chief of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, told reporters in London that an Israeli attack on Iran would delay but probably not stop its nuclear program, could unravel the “international coalition” supposedly “pressuring” Iran, and that “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

“Complicit”? As if such a pre-emptive act of self-defense would be a crime? Yes:

With a few words, then, Dempsey managed to convey that Israel was militarily incapable, a potential spoiler of an effective international strategy, and that it would be somehow criminal or illicit — “complicity” usually referring to illicit activity — if Israel did move to preempt the genocidal threat, something the U.S. would want no part of.

It was further reported by Time magazine that the U.S. was substantially scaling back a planned joint U.S.-Israeli military drill, though so far that account has evoked denials from some of the officials quoted in media reports. But, on the whole, the developments didn’t impart the sense that the Obama administration “has Israel’s back” as it has been ritually claiming.

“… ritually and mendaciously claiming”, that should read.

As for “the U.S. substantially scaling back a planned joint U.S.-Israeli military drill”,  this source gives some concrete details of the reported reductions, leading us to think they are very likely true.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are silent in the face of the avalanche of bad news coming in from official Washington.

In accord with the Dempsey  shout, this:

The Patriot anti-missile systems scheduled for what was to have been the biggest joint US-Israel anti-missile drill in October will remain packed in tarpaulin because they come without crews; even one – much less two – Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships may not be dispatched to Israeli waters; and the number of US servicemen sent over for the annual exercise is to be cut by more than two-thirds to 1,500.

This downgrade of US participation in an annual war exercise with Israel is more than striking. It adds up to the dismemberment by the Obama administration of the entire intricate strategy US and Israel have built over years for the deterrence – and interception if need be – of any Iranian/Hizballah/Syrian missile assault on Israel.

The inferences are cruel: The US defense or second-strike elements – which had been slotted into place by the military strategists of the two armies – will not be there. Their absence slashes the time available for Israel’s alarm-and-interception systems to spring into action – the moment the engines of Iranian ballistic missiles heading its way are fired – right down from the originally estimated 14 minutes’ notice.

It also means that Barak’s estimate of 500 dead in the worst case of a war with Iran must go by the board.

So Israel is to be punished by Obama because Iran is intransigent. Or would it be more accurate to say that Obama is positively helping Iran advance towards nuclear capability?

A story is going round that he sent messages to Iran through two unnamed European countries that he would “hold back” Israel, but the mullahs must agree not to attack US shipping in the Gulf. The Dempsey insult was perhaps part of this plot.

For instance, The Blaze reports:

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot published a startling report Monday detailing a message it says was conveyed by the Obama administration – via two European countries – to Iranian officials. The request: if Israel decides to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, the U.S. will not support it and the Islamic Republic should refrain from retaliating on U.S. military installations in the Persian Gulf.

The story has of course been denied  by the White House.

But then it also denies disliking Israel, or wishing it anything but peace, prosperity, security and the continuing warm friendship of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

Ikhwan is the Arabic for brothers.

Jamiat al-Ikhwan al-muslimun means the Muslim Brotherhood.

The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is:

Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

The following quotation is from a letter to the editor of Noozhawk, Santa Barbara, by Donald Thorn. It is a useful timetable of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power with the help of the Obama administration. We came to it via Creeping Sharia which has coined the word “Ikhwanization” to sum up the process.

Today, Egypt has a Muslim Brotherhood hard-liner president (Mohammed Morsi), and there are more calls for the destruction of Israel. There are new fears that the regime will invite al-Qaeda back into Egypt and open up a front with Israel along the Sinai.

Who helped the Muslim Brotherhood gain control? [The State Department] and the White House helped train the Brotherhood during Egypt’s elections, selling out Israel and U.S. interests in the Mideast. Even more troubling is the untold story of how the Obama administration secretly helped bring Islamofascists to power.

Consider the timeline:

»1) 2009: Brotherhood spiritual leader Qaradawi writes President Barack Obama and argues terrorism is a direct response to U.S. foreign policy.

