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Hamas-Linked CAIR Demands Biden Dismantle Counterterror Operations

December 29, 2020/in Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics, Regulation, Religion /by Robert Spencer

The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) worked hard to get His Fraudulency President-select Joe Biden into the White House, and now it’s time for payback. On Tuesday, the sinister organization that the establishment media routinely presents as a benign human rights group released what it called “a detailed agenda detailing policy changes that the Biden-Harris administration should pursue within its first 100 days in office to restore the rights of Americans Muslims and advance justice for all.” “Restore the rights of American Muslims”? What rights have they been denied? If you said “none,” you’re correct, but CAIR’s wishlist emanates from the bizarro world of the group’s relentless efforts to secure coveted victimhood status for Muslims in the U.S.
The report is impressively detailed, identifying “33 new initiatives and policy reforms designed to protect and respect the rights of all U.S. citizens and residents, including Muslims, that the new administration can start to implement the first day in office.”
This is so much eyewash, as there is nothing among these 33 demands that is designed to protect and respect the rights of anyone but Muslims, but this sort of thing plays well with the media, and so it’s always worth throwing in. For example, one of the demands is “Support the free speech of all Americans and the right to boycott without government interference.” Another demands an “end the U.S. Department of Education’s attempts to suppress free speech on college campuses, including attempts to target Middle Eastern studies courses and punishing Palestinian student activists.”
These are not calls for the support of the freedom of speech as such. CAIR’s support for the freedom of speech here is stated only in connection to protesting Israel. When it comes to criticism of Islam, CAIR’s commitment to the freedom of speech suddenly weakens. It also demands the removal of “alt-right and Islamophobic online resources” from “existing vetting practices,” which is essentially a call for the removal of material that speaks honestly about the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism. All such material was removed years ago, so it’s unclear what CAIR spokesman Ibrahim “Honest Ibe” Hooper is in a lather about here. But free speech? Not really high on CAIR’s agenda at all.
“CAIR’s agenda,” CAIR notes proudly, “is being endorsed by the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, the largest coalition of several leading national, regional, and local Muslim organizations and institutions harnessing the collective strength of American Muslims for the greater good of all.” That makes it all the more disquieting that the list of demands includes these:

1. Fundamentally reform the federal government’s unconstitutional Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), commonly referred to as the “terrorism watchlist.”
2. Dismantle the TSA’s secretive Quiet Skies passenger tracking program, its international counterpart Silent Partner and other rules-based lists, that operate without Congressional oversight to single out law-abiding Muslim travelers for official harassment and extrajudicial consequences without due process.
3. Oppose and defund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (“DHS”) 2020 “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention” (“TVTP”) grant program, the successor of DHS’s previous Countering Violent Extremism (“CVE”) grant program.
4. End the FBI’s use of informants to spy on American Muslim communities.
5. Reject any new domestic terrorism statutes.

Consider all these demands in light of the fact that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman, Omar Ahmad, as well as Hooper, have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.)
Even worse, CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.
This list of demands also features some of CAIR’s usual victimhood mongering: “Ensure American Muslims and other minorities, like all other Americans, have equal access to the COVID-19 vaccine and federal and state aid available to those impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.” Of course, there is no need for such a demand, as no one anywhere is contemplating denying Muslims or anyone else equal access to the vaccine.
The next demand makes the remedy for this alleged discrimination clear: “provide more funding to American Muslim clinics.” Ah yes, no problem is so big that a little cash won’t solve it.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U..S. Sanctions Iran’s International Network of Islamic Seminaries, Accuses them of Jihad Recruitment

December 26, 2020/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics, Religion /by Robert Spencer

As the West continues to be duped by Muslim Brotherhood-linked lobbies, pushing the “Islamophobia” subterfuge which serves as a cover to advance the jihad, Iran continues to expand its operations worldwide via its proxies, and is eager for a Biden administration to further facilitate its ambitions.
Some background about Al-Mustafa International University:

In February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini and a group of clergymen attached to him, seized the power in Iran. From the onset, Khomeini’s regime utilized all the means and tools in its disposal to establish and fortify its brand of fundamentalism in Iran and export it throughout the Islamic world….Al Mustafa international university founded in 2007 is one of the most important among these organizations.”

Aside from Islamic indoctrination at the university, thousands of “high value individuals” from Pakistan and Afghanistan were courted by the regime’s elite Quds Force to be recruited as jihadists, and “multiple students from the university have been killed fighting in Syria.” In a characteristic deception, the university earlier in December claimed that “it promoted “peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations” and “slammed the U.S. decision as ‘hegemonic.’”
“U.S. Sanctions Put Spotlight On Iran’s International Network Of Religious Seminaries,” by Frud Bezhan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,December 22, 2020 (thanks to Henry):

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran’s clerical establishment has used religious organizations to expand its clout abroad.
Key among them is the Al-Mustafa International University, a network of religious seminaries based in the Shi’ite holy city of Qom that has branches in some 50 countries.
The university claims to teach Shi’ite Muslim theology, Islamic science, and Iran’s national language, Persian, to tens of thousands of foreign students across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.
But Tehran’s adversaries say the university has been involved in espionage and recruited foreign fighters for Iran’s proxy war in Syria.
For years, experts have documented the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) recruitment, training, and deployment of thousands of Shi’ite fighters to Syria to defend the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, Tehran’s key ally in the brutal civil war that erupted in 2011.
‘Recruitment Platform’
The United States imposed sanctions on the massive university network on December 8, alleging that it was involved in the recruitment of Afghan and Pakistani students to fight in the Syrian conflict.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Iran’s elite Quds Force, the overseas operations arm of the IRGC, used the university’s foreign branches as a “recruitment platform” for “intelligence collection and operations,” including recruitment for pro-Iranian militias.
The Treasury Department alleged that the Quds Force used the Al-Mustafa International University as a “cover” to recruit Afghans for the blacklisted Fatemiyoun Brigade, a pro-Iranian militia that fought in Syria.
Moreover, Treasury said the Quds Force also used Al-Mustafa’s campus in Qom “as a recruitment ground” for Pakistani students to join the blacklisted Zeynabiyoun Brigade, a militia that consisted of Pakistani Shi’a.
Treasury added that “multiple students from the university have been killed fighting in Syria.”
In a statement on December 9, the university said it promoted “peace, friendship, and brotherhood among nations” and slammed the U.S. decision as “hegemonic.”
‘High-Value Individuals’
Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who has closely monitored IRGC activity in Syria, said that, according to his database from January 2012 to December 2020, 3,059 Iranian and allied foreign fighters were killed in combat in Syria.
Alfoneh says of those, only three were students or graduates of the Al-Mustafa International University — known as Jamiat al-Mostafa University in Iran.
“This indicates that Jamiat al-Mostafa has never served as the primary recruitment ground for the IRGC’s war effort in Syria,” he says.
The IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi’a inside Afghanistan. The same strategy was used to recruit Pakistanis.
Alfoneh says the “three individuals identified appear to have been in command, intelligence, or political-ideological indoctrination positions.”
That means, he said, that the IRGC perceived the graduates or students of the Al-Mustafa International University as “high-value individuals.”…