» 2) 2009: Obama travels to Cairo and apologizes to Muslims and invites the Muslim Brotherhood, but snubs Israel and Mubarak.

» 3) 2009: Obama appoints a Brotherhood-tied-Islamist, Rashad Hussain, as U.S. envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which supports Muslim Brotherhood.

» 4) 2010: State Department lifts visa ban on Tariq Ramadan … grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood founder.

» 5) 2010: Hussain and Ramadan meet at an American sponsored conference attended by U.S. and Brotherhood officials.

» 6) 2010: Hussain meets in Egypt with Brotherhood’s grand mufti.

» 7) 2010: Obama meets with Egypt’s foreign minister, Gheit, who claims Barack said he was a Muslim.

» 8) 2011: The Brotherhood’s supreme leader calls for jihad against the United States, and Qaradawi calls “days of rage” against Mubarak and pro-western Mideast regimes. Cairo erupts into violence.

» 9) 2011: Obama fails to back his ally, Mubarak, then sends intelligence czar Clapper to Capitol Hill to claim the Muslim Brotherhood is moderate and secular.

» 10) 2011: The Brotherhood wins control of Egyptian parliament, vows to tear up 30-year peace treaty with Israel and re-establishes ties with Hamas and Hezbollah.

» 11) 2011: Obama demands Israel relinquish land to Palestine …

» 12) 2011: State Department formalizes ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, letting diplomats deal directly with Brotherhood officials in Cairo.

» 13) 2012: Obama releases $1.5 billion in foreign aid to new Egyptian regime.

» 14) 2012, June: Morsi becomes Egypt’s president and vows to instate Shariah law, turning Egypt into an Islamic theocracy.

» 15) 2012, June:  A delegation of once-banned Brotherhood terrorists join a Muslim Brotherhood delegation at the White House, meeting with a national security official.

» 16) 2012, July: Obama invites Morsi to visit the White House in September.

What does all this mean? The Muslim Brotherhood’s didn’t just suddenly take over in the Mideast or Egypt. It was helped along by a U.S. president sympathetic to its interests, over those of Israel and the United States.

It certainly looks that way. It looks like there has been an Ikhwanization of the US administration.

How should the US deal with the Muslim Brotherhood?

Karl Schake of the (estimable) Hoover Institution writes:

There is little doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood is not going to be a comfortable partner for the United States. …

The Muslim Brotherhood operates with decentralized national branches in many countries (including the United States). The different branches, however, share core beliefs. They clearly seek to attain political power in order to foster wide-ranging social change. Make no mistake, the Brotherhood is not a status quo political party. It would institute Sharia law, deny women the political and social latitude of men, and, if history is a precedent, be hostile to non-Muslims. …

In Egypt, the influence of the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda accounts for less of their appeal than their long-standing opposition to the Mubarak government. Egyptian politicians are keenly aware that while most Egyptians support an Islamic government, polling of public attitudes indicates Islam is not a priority for Egyptian voters — only 3 percent of respondents in recent polls considered Sharia law an important issue. Egyptians are overwhelmingly concerned about security, the economy, and justice.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is not Hamas or Hezbollah …

Note that Hamas, an actively terrorist organization, is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood …

…  at least not yet. It does not bring violence into the political sphere. It was not the motivating force in toppling Hosni Mubarak; in fact, its members were late to the revolution. But the Brotherhood capitalized on its decades of political organization and social activism to dominate the elections.

This should not have been surprising; the Brotherhood had a structural advantage over all of the other political parties just forming. But the sharp decline in support for Brotherhood candidates in Egypt’s June 2012 presidential elections suggested that voters were irritated at the Brotherhood’s ineffectualness in Parliament, concerned that it broke its promise not to run a candidate in the presidential elections, and worried about Islamist domination of Egypt’s politics.