COLUMN BY

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

U.S. Nuclear Submarine enters Persian Gulf after Pompeo blames Iran for Rocket Attack on U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

December 25, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics /by Robert Spencer

Tension is heating up in the Persian Gulf following a rocket attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad that left a civilian dead.
The nuclear sub sends a clear message to Iran, but clearly Iran has been emboldened by its expectation of a Biden administration that will enable billions to flow once again into its coffers, facilitate its nuclear arsenal build-up, expand its influence in the Middle East, and further enable it to terrorize its targets abroad, including Iranian dissidents who should be safe in the West.

“Israeli Submarine Reportedly Crossed Suez in ‘Message’ to Iran as US Warships Enter Persian Gulf,” by Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik News, December 22, 2020:

A US nuclear-powered submarine entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December as part of Washington’s latest deterrence mission against Iran as tensions spiked after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the American Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.
An Israeli Navy submarine visibly crossed the Suez Canal above water last week in what is being seen as a show of force aimed at Iran, Kan News, a public broadcaster, reported on Monday night.
Arab intelligence officials had reportedly confirmed to Kan News that the IDF Navy submarine surfaced and faced the Persian Gulf, which lies on the other side of Saudi Arabia, in a deliberate act, approved by Egypt, and purportedly intended to ‘send a message’ to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
There has not been any official comment from the Israel Defence Forces, with the IDF saying it does not respond to “reports of this kind.”
Earlier, on 21 December IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi voiced a warning to Tehran against attacking Israel, vowing that the Jewish state would retaliate forcefully against any aggressive moves.
“Recently, we have heard increased threats from Iran against the State of Israel. If Iran and its partners, members of the radical axis [Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups], whether in the first circle of states or the second, carry out actions against Israel, they will discover their partnership to be very costly,” Kohavi was quoted by The Times of Israel as saying at a military ceremony. He added:
“The IDF will forcefully attack anyone who takes part, from near or far, in activities against the State of Israel or Israeli targets. I am saying this plainly and am describing the situation as it is — the response and all the plans have been prepared and practised.”
‘Message to Iran’
The reported move by the IDF Navy comes as a similar manoeuvre was undertaken on Monday by a US submarine. The US Navy confirmed that the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December, accompanied by two American warships, the guided-missile cruisers USS Port Royal (CG 73) and USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), amid heightened tensions with Iran.
A US Navy official confirmed to Fox News that the latest movements in the Persian Gulf had been “long planned” ahead of the approaching anniversary of the killing of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, in Iraq on 3 January 2020 by an American drone.
According to the American official, the manoeuvres were not in response to the rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.
According to a statement from the US Navy, accompanied by photos of USS Georgia at the surface, the vessel can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and 66 special forces soldiers.
The Navy warned that the military move seeks to demonstrate “the United States’ commitment to regional partners and maritime security with a full spectrum of capabilities to remain ready to defend against any threat at any time.”
US military officials have been apprehensive of a possible attack by Iran to avenge the assassination of Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in Iraq in early January.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Chief Commander, Hossein Salami, said in September on the guard’s website that Tehran will avenge the US killing of its top commander General Qasem Soleimani by targeting those involved, in an “honourable” retaliation.
Spike in Iran Tensions
The show of force in the Persian Gulf comes amid heightened tensions with Iran after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid the blame with Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on 20 December.
The attack left at least one local civilian dead, while no embassy personnel were killed or injured, according to NPR, which cited US diplomatic sources….

COLUMN BY

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

Al-Azhar says Sharia forbids joining Muslim Brotherhood, accuses it of ‘immorality, aggression and terrorism’

December 24, 2020/in Courts & Law, Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics, Religion /by Robert Spencer

Entities all over the Muslim world has been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, all while the Brotherhood and its affiliates expand their influence throughout the West. The highly publicized Holy Land foundation trial – the largest terrorism financing trial in the history of the United States — exposed an extensive list of Brotherhood operatives in America, as well as offshoots in Canada. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Russia, Bahrain and Syria have all banned the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist group. The U.S., Canada, and the EU need to do the same. Labeling groups which are connected to Hamas as “unindicted co-conspirators” isn’t enough. Take, for instance, the Canadian government of the former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It declared IRFAN-Canada (Islamic Relief) a terrorist entity for funding Hamas. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, and explained that he believes it will “advance America’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism.” He’s right.
Last week, in a telling move, Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the head of the UAE fatwa council, withdrew from the speaker list at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit mega-conference in Toronto because it featured MB-linked groups.