Though Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi did win the election, the Egyptian voters expressed real concern about these issues during presidential polling. Exit polls suggest voters were even more distrustful of the military’s candidate, worried the secular candidate represented the Mubarak past. Voters also resented the military’s moves to usurp Parliament and the Constitution drafting process. For now, it looks like Egyptians are holding the Muslim Brotherhood accountable for their political actions, not just their ideological appeal. …

What they all agree on is that the US should continue providing Egypt with massive aid regardless of who is in power:

Even those political actors deeply suspicious of U.S. policies and resentful of our past actions want the United States to be a major participant in their countries’ transitions. … They want  American [economic] assistance — and they don’t have much sympathy for our current economic straits, given how much more dire are their own are. … They want us to actually care about their futures, not what they can do to advance our interests. …

But if what happens to them in no way serves US interests, why should the US care about them? There is something childish about such thinking.

The most worrisome thought dealing with Brotherhood and even Salafist politicians is not what will happen should they succeed, but what will happen should they fail. Moderate Muslims have been winning the argument over the past decade that al Qaeda’s nihilist vision isn’t the path. Restoration of the caliphate by any means is not the Islam most Muslims want. 

How can he possibly know that?

He is basing his conclusions on what diplomats said to each other when they met at Doha. How far are the communications of diplomats likely to reflect “what most Muslims want”?

He takes an optimistic view of what “the people” in the Arab world want, but issues a warning:

Elections in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya — even the glacially slow political change that the Gulf’s authoritarian governments are quietly experimenting with — demonstrate the people of the Arab world want accountable and transparent governments. They want institutions to constrain the power of rulers; they want grievances addressed; and they want the means by which to change their leaders if those leaders aren’t responsive to their concerns. The revolutions of the Arab spring have given citizens of those countries hope that political change can achieve those ends. If governments fail to produce that change, the al Qaeda narrative could again get traction in the disillusionment and despair that follows.

Is that something the US should fear? How much worse would al Qaeda be than the Muslim Brotherhood? How bad the Muslim Brotherhood will be, only time can show.

It is an interesting essay. Read it all here.

This is from the PJ Tatler:

A stunning exchange took place today when Assistant AG Tom Perez of the DOJ Civil Rights Division refused to commit to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution that it would never advance a law criminalizing the right to criticize any religion.

The non-commital answer by Perez was in response to a question asked by Rep. Trent Frank (R-AZ): “Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?”

Here’s the exchange:

The Muslim Brotherhood has deeply infiltrated the Obama administration, and its influence could not be more glaringly obvious.

The Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conspired with the Holy Land Foundation to fund Hamas, the death-cult terrorist organization that the Palestinians in Gaza have elected to govern them. As a result CAIR has been named a co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation which was found guilty of the crime, but CAIR remains “unindicted”. [Why?] It pretends to be the protector of American Muslims aganst a totally imaginary campaign of persecution which it dubs “Islamophobia”.

In fact, CAIR is a menacing organization dedicated to imposing oppressive sharia law on all Americans.

This is from American Thinker:

On June 5, 2012, a radical Islamic organization, CAIR-Florida, sent out a mass mailing with this message:

“CAIR Florida has been receiving an increase in complaints by law abiding American Muslims inappropriately targeted by law enforcement for questioning. This is a direct result of Islamophobic training CAIR has discovered many law enforcement officers in Florida are receiving. Join us this Saturday for an important program to learn how to protect yourself, your family, and your community against harassment by law enforcement or discrimination by businesses.”

Without verifiable proof of such “discrimination by businesses,” “Islamophobic training” or “inappropriate targeting by law enforcement”, this email appears to be a blatant slander of the tolerant American society and its legal system. The extensive influx of Muslim immigrants in recent years is the best evidence that they are treated better in the U.S.A. than in their own countries of origin.

So what motivates CAIR to besmirch their host country and stir discontent? The answer lies in the old playbook developed by the radical Left and now passed on to the new radical players: calculated fear mongering. Such messages are designed to keep American Muslims misinformed, scared, and running for CAIR’s protective cover.

In this example, CAIR was promoting its own so-called “Civil Liberties” Conference titled “Know Your Rights,” with the apparent purpose of encouraging Muslim immigrants to disobey American laws, resist law enforcement efforts, and game the system with frivolous lawsuits against local businesses and government agencies that result in more political power and personal enrichment – all under the aegis of CAIR.

The email included this flyer:

… CAIR’s faith-based protection racket is now working its way to replace all other means of social interaction for Muslim immigrants, aiming to become the only game in town for all American Muslims.  By the rules of this game, in exchange for “protection,” they dare not assimilate and integrate into the larger society, accept American traditions and values, and – most importantly – dare not leave Islam.

The framework for such games has been inadvertently established by the fallacious multiculturalist doctrine.  …

Omar M. Ahmad, founder of CAIR, once said: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant… The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” It is apparent that CAIR’s goal is not so much to contribute to the American society, but rather to replace our constitutional republic with an oppressive Islamic theocracy.  Their efforts to set up the groundwork for this have been so far successful.

Freedom-loving Americans who oppose premeditated destruction of their cultural and political integrity are being silenced with lawsuits and the myth of “Islamophobia.” Their opponents have learned how to take advantage of democratic liberties, such as the right to free speech, free expression, free press, free assembly, freedom of religion, and equal protection before the law.  But in a society the Islamists are planning for us, there will be no place for any of these individual freedoms, as evidenced by the Sharia-based totalitarian systems currently being implemented in the Middle East by the international Islamist alliance known as the Muslim Brotherhood.

All world cultures, Western and Muslim alike, share the same moral conviction, which is commonly reflected in their laws: those who show contempt for human life by committing remorseless, premeditated murder justly forfeit the right to their own life.

No. That is not true. Islam does not share the moral convictions of the West. It does not forbid its followers to murder, it only fobids them to murder fellow Muslims [eg. Koran 48:29]. And even that prohibition is honored more in the breach than the observance. Every single day Muslims are killed by other Muslims, in large numbers.

By this moral and legal standard, shouldn’t remorseless radical groups that profess contempt for our individual freedoms and actively promote their demise, forfeit their own right to enjoy these very individual freedoms? Shouldn’t their premeditated efforts to destroy the rule of law make them ineligible to be protected by these very laws? …

They should. But CAIR is favored, assisted, sustained, encouraged by the Obama administration:

The White House has recently admitted to having hundreds of behind-the-scenes meetings with CAIR …

When Eric Holder’s DOJ routinely steps in as muscle for CAIR’s ongoing litigation jihad; when Muslim employees are instigated to bring about unreasonable lawsuits against their employers; when American Muslims feel overwhelmed or bullied into silence by radical groups that claim to “represent” them, good and honest Americans must say “enough is enough” and, in the absence of government protection of their interests, resort to individual action and seek effective alternatives.

The Florida chapter of Stop Islamization of America has done just that. Calling CAIR-Florida’s flyer “offensive to our law enforcement officers and to Florida business owners,” they have created this counter flyer:

The advance of Islam must be resisted. Powerful, well-funded Islamic organizations can be frustrated. Stopping the creep takes organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.

We at the American HQ of TAC are proud to announce that our British editor, Sam Westrop, wearing one or two of his several political activist hats, has chalked up a victory by all these means in London.

Two victories, in fact, as this press release reveals:

A report published by Stand For Peace exposing the extremist views and backgrounds of several foreign speakers invited to preach at a large conference in London has forced the cancellation of the event.

Organised by the Al-Muntada Trust, the ‘Month of Mercy’ was due to be held on 8th July at the Grand Connaught Rooms, but following numerous complaints and discussion with the police, the venue has stated that the conference will not go ahead.

Al-Muntada has an extensive history of hosting some of the UK’s worst hate preachers over many years. The views of the proposed speakers at the conference included justifying suicide bombings, glorifying jihad, promoting venomous homophobia, questioning criticism of female genital mutilation, spreading antisemitism, and encouraging reprehensible bigotry against Shia Muslims.