“Al-Azhar decrees prohibition of joining Muslim Brotherhood,” by Mohammed Abu Zaid, Arab News, December 21, 2020:

CAIRO: Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center has said that joining the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups is forbidden according to Shariah and that God has forbidden division and disagreement.
The Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan quoted Al-Azhar as saying in its announcement that God forbids people from pursuing any path that distracts them from following the truth, explaining that keeping to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, in accordance with Shariah, was the only way to please God.
“It is clear to the public what these groups have done in distorting some texts, cutting them out of their context, and using them to achieve personal goals or interests and corrupting the land,” the center said in the fatwa.
“Membership in these extremist groups is considered forbidden by Shariah.”
“Joining the terrorist Brotherhood is forbidden by law [and is considered] cooperating in immorality and aggression, for that group violates the law of God and is involved in terrorism,” said Abdullah Al-Najjar, a member of the Islamic Research Academy.
Hussein Al-Qadi, a researcher in religious affairs and Islamic movements, said that the fatwa is the first of its kind in the history of Al-Azhar.
“This fatwa has never been issued from Al-Azhar before. Various statements were issued by Al-Azhar describing the Brotherhood as being outdated. In fact, Imam Muhammad Mustafa Al-Maraghi, reformer and rector of Al-Azhar, demanded the dissolution of the Brotherhood,” Al-Qadi said….

NYC: Muslim murders his daughter for being too ‘Americanized’ and not wanting to wear hijab

December 24, 2020/in Courts & Law, Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Robert Spencer

Witless Western feminists now have an annual event, World Hijab Day, in which they don hijabs in order to show solidarity with Muslim women in the West who supposedly experience abuse for wearing the hijab, although a great many of these incidents have been found to have been faked by the alleged victims. The real victims of abuse over wearing the hijab are much more often girls and women who don’t wear it, such as Ola Salem.
Aqsa Parvez’s Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it. Amina Muse Ali was a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab. 40 women were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab. Alya Al-Safar’s Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain. Amira Osman Hamid faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab. An Egyptian girl, also named Amira, committed suicide after being brutalized by her family for refusing to wear the hijab. Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia were told they had to wear the hijab or be fired. Women in Chechnya were police shot with paintballs because they weren’t wearing hijab. Other women in Chechnya were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab.
Elementary school teachers in Tunisia were threatened with death for not wearing hijab. Syrian schoolgirls were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab. Women in Gaza were forced by Hamas to wear hijab. Women in Iran protested against the regime by daring to take off their hijabs. Women in London were threatened with murder by Muslim thugs if they didn’t wear hijab. An anonymous young Muslim woman doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents. Fifteen girls in Saudi Arabia were killed when the religious police wouldn’t let them leave their burning school building because they had taken off their hijabs in their all-female environment. A girl in Italy had her head shaved by her mother for not wearing hijab.
Other women and girls have been killed or threatened, or live in fear for daring not to wear the hijab. But where are the feminists standing in solidarity with them?
“Staten Island fugitive arraigned, held without bail in Staten Island slay of Muslim activist daughter,” by Rocco Parascandola, New York Daily News, December 22, 2020:

A former Olympic boxer charged with the strangulation of his daughter — an activist for the rights of Muslim women — was arraigned on murder charges Tuesday and ordered held without bail, the Staten Island district attorney said.
Kabary Salem, 52, was extradited from Kuwait on Friday, ending a year-long manhunt that started shortly after his daughter, Ola Salem, 25, was found strangled in Bloomingdale Park, a 138-acre park on the South Shore of Staten Island, the morning of Oct. 24, 2019.
Salem fled the country, possibly spending time in Egypt, authorities said — and even tried to throw investigators off his trail by telling The New York Times his daughter had complained to him that she was being tailed by another car on the highway.
“I want to know what happened to her, what is the reason for that, but no one tells me,” he told the news outlet. “I am just waiting.
“She was a really good, beautiful girl.”
Kabary Salem was indicted by a grand jury Nov. 3 and charged with murder, manslaughter, concealment of a human corpse and strangulation….
It’s unclear what sparked the violence. The DA’s office wouldn’t comment on a report that the father wasn’t happy with the man his daughter was dating.A source who knew the daughter told the Daily News she was becoming more Westernized and didn’t want to wear her hijab.
“She was very outspoken,” the source said. “She wasn’t timid.”
“She was becoming Americanized,” the source said….
The suspect was a top boxer in Egypt and competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. His daughter also boxed and had dedicated her life to championing the rights of Muslim woman.

ADL smears foes of jihad violence against Israel as ‘Islamophobes,’ gets canceled as ‘anti-Muslim’ anyway

December 19, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, National Security, News, Politics, Religion /by Robert Spencer

Jonathan Greenblatt is discovering that any dissent, no matter how small and qualified, from the far-Left agenda — which is increasingly open in its hostility to Israel — will get you defamed as an “Islamophobe,” no matter how much you pander, no matter how much you desperately try to stay in the good graces of those who set the tune to which the rest of us must dance. The sinister Salam al-Marayati of MPAC has smeared ADL as “anti-Muslim” for supporting Israel, and Greenblatt is dismayed, saying that “the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false.”
Of course it is. The ADL has repeatedly done to foes of jihad violence against Israel and other states, and foes of Sharia oppression of women and others, exactly what Salam al-Marayati is doing to him now. Greenblatt could have used this as an occasion to wake up and realize how he is being played, and how the entire “Islamophobia” enterprise is a scam designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror, for fear of falling prey to what al-Marayati is doing to him now. But instead of having an original thought for the first time in his life, Greenblatt is doubling down, pleading with al-Marayati to accept him. Will it work? Almost certainly not, but it will likely lead the ADL to become even more anti-Israel than it is now.
“ADL: We’re proud of our record defending Jews — and Muslims,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Forward, December 16, 2020:

As one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the Jewish community, we’re not unaccustomed to criticism, even in the pages of one of America’s oldest Jewish news outlets. But the OpEd by Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which the Forward published on Tuesday morning, was illuminating about how certain quarters in our society desperately try to employ cancel culture to silence others. In this case, the author is trying to marginalize ADL and make support for the State of Israel disqualifying in pursuing civil rights for all Americans, including the Muslim-American community.
Al-Marayati argues that ADL is a source of “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and cannot be fully trusted as an ally in the fight for civil rights because of our support of the Jewish state. It is an argument taken from the playbook of a fringe smear campaign being run against ADL that, to its credit, MPAC has not signed his name to, but which he still chose to directly quote in his piece. Still, their campaign is wrong and without merit on a number of levels. It is also dangerous, creating a space where we as a Jewish organization are judged more for what we do or do not say about Israel than for all of the advocacy work we do here in the U.S. and abroad fighting for marginalized communities.
This is a common tactic in a smear campaign – narrow down a broader argument (in this case, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) into a singular, unfounded allegation (in this case, that ADL is Islamophobic because of our support for the Jewish State). But the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tlaib: ‘I hope that you realize the opportunity that Allah has given us to show the power of Muslims in Georgia’

December 18, 2020/in Commentary, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by Robert Spencer

Expect many more such demonstrations of power in the coming years.
“Tlaib: ‘I Hope You Realize Just the Opportunity Here That Allah Has Given Us to Show the Power of Muslims in Georgia,’” by Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, December 14, 2020:

(CNSNews.com) – Muslim leaders, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), expressed the hope and expectation on Sunday that Muslim voters would be a deciding factor in the pivotal Senate runoff election in the state of Georgia early next month. The early voting period begins on Monday.
Participating in an online “vote-a-thon” co-hosted by the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Georgia Muslim Voter Project, Tlaib said: “I hope that you realize just the opportunity here that Allah has given us to show the power of Muslims in Georgia.”
“I want people to be like, oh my God, I didn’t even know Muslims are in Georgia,” she said. “Exactly! Because we’re going to show them in droves of numbers.”
“I want to, mash’allah [what Allah has willed] be able to say, ‘Look at the voting in these precincts and guess what? It was the Muslim vote that delivered Georgia,’ ” Tlaib said.
Mediavine
Omar said Muslim voters in Georgia had played a big part in delivering the result on November 3 that necessitated the runoff, and voiced the hope that the same would apply on January 5.
“I do hope that when the election is decided on January 5, and people are able to analyze who came out and voted, we will hear that the Muslims in Georgia were a big part of making the right decision in this historic election,” she said.
Omar and Tlaib in 2018 became the first two Muslim women to be elected to the U.S. Congress.
In next month’s runoff, Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are fighting off challenges from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock respectively. The outcome will determine control of the Senate for the next two years at least.
Another participant in the livestreamed event on Sunday was Palestinian American activist and Women’s March co-founder Linda Sarsour.
“You, the Muslim community in Georgia, by yourselves, can literally swing this entire election and send two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, which makes Kamala Harris the deciding vote,” she said. “And you can actually alleviate harm and suffering on millions of immigrants in this country, particularly on the issue of immigration reform.”
“Let history be made, and let the story be told: On January 5, 2021, it is the Muslim American community, the votes from the Muslim American community in Georgia, that literally helped us win back that Senate and put us back on the path towards winning justice for our community,” Sarsour said….

Israel has tape of Iranian nuclear scientist saying mullahs ‘want five warheads’

December 7, 2020/in Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics, Science /by Robert Spencer

Yet His Fraudulency Joe Biden plans to enable Iran’s nuclear program anew by returning to the Iranian nuclear deal. Find out why that would be a catastrophic move in The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran.
“‘Israel has tape of slain Iran nuke chief talking about building five warheads,’” Times of Israel, December 4, 2020:

Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
This top-secret recording was played in 2008 by former prime minister Ehud Olmert for then-president George W. Bush during a visit by Bush to Israel and was a key element in convincing the Americans to step up efforts to combat Iran’s nuclear program, the report said….

“I’m going to play you something, but I ask that you not talk about it with anyone, not even with the director of the CIA,” the report quoted Olmert as telling Bush from within the closed-door meeting. Bush reportedly agreed to the request.

Olmert pulled out a recording device, hit play and a man could be heard speaking in Persian.

“The man speaking here is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,” Olmert reportedly explained. “Fakhrizadeh is the head of the “AMAD” program, Iran’s secret military nuclear project. The one it denies exists at all,” Olmert told Bush according to the report.

The prime minister then revealed that Israeli intelligence services had managed to recruit an Iranian agent close to Fakhrizadeh who had been feeding Jerusalem information on the nuclear scientist for years.

Olmert provided Bush with an English-language transcript of what Fakhrizadeh had said in Persian.
According to the report, Fakhrizadeh could be heard giving details about the development of Iranian nuclear weapons. However, the Yedioth report only quotes selected phrases, without the word nuclear. The scientist complains that the government is not providing him with sufficient funds to carry out his work. On the one hand, Fakhrizadeh says, in an apparent reference to his superiors, “they want five warheads,” but on the other, “they aren’t letting me work.”

Fakhrizadeh then goes on to criticize colleagues in the defense ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the report.

Bush read the recording’s translation and reacted with silence. Yedioth claimed the recording served as a “smoking atomic gun” for Olmert….

New Study Reveals that Muslim Religiosity Strongly Linked to Hatred Towards the West

December 6, 2020/in Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, News, Politics, Religion, Science /by Robert Spencer