The report was compiled with research assistance from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, which monitors anti-democratic and illiberal forces abroad. It was then discussed with MPs, the Home Office and security services, and was published on the Stand for Peace website.

Concerns were initially dismissed by the venue hosting the event, with one senior member of management stating that the conference “didn’t bother me at all”. But after several anti-extremist blogs and websites picked up on the report, hundreds of people complained directly to the venue and lobbied their MPs, resulting in the cancellation. The venue cited “the safety and security” concerns when they cancelled the event, saying that they had engaged in “careful consideration and liaison with the local police force”.

Sam Westrop, Associate Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, said:

“The cancellation represents a victory for fair minded people of all faiths. By giving out the relevant information about extremist speakers, Stand for Peace was able to demystify the event’s purpose. Many people are intimidated by such events taking place around them, and lack the tools to investigate the true nature of what will be preached at them. By simply referring to public statements speakers have made in the past, members of the public were able to point out the worrying agenda that the event seemed to be pursuing. We commend the Connaught Rooms for changing their mind in the face of public concern.”

The Grand Connought Rooms cancellation follows a recent and similar warning about the activities of the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB). The PFB planned a ‘cultural’ event in Manchester, featuring speakers who have supported terrorism, including Azzam Tamimi and Saudi hate preacher Mohammed Al-Shareef. After StandforPeace and other campaigning organisations disseminated background information provided by the Institute, the hosting venue forced the PFB to cancel the speakers.

Notes for editors:

Stand For Peace is one of the UK’s leading anti-extremism organisations. It closely monitors and analyses extremist activity across the UK, thanks to its network of informers, and its expert researchers and analysts.

The Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy is a London-based think-tank which promotes better understanding of democratic and anti-democratic forces in the Middle East.

If it can be done there, it can be done here. It is being done here – in Florida, for instance. All it takes is organization, determination, thought, planning, tireless work, and much courage.

Niall Ferguson, the historian, is interviewed on MSNBC on the Egyptian revolution, before the recent elections brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt. Ferguson predicts that very outcome, and criticizes Obama’s policy towards the Middle East. He sums up Obama’s  foreign policy as “I’m not George W. Bush – love me”. Obama’s “touchy-feely speeches”, he says, are no substitute for a vision and a plan. The interviewers disagree with him, even seem quite shocked at Ferguson’s very well informed opinion. They say they think the Egyptian revolution is “going really well”.

We agree with Ferguson’s analysis. Our only point of disagreement with him is this: he says that what is happening in Egypt and elsewhere shows Obama’s policy to be a failure.

We think the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, Iran’s progress towards nuclear capacity, and the greatly accelerated advance of Islam in the world as a whole since Obama was absurdly elected to the presidency of the United States, does not reflect a failure of his, but a success. These developments are bad for America, but they are victories for Islam; and Barack Obama wants Islam to triumph. 

President Barack Obama’s deputies are holding “hundreds” of closed-door meetings with a jihad-linked lobbying group that is widely derided by critics as a U.S. arm of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood.

So The Daily Caller reports.

The admission of meetings with the Council on American-Islamic Relations came from George Selim, the White House’s new director for community partnerships, which was formed in January to ensure cooperation by law enforcement and social service agencies with Muslim identity groups in the United States.

“There is [sic] hundreds of examples of departments and agencies that meet with CAIR on a range of issues,” he told The Daily Caller …

CAIR is especially controversial because of its many links to the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood, whose political wing is set to dominate Egyptian politics since the 2011 departure of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak.

In 2009, a judge confirmed the Justice Department’s decision to name CAIR as an unindicted conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation conspiracy to smuggle funds to HAMAS, which is a jihadi affiliate of the Egypt-based brotherhood. Five men in the smuggling ring were sentenced to jail in 2009, including two who were given 65-year sentences.

We often ask, why does CAIR remain forever “unindicted” if it is known to be a conspirator in felonious activities? But answer comes there none.