I am a Social and Political Psychologist that has been researching in the area of Psychology of Religion. What fascinates me about this discipline is that it goes beyond collecting people’s responses to understanding and examining their attitudes. Our aim is not limited to knowing what people think about a particular issue, but it expands to answer questions about why do they think and behave in a certain way and what we can do to change or sustain their behaviour.
The Christian faith dominates the field of Psychology of Religion. This is understandable since the West was the first to study religion using empirical scientific methods. As a Middle Eastern, I was keen to enrich the literature by expanding it to cover Islam and Muslims. In a recent study that I published in one of the top journals of the scientific study of religion, I examined the relationship between Muslim religiosity and prejudice towards the West. I wanted to investigate whether there was an association between being a religious Muslim and having negative attitudes toward the West. The sample of this study was collected from 17 Arab countries and from a variety of ages ranging from 18 to over 70.
The results were distressing and revealed that Muslim religiosity was strongly linked to hatred towards the West. It was expected to see a link between Islamic fundamentalism and negative attitudes towards the West; however, even intrinsic Muslim religiosity (moderate Islam) strongly predicted prejudice towards the West. In fact, the only groups that had favourable attitudes toward the West were the secular and nonreligious Arabs. What makes this finding intriguing is that it is different than what is found in a Western context. For instance, Christian fundamentalism is still linked to prejudice toward Muslims, but moderate Christian religiosity is not. Also, when we add ideological variables like Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Dogmatism to mediate this relationship, the Christian fundamentalism – prejudice link disappears. This means that in a Western context, Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Dogmatism have a substantial impact on prejudiced attitudes that the religiosity factor becomes insignificant. In comparison, Muslim religiosity remains even after including ideological factors like Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Dogmatism to try to mediate the link between Islam and negative biases towards the West. In other words, Muslim religiosity remains the dominant predictor for disliking the West regardless of it being moderate or reaching a fundamentalism level.
The crucial thing about these findings is that it shows that Islam is not like other religions and that this ideology needs to be understood and examined from a different scope. I have prepared a project entitled: “Conceptualizing and measuring Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, and consequences for anti-Western prejudice.” This project will examine Islamic fundamentalism in more detail in the Middle East and test its relationship to anti-Western prejudice, its link to political Islam, and other related psychological traits. Long story short, I was quite surprised by the response of many Western universities that were hesitant to invest in this research. I was asking myself why is it ok to study and examine other religions but one of a sudden it might not be a good idea to study Islam? After all, this is science, and science should remain objective.
As a psychologist, I believe that if we are serious about finding a cure for a patient, then we must begin by a proper diagnosis. But if we insist that the patient is ok and does not need treatment than things will only get worse. That is why science is crucial to help us understand and work on finding solutions to deal with extreme ideologies rather than leaving things the way they are which will only bring more violence and risk stability and security in both the East and the West. And if the recent horrifying act of beheading a schoolteacher in France because of showing some pictures was not enough to bring a wake-up call then I’m not anticipating a bright future! If you would like to read the details of my study you can reach it through this link: Islam and the West
COLUMN BY

BASHAR ALBAGHLI

Bashar Albaghli is a Kuwaiti academic that specialises in the scientific study of religion. He was sponsored by Kuwait University and was supposed to go back to Kuwait and be a lecturer after he completed his PhD studies. However, he was prosecuted and sentenced to prison because of his political opinions against the Islamists and funding terrorism in the Gulf.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweets genocidal slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’

December 2, 2020/in Culture Wars, DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Robert Spencer

This slogan means no Jewish state at all, and that would mean the slaughter of millions of Jews. But it’s acceptable on the Left today to harbor such genocidal aspirations.

Rashida Tlaib RT's out the same message that got Marc Lamont Hill canned from CNN.

From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free – code for eradicating the State of Israel and its millions of Jews.

Reminder – this is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman pic.twitter.com/zEWOptrGPW

— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) November 30, 2020

“Democrat Rashida Tlaib Promotes Slogan Associated With Calling For Elimination Of Israel,” by Ryan Saavedra, Daily Wire, November 29, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) promoted a tweet on her Twitter account on Sunday that contained a phrase that is associated with calling for the elimination of Israel.
StopAntisemitism.org highlighted the tweet that Tlaib retweeted, which stated: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“Rashida Tlaib RT’s out the same message that got Marc Lamont Hill canned from CNN,” StopAntisemitism.org noted. “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free – code for eradicating the State of Israel and its millions of Jews. Reminder – this is a sitting U.S. Congresswoman.”
The Daily Beast, a left-wing publication, wrote the following about the meaning of the phrase:
The river in this formulation is the Jordan, the naturally occurring eastern border of Israel and of the West Bank; the sea is the Mediterranean to the west. Uttered by advocates of the Palestinian cause for decades, the pithy slogan very pointedly makes no place for Israel. It evokes a strip of Middle Eastern land where Israel is no more, replaced by a unified Palestinian entity in the space it once occupied. It could be that this entity would welcome and protect a Jewish population. But when supporters of the Jewish state hear those 10 words, they worry about their potentially violent implications.
CNN did fire then-contributor Marc Lamont Hill in 2018 after he used the slogan, which The Times of Israel noted was associated with “Palestinian extremists,” during a speech at the United Nations. Hamas has repeatedly used the phrase…

Chutzpah: Palestinians Prepare List of Demands For Biden Administration

November 26, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, National Security, Politics /by Robert Spencer

The Palestinian Arabs sense an opening for them in Biden’s Washington, where they rightly assume they will be personae gratae again. They have already been preparing their laundry list of demands for the Biden Administration, which is discussed here: “PA wants Biden to reverse ‘anti-Palestinian’ decisions,” by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, November 22, 2020:

The Palestinians will demand that the new administration under US President-elect Joe Biden cancel “anti-Palestinian” decisions taken by the administration of President Donald Trump, Palestinian officials said on Sunday.
The officials told The Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Authority has prepared a list of demands that will be presented to Biden after he is sworn in on January 20.
The list includes a request to reopen the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington, rescinding Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, resuming financial aid to the PA and the UN Relief and Work Agency and reopening the US consulate in east Jerusalem.
In addition, the officials said, the Palestinians will also demand the Biden administration cancel the recent decision that allows US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth, as well as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement allowing for settlement products to be labeled as “Made in Israel.”
“We have already contacted Biden’s people to inform them of our demands,” a Palestinian official told the Post. “We had a positive dialogue with senior officials who are close to Biden.”

Since that contact between the Palestinians with Biden’s staff, the two most pro-Israel of Biden’s advisers, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, have been appointed to be, respectively, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. It may not be quite as smooth sailing for the PA as it thought just a few days ago.