The House of Representatives last month prodded the Department of Justice to end all contacts with CAIR. “The [appropriations] committee understands that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has an existing policy prohibiting its employees from engaging in any formal non-investigative cooperation with CAIR [and] the committee encourages the attorney general to adopt a similar policy for all department officials,” said the committee report accompanying the 2013 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, passed in mid-May by the House..

Janet Levy writes at Family Security Matters:

The Muslim Brotherhood is well entrenched throughout the government and government agencies at the federal, state and local levels. They have taken hold of the FBI, the DHS, the military, the State Department, and other government organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood determines U.S. counterterrorism policy and its operatives meet regularly with Janet Napolitano as well as the Department of Justice staff.

Recently, the DoJ joined the Muslim Brotherhood in an investigation of NYPD counterterrorism interventions that have protected Americans from jihadist attacks.

Ask yourself why Major Hasan’s trial has been delayed and why he hasn’t received the death penalty almost three years after he committed the Fort Hood massacre?

Also, why has Hasan’s murderous rampage been officially designated as “workplace violence” and “nothing to do with Islam”?

What about the order to destroy the cell phone videos taken by Pfc. Lance Aviles showing Hasan shouting “Allahu Akbar” and Hasan’s private business cards that identified him as a “Soldier of Allah, Glory to God” … ?

Why were two Al Qaeda fundraisers – Al Munia and Muntasser – just set free? How was the federal judge in this case able to rule that references to Osama bin Laden were off-limits during their criminal trial?

Last month, one of the MB subsidiaries – CAIR – successfully eliminated 900 pages of close to 400 FBI training presentations that they deemed “offensive to Islam.” FBI agents will no longer learn anything about the enemy except that they are followers of “the religion of peace.”

In 2009, all references to “jihad,” “Islam” and the “Muslim Brotherhood” were expunged from the FBI lexicon and the National Intelligence Strategy of the U.S. Contrast this with the 9-11 Commission report issued in 2004 which mentioned “Islam” 322 times and “jihad” 126 times.

Recently, the U.S. State Department removed an entire section of a human rights report that dealt with the persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world.

For over a decade, the State Department has been actively facilitating higher levels of Muslim immigration to the U.S.

Our military has been busy learning to respect Islam and our troops are well schooled in the proper handling of Islamic religious materials. They also know not to urinate or spit in the direction of Mecca. At a once prominent military academy deemed the “West Point of the South” – VMI – cadets now celebrate the 771 A.D. Muslim conquest of Spain.

All because America has elected a lover of Islam as its president. Americans learnt on 9/11 (if they did not know it sooner) that Islam is America’s enemy. But no one whose duty it was – media reporters, politicians – found out and published, in the election year of 2008, the fact that candidate Obama loves Islam.

Now it is known, can the information be widely enough spread to keep the voters from re-electing him?

This is from Family Security Matters, by Clare M. Lopez:

Quietly, behind the scenes, the Muslim Brotherhood is enforcing censorship of all U.S. government training about Islam and the forces of Islamic jihad. Under the co-opted direction of National Security Council official, Quintan Wiktorowicz, key Cabinet Departments, including Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State are purging their curriculum materials of any references about Islam that their Muslim Brotherhood advisors find objectionable.

In effect, the national security policy of the U.S. government is being brought into compliance with Islamic law on slander.

Under Islamic law (sharia), “slander” means “to mention anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike.” Telling the whole truth about Islamic doctrine, law and scriptures – especially the Muslim obligation to conduct warfare against non-Muslims, subjugate them and force them to live under Islamic law – would reveal the very essence of sharia Islam. For obvious reasons, it’s not the part of Islam that its Brotherhood vanguard wants Americans to know about.

There is a campaign against imaginary “Islamophobia,” which is, Clare Lopez writes, “designed and promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood to silence those who would speak truth about Islam.”

She goes on:

Farah Pandith is the Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the U.S. Department of State. … She repeatedly has associated with groups and individuals that are known affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood and its equally jihadist off-shoot, HAMAS. In an interview with the Gulf Times at the conclusion of the May 2012 9th U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, Pandith confirmed that it has been the policy of the Obama administration since its inception “to put the priority of engaging with one fourth of humanity [Islam] front and centre.” …

There’s never before been an American president who so unashamedly and deliberately has sought to empower those who’ve openly and repeatedly declared themselves the sworn enemies of this country. … Muhammad Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, effectively declared war on the U.S. in October 2010, about nine months before the Obama administration granted formal diplomatic recognition to the jihadist group. …

With the Obama presidency that the deep Brotherhood penetration of U.S. national security leadership is moving unafraid into the open, at last confident of its acceptance and backing. …

On October 19, 2011, an op-ed piece, written by Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) President Salam al-Marayati, was published in the Los Angeles Times and threatened the FBI that the Muslim community would withhold cooperation against terrorism if the Justice Department (DoJ) didn’t purge its training materials “immediately.”

“Co-operation against terrorism”? By the MPAC? Who would have guessed it was happening? Who will believe it that it ever did or ever will?

Justice must have gotten the message very quickly, immediately in fact, because that very afternoon, Thomas E. Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, represented the Department at a George Washington University summit in Washington, D.C. to confirm its capitulation to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In attendance to accept the surrender was Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) …  [The] DoJ earlier named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.

Another criminal organization remaining “unindicted”.

In fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared to anticipate the al-Marayati blackmail piece when he appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence earlier on October 6, 2011, to offer his mea culpa for FBI training material that … taught accurately that “Jihad is motivated by the strategic themes and drivers in Islam.”

By February 15, 2012, the FBI was announcing that it would be taking its curriculum purge and revision advice from a panel that apparently includes Muslim Brotherhood associates ISNA and MPAC (although the FBI refuses to say for sure). Under the watchful eyes of its jihadist mentors, the FBI subsequently pulled over 700 documents and 300 presentations from its training materials.

Also in October 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its Training Guidance & Best Practices for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), a term that deliberately erases any hint that Islamic terrorism derives its motivation from the doctrine, law and scriptures of Islam.

It’s no surprise that DHS Secretary Napolitano’s CVE Working Group includes the Obama administration’s favorite Imam, Mohamed Magid (of ISNA and Muslim Brotherhood association), plus Dalia Mogahed, who sports her own jihadist leanings, and one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s all-time favorite law enforcement officials, the LAPD’s Deputy Chief, Michael Downing. …

The final bastion of America’s defense against Islamic jihad and sharia, the Pentagon, fell to the enemy in April 2012, with the issuance of a letter from General Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, re-issuing his earlier order that all Department of Defense (DoD) course content be scrubbed to ensure no lingering remnant of disrespect to Islam.

All U.S. military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau and Joint Staff are under Dempsey’s Muslim Brotherhood-dictated orders to ensure that henceforth no U.S. military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive (or just too informative). To all intents and purposes, DoD Secretary Leon E. Panetta likewise has acquiesced to a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of U.S. military education.

One cannot help wondering: if Muslims  find it “offensive” for the cruelties of Islamic law and practice to be revealed, why do they continue to uphold them and practice them? If they’re proud of amputating limbs, stoning women to death, killing apostates and homosexuals, beating women and treating them as slaves, waging  jihad against the rest of the world, why not trumpet those ideals of justice throughout every land? Hushing them up does suggest they’re ashamed of them. Why can’t they see this? Why can’t the administration see it?

The Great Purge represents a huge victory for the jihadist enemy, who told us in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum more than 20 years ago of its plan for “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house …  ”

Without the willing assistance of America’s most senior leadership figures – at DHS, DoD, DoJ, the State Department and White House – this enemy triumph could never have happened. Reversing the disastrous effects of the Great Purge before the Republic slips further under the censorship of the Muslim Brotherhood is the critical task before us now.