Last week, PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki said the Palestinians want to conduct dialogue with the new US administration in order to cancel decisions taken by the Trump administration.
Malki said the Palestinians have suffered tremendously as a result of Trump’s decisions directed against them, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the closure of the PLO mission in the US and the suspension of US financial aid to the Palestinians.
Malki and other Palestinian officials said they also expected the Biden administration to distance itself from Trump’s plan for Middle East peace, also known as the “Deal of the Century.” The Palestinian leadership has strongly condemned the plan, unveiled in January 2020, as a “conspiracy aiming to liquidate the Palestinian issue and national rights.”
Another Palestinian official told the Post that while he was optimistic the Biden administration would cancel some of the decisions taken by the Trump administration, the Palestinians do not believe it would be easy to return the US Embassy to Tel Aviv.

No, it won’t be easy to move the Embassy back to Tel Aviv. It will be impossible. There is not a chance in hell that the American Embassy will be moved out of Jerusalem. Biden has already declared that he would not do it, though he also added that he “would not have made the move himself,” a curious remark given that he was one of the most enthusiastic backers of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which passed in the Senate by 93 to 5.

“We know that the Biden administration would not be able to accept all our demands, such as the removal of the embassy from Jerusalem, but we are very optimistic regarding the other demands,” the official explained. “If [Biden] renounces the ‘Deal of the Century’ and resumes financial aid to the Palestinians, this will be a good step in the right direction. It will be a big victory for the Palestinian people.”

The suspension of financial aid to the Palestinians was partly in response to the PA’s refusal to end its Pay-For-Slay program, which incentivizes terrorism by providing generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists, and to the families of terrorists who had been killed. The PA has been recently been making noises about modifying the plan, by providing stipends based not, as now, on the length of a sentence, which provide more money the longer the sentence (so those who commit the worst attacks get more money), but instead on the “financial need” of a terrorist’s family. Qadri Abu Bakr, the PLO’s Director for Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, in English told the New York Times that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) policy on terrorists’ families’ salaries will change. But in the Arabic version of those remarks, Qadri Abu Bakr said the exact opposite, assuring his listeners that the calculation of stipends to terrorists and their families would not change in any way. Two versions, directly contradicting each other. Why not? Qadri Abu Bakr knows: “War is deceit,” said Muhammad.
It is thus doubtful that the PA could bring itself to change its Pay-For-Slay policy, which reflects the Palestinians’ visceral support for terrorism. But even if the PA did change the criteria according to which the stipends are calculated, this would still leave in place a program that subsidizes, and therefore incentivizes, terrorism. This will make it very difficult for the Americans to turn on the faucet of aid again.
The PA’s complacent assumption that the Americans will renew financial aid to the Palestinians needs to be challenged and undermined. Even without the Pay-For-Slay program, why should the Americans turn on that tap for the PA, rather than have the PA go hat in hand to their fellow Arabs in the oil states, or Iran, or Turkey, and ask them for aid? Who decided that the United States owes the Palestinians a permanent living? And why should American taxpayers be shelling out billions, over the years, to UNRWA, which includes on its ever-expanding rolls of those who receive its largesse not just the real Palestinian refugees, those who left in 1947-1949, of whom there may now be 30,000 still alive – but also all of their descendants, now amounting to more than five million people? Who decided that among the many tens of millions of refugees who have been created by conflicts – wars, civil wars, persecutions — all over the world since the late 1940s, only one group, the Palestinians, should be allowed to pass on the refugee status to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so on, world without end?
This ever-lengthening list of “Palestinian refugees” has been on the international – almost entirely Western – dole for decades. Don’t we need to ask a few questions at this point? For example, why are we Americans expected to give hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the Palestinians instead of, say, to the inoffensive and much poorer people in Bolivia or the Congo or Nepal? What exactly have the Palestinians done for us? Haven’t they used terror as a weapon for a half-century? Didn’t we see the Palestinians hand out candies and celebrate when they heard the glad news on 9/11/2001? Haven’t Palestinian terrorists killed American citizens? Isn’t Hamas a local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, that seeks a worldwide caliphate? And what about the links between the Palestinians and our mortal enemy, Iran?

According to the official, the Palestinians are also expecting the Biden administration to return to the long-standing US policy toward settlements and adhere to UN resolutions on this issue.
In November 2019, Pompeo announced that the US no longer views settlements as “inconsistent with international law,” a move that drew strong condemnation from the Palestinian leadership.

Secretary Pompeo had quite properly declared as a break with previous policy what ought to have been American policy all along. The Israeli settlements in the West Bank do not violate, and are not “inconsistent with” international law. Their legality stems from the Mandate for Palestine, that included the entire West Bank in the territories assigned to the future Jewish National Home. Previous administrations had relied on the “Hansell Memorandum” of 1978, which took the position that the settlements were “illegal,” but Hansell himself never mentions the Palestine Mandate In his memorandum, as if it were of little moment, when it is, in fact, the essential document for understanding Israel’s claim to the West Bank, and hence, the basis of Israel’s right to build settlements in that territory.
COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

Trump is Right: Our Exit from Afghanistan is Long Overdue

November 21, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, Immigration, National Security, Politics /by Robert Spencer

President Trump is withdrawing a significant number of troops from Afghanistan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is livid. According to AP, McConnell “warned against a potentially ‘humiliating’ pullout from Afghanistan that he said would be worse than President Barack Obama’s 2011 withdrawal from Iraq and reminiscent of the U.S. departure from Saigon in 1975.” Not to be outdone, Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican leader on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, insisted: “We need to ensure a residual force is maintained for the foreseeable future to protect U.S. national and homeland security interests and to help secure peace for Afghanistan.” But McConnell and McCaul are advocating for a failed policy. It is long past time to leave Afghanistan.
In his State of the Union address on February 5, 2019, President Trump stated: “As a candidate for President, I pledged a new approach. Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Epitomizing the need to do this was what happened when Trump first moved to end America’s longest endless war, the war in Afghanistan, with a treaty with the group that the U.S. entered Afghanistan in order to topple, the Taliban, in February 2020. The ink was still fresh on the signed document when the Taliban launched a new attack against Afghan government forces, killing twenty Afghan soldiers and police officers.
The attack was a fitting symbol of the fruitlessness of these endless wars and the bankruptcy of the assumptions and policies that had led to their being waged.
After all these years, we have little to show for all our efforts in the nation that has been ominously dubbed the “graveyard of empires.” The U.S. has sacrificed the lives of numerous heroic service members and squandered trillions for nearly two decades in the fond hope that it could remake Afghanistan into a stable, Western-style republic that would respect the human rights of all its citizens. That’s still the plan, as far as the architects of our intervention are concerned: One foreign policy establishment wonk counseled patience, saying that Afghanistan “is not going to become Switzerland overnight,” a fact that is as obvious as Joe Biden’s dementia.
Great. So we know now after almost twenty years that it isn’t going to happen overnight, but how long exactly is it going to take? To that question the advocates of endless intervention have no definite answer. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in late 2019: “We are never going to get the U.S. military out of Afghanistan unless we take care to see that there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to leave.”
All right, but what’s it going to take? Do Rumsfeld, McConnell, and McCaul really think that after nearly twenty years, one more year, or five more years, or ten more years, will do the job?
Afghanistan will never be a Western-style republic and will likely never be free of the Taliban without a massive transformation of Afghan society, no matter how long we stay, and such a transformation is not on the horizon. This was clear relatively early in the conflict, but the obviousness of this fact did not make successive Republican and Democratic administrations rethink the wisdom of being there.
And so after all this American expenditure of personnel, money, and materiel, there is absolutely no doubt that once we leave, the Taliban will make gains and may even regain control of the Afghan government.
Did that mean that America had to keep troops there for fifty years? A hundred years? Should we just make Afghanistan the fifty-first state and seal our commitment there forever? Or should the U.S. instead focus on what is best for America in Afghanistan, working to contain the jihad there and to ensure that the Taliban does not and cannot engage in international jihad terror activity, while otherwise leaving the Afghans to their own devices?
America’s tragic misadventure in Afghanistan makes it clear that a new foreign policy strategy is urgently needed, and that the ideas and assumptions that have governed U.S. foreign policy for nearly a century needed to be consigned to the dustbin of history. President Trump had proposed to do that. Now we are likely to see instead a retrenchment of the forces that made the tragedy of two decades of war in Afghanistan happen in the first place. President Biden, or President Harris, or President Pelosi, or whatever horror show we may be facing next, could send the troops that Trump withdraws right back into the belly of the beast.
After all, as Trump said last September, “the top people in the Pentagon…want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.” He is getting us out. Others, wanting to keep the Masters of War happy, may get us right back in.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

15 Dem Senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, urge Facebook to block ‘anti-Muslim hate’

November 19, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, Politics, Religion /by Robert Spencer

Incitement to violence against any group should always be blocked. The problem here is that Islamic advocacy groups and their allies in the West have for years claimed that any honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad violence was “anti-Muslim hate.” Facebook already makes such discussion virtually impossible to find. Expect it to be completely blacked out in a Biden/Harris administration.
“US senators call on Facebook to address anti-Muslim bigotry,” Middle East Eye, November 16, 2020 (thanks to Henry):

Democratic senators are calling on Facebook to “do more” to mitigate the spread of anti-Muslim bigotry, after the social media giant was criticised for failing to address attacks against the faith group on multiple occasions, including the aftermath of the Christchurch shootings.
In a letter sent to Facebook to CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday, a group of 15 Senators said the platform needed to immediately enforce its community standards to address anti-Muslim hate and ban the use of event pages for the purpose of “harassment, organizing, and violence” against the Muslim community.
The letter also said that Facebook had not taken proper steps to enforce its “call to arms” policy, a year-old rule created in large part due to pressure from Muslim advocacy groups, which since 2015 had flagged multiple instances where organisers of Facebook events had advocated for followers to bring weapons to mosques and other places of worship.
“We recognize that Facebook has announced efforts to address its role in the distribution of anti-Muslim content in some of these areas,” the letter, signed by Senator Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and 12 others, said.
“Nevertheless, it is not clear that the company is meaningfully better positioned to prevent further human rights abuses and violence against Muslim minorities today.”
An independent civil rights audit of the social media company released in July outlined that despite having policies that did not allow for hate speech against religious groups, incidents of hate speech continued to persist across Facebook.
Muslim Advocates, a rights group that called for the audit two years ago, thanked the senators for writing the letter.
“Since 2015, Muslim Advocates had warned Facebook that the platform’s event pages were being used by violent militias and white nationalists to organize armed rallies at mosques,” the group’s executive director Farhana Khera said on Monday.
“We need to know what Facebook plans to do to end the anti-Muslim hate and violence enabled by their platform – and end it now.”…
“As members of Congress who are deeply disturbed by the proliferation of this hate speech on your platform, we urge you to do more,” the senators’ letter read.

RELATED VIDEO: Guest on US-funded Alhurra denigrates Christians
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden transition official wants speech restrictions, criminalization of burning of Qur’an

November 16, 2020/2 Comments/in Commentary, Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Politics, Religion /by Robert Spencer

I’m not in favor of the burning of any book, and I believe that people ought to read and understand the Qur’an rather than burn it. However, note that Stengel is calling for legal “guardrails” against “speech that incites hate.”
If someone burns a Bible, no one cares. If someone burns a Qur’an, there are riots and death threats. So for Stengel, burning a Bible would not be “speech that incites hate,” but burning a Qur’an would be. Saying that “speech that incites hate” must be criminalized is tantamount to calling for the heckler’s veto to be enshrined in law. Stengel says: “Yes, the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.”
So if Muslims riot over burned Qur’ans, we must outlaw burning Qur’ans. That would only signal to Muslims that they can get us to bend to their will by threatening violence, and ensure that we will see many more such threats. In Richard Stengel’s ideal world, non-Muslims are cowed into silence by Muslims who threaten to kill them if they get out of line, and by non-Muslim officials who react to the threats by giving the Muslims what they want.
Note also that Leftist and Islamic groups in the U.S. have for years insisted, with no pushback from any mainstream politician or media figure, that essentially any and all criticism of Islam, including analysis of how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, is “hate speech” and “speech that incites hate.” Thus Richard Stengel will silence that as well, and the global jihad will be able to advance unopposed and unimpeded.
In a year or two I might have told you “I warned you this was coming,” but by then I probably won’t be able to.
“Joe Biden transition official wrote op-ed advocating free speech restrictions,” by Steven Nelson, New York Post, November 13, 2020:

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team leader for US-owned media outlets wants to redefine freedom of speech and make “hate speech” a crime.
Richard Stengel is the Biden transition “Team Lead” for the US Agency for Global Media, the US government media empire that includes Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Stengel, an Obama administration alumnus, wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered.
He wrote: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting ‘thought that we hate,’ but not speech that incites hate.”
Stengel offered two examples of speech that he has an issue with: Quran burning and circulation of “false narratives” by Russia during the 2016 election.
“Even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?” Stengel wrote.
“It’s a fair question. Yes, the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.”…
“Since World War II, many nations have passed laws to curb the incitement of racial and religious hatred. These laws started out as protections against the kinds of anti-Semitic bigotry that gave rise to the Holocaust. We call them hate speech laws, but there’s no agreed-upon definition of what hate speech actually is. In general, hate speech is speech that attacks and insults people on the basis of race, religion, ethnic origin and sexual orientation,” Stengel wrote.
“I think it’s time to consider these statutes. The modern standard of dangerous speech comes from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) and holds that speech that directly incites ‘imminent lawless action’ or is likely to do so can be restricted. Domestic terrorists such as Dylann Roof and Omar Mateen and the El Paso shooter were consumers of hate speech. Speech doesn’t pull the trigger, but does anyone seriously doubt that such hateful speech creates a climate where such acts are more likely?”…

Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif: Biden ‘more promising’ for the Islamic Republic than Trump

November 8, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, National Security, Politics /by Robert Spencer

It doesn’t take a genius or “expert” to recognize that Joe Biden would be a better president from the standpoint of the Iranian mullahs. The surprising and embarrassing aspect of this is that so many seem to be ignorant of it or indifferent to it, even as Zarif acknowledges it openly. Biden and the Democrats are a boon for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is seeking to expand its influence in the West and elsewhere, and will be enabled to do just that by Biden and his team.
“Why Iran sees Biden as the “more promising” candidate in the U.S. election,” by Elizabeth Palmer and Tucker Reals, CBS News, November 2, 2020:

Tehran — Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has indicated to CBS News that the Islamic Republic’s leadership would prefer Joe Biden win the U.S. election. It was a first for a country that has been reluctant to tip its hand.
Zarif first insisted that Iran‘s government has no preference between President Donald Trump or Biden, but pushed to respond, Zarif said that “the statements by the Biden camp have been more promising, but we will have to wait and see.”…
“What is important for us is how the White House behaves after the election, not what promises are there, what slogans are made. The behavior of the U.S. is important. If the U.S. decides to stop its malign behavior against Iran, then it will be a different story no matter who sits in the White House,” the U.S.-educated diplomat said.
U.S.-Iran relations have disintegrated since President Trump’s unilateral move in 2018 to pull out of the nuclear deal reached with Iran under former President Barack Obama. The Trump administration not only withdrew from that agreement but has since hit Iran with a series of harsh economic sanctions — a “maximum pressure” bid to force Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal.
The Biden camp has signaled that, if he wins, his administration would attempt to renegotiate the deal hashed out when he was vice president, but the Iranian Foreign Minister insisted to us that that is not Tehran’s hope.
“If we wanted to do that [renegotiate], we would have done it with President Trump four years ago,” Zarif told CBS News, adding that “under no circumstances” would Tehran consider renegotiating the terms of a deal which has since been adopted as a United Nations Security Council Resolution….
“We can find a way to reengage, obviously. But reengagement does not mean renegotiation,” he said. “It means the U.S. coming back to the negotiating table.”…
“I know that Vice President Biden understands that that won’t happen [renegotiate the terms of the nuclear deal], and may act differently,” said the Iranian foreign minister. He expressed hope, however, that Mr. Trump, too, “is capable of acting differently.”…

Kamala Harris: Biden will restore aid to ‘Palestinians’, reopen East Jerusalem consulate and PLO office in D.C.

November 3, 2020/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by Robert Spencer

Returning to the old arrangement: pressuring our only reliable ally in the Middle East, while coddling and enabling those who would conquer and subjugate us.
“Exclusive: Q&A with Kamala Harris ahead of election,” Arab American News, October 28, 2020:

DEARBORN — Democratic vice presidential nominee and California Senator Kamala Harris visited Metro Detroit last Sunday, making a notable, unannounced stop in Dearborn to grab dinner at the Khalaf Grill. The visit by Joe Biden’s running mate was just one of several visits by both prominent Democratic and Republican candidates in the last few weeks ahead of the critical upcoming general election….
Many Arab voters in Dearborn and Hamtramck hold foreign policy issues important, particularly the Israel and Palestine conflict, Syria, the war on Yemen and others. What can a Biden presidency mean for lasting peace and demands for human rights in the Mid East region? Could we see an end to continued U.S. military engagements in the region?
Joe and I are committed to helping the people of the Arab world meet the challenges they face. The United States cannot dictate the outcomes in other countries, but we do have a responsibility to advance human rights and democratic principles on behalf of all people. We have an obligation to promote universal values and work toward a more peaceful and secure world.
Joe and I also believe in the worth and value of every Palestinian and every Israeli and we will work to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy. We are committed to a two-state solution, and we will oppose any unilateral steps that undermine that goal. We will also oppose annexation and settlement expansion. And we will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.
In Syria, Joe and I will once again stand with civil society and pro-democracy partners in Syria, and help advance a political settlement where the Syrian people have a voice. We will work to protect the most vulnerable Syrians and lead the global coalition to defeat ISIS. And instead of standing by as the government of Saudi Arabia pursues disastrous, dangerous policies, including the ongoing war in Yemen, we will reassess the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen….

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“Al-Azhar decrees prohibition of joining Muslim Brotherhood,” by Mohammed Abu Zaid, Arab News, December 21, 2020:

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