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[size=16]Dear Elaine,

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is at it again.

This time they are working to water down a 7-minute film entitled, “The Rise of Al Qaeda” that will be shown at the soon-to-be opened September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center. Specifically, CAIR wants to whitewash the description of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks by having the film edited to remove the words “Islamists” and “jihad.”

We must stop CAIR now! We cannot allow CAIR to rewrite the history of 9/11.

Removing the accurate description of those who caused this heinous attack not only would be factually incorrect, but would be a tragic slap in the face to all Americans, as well as a disservice to all future generations by misrepresenting the truth.

Further, if Jihad truly means to “struggle” and not warfare to establish the religion, how does CAIR explain the names of terrorist organizations such as these?
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Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India) Islamic Front for Armed Jihad (Algeria) Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine (Lebanon) Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine (Israel) Islamic Jihad Organization (Lebanon) Islamic Jihad Union (Uzbekistan) Jama’at al-Jihad al-Islami (Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia) Laskar Jihad (Indonesia) United Jihad Council (India)

[size=16]You cannot deny the fact that there is a connection between Islam and Jihad. The reality is Jihad is a tenet of Islam. Depicting anything else – and at a memorial dedicated to the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks no less – would be factually dishonest.

We must take action and we must take action now. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum officials must hear what the rest of America thinks about this issue, otherwise, the only ones they will hear from are groups like CAIR. This is your turn to protect historical truth from being erased from the 9/11 Museum. We owe it to our children to keep the truth alive.

Can we count on you to take a moment to contact the 9/11 Memorial Museum about this issue today?

[size=18]*** IMPORTANT AND TIME-SENSITIVE ACTION ITEM! ***

Please contact the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center today to let them know that you fully support their film, “The Rise of Al Qaeda,” as it currently stands and that you oppose any modification of that film to whitewash historically accurate depictions of who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on our nation.

Let them know that including the words “Islamist” and “jihad” are historically accurate and in no way impugn the entire Muslim community.

We have provided all the contact information you need to take this action.

We have also written a sample call and e-mail script for you, to make this as easy as possible. (NOTE: The e-mail script is modifiable if you wish to convey the message in your own words. We ask that you please be respectful at all times.)

Click HERE TO CALL and click HERE TO E-MAIL.

Then, please pass this e-mail along to everyone you know. Time is of the essence.

Thank you. Together we are making a difference[/size][/size]
[size=16][size=16][size=13]ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.[/size][/size][/size]

Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national mouthpiece, certainly picked the wrong person to push around when he tried his usual shenanigans during a recent interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. Click HERE to watch the fireworks if you missed it.

Mr. Hooper challenged Ms. Kelly to “please find something that CAIR has done or said…that you find either extreme, objectionable, intolerant, whatever.”

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has followed up with a “Top Ten List of Extreme, Objectionable, Intolerant, WHATEVER, quotes from CAIR over the last 20 years.” Enjoy (and share).

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[size=32][size=29]Great Idea, Ibrahim Hooper!

IPT News

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4352/great-idea-ibrahim-hooper

In a heated exchange last week, Ibrahim Hooper – national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – issued a put up or shut up kind of challenge to his organization's critics.

Hooper was pressed by Fox News host Megyn Kelly about CAIR's record of failing to condemn terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizballah and other questionable positions. Hooper tried to deflect, blaming "Internet hate sites" for fueling "hate-filled smears against CAIR, which was founded in 1994.

"Please find something that CAIR has done or said in those 20 years that you find either extreme, objectionable, intolerant, whatever," Hooper said.

Don't mind if we do.

We've documented CAIR's dubious record for years, noting in a 2009 report that the group responds to the very kind of specific examples Hooper demands to see by issuing ad hominem attacks against the messenger.

So, in a decidedly-less funny tribute to Late Show host David Letterman's pending retirement, here are the IPT's top 10 examples of "extreme, objectionable, intolerant, whatever" actions by CAIR. Together, they undermine CAIR's credibility as a mainstream, reliable arbiter in the debate about terrorism, extremism and the treatment of Muslims in America:

You'll have to provide your own drumroll.

10. Using civil rights instruction to scare the daylights out of Muslims and drive a wedge between the community and the FBI.

CAIR officials say their "Know Your Rights" seminars simply are meant to educate people that they have a right to have counsel present for questioning if the FBI approaches.

That would be fine if that's all they were. But CAIR's message is wrapped in paranoia, casting the FBI as an out-of-control monster whose agents will do everything and anything to set up innocent Muslims.

"They will do anything, anything within their power and oftentimes beyond their power to get you to talk," CAIR-New York board member Lamis Deek said at a 2011 seminar. "They will threaten you. OK? I've had one case where they tried to blackmail my client, I mean blackmail, seriously blackmail; that's illegal. But they'll do it."

This came two months after CAIR's San Francisco chapter posted a flyer online urging Muslims to "Build a Wall of Resistance. Don't Talk to the FBI." In response, Hooper tried tominimize the incident as a misinterpretation. The problem wasn't the flyer and its message. Instead, he told Fox News – surprise! – it was an "attack by the Islamophobic hate machine."

9. False Accusations of FBI Shootings

It has not happened often, but FBI agents have shot and killed Muslim suspects in separate episodes. In each case, CAIR immediately cast the shooting as unjustified, and demanded independent investigations. In each case, those wishes were granted. But when the reviews reached the opposite conclusion, that the shootings were justified based upon the suspect's actions, CAIR refused to accept that the suspect may have escalated the situation. This emphasis on blaming law enforcement no matter what should be viewed in the context of CAIR's campaign against the FBI illustrated in #10 above.

In 2009, agents shot and killed Detroit Imam Luqman Abdullah. Abdullah fired first as agents moved in to arrest him for conspiracy and weapons charges. A Justice Department Civil Rights Division investigation concluded that agents opened fire "only after Imam Abdullah brandished a concealed handgun and shot toward them and that they legitimately feared that Imam Abdullah was in a position to cause death or significant injury to another."

Even though the report made a point of showing that audio recordings, ballistics and other evidence all corroborated the agents' accounts, and even though "[a] Glock 9mm handgun was found next to Imam Abdullah after the shooting and it had been fired," CAIR officials continued to cast the shooting as "an overblown military type raid." CAIR dismissed the findings, along with similar conclusions from the Dearborn Police Department and Michigan attorney general, as "superficial and incomplete."

Last month, CAIR again took issue with an independent investigation for failing to agree with their spin. Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was shot and killed by an FBI agent after hours of questioning in his Florida apartment. Todashev, a "skilled mixed-martial arts fighter," implicated himself in a triple murder in Massachusetts. Witnesses say he grew anxious and agitated before heaving a coffee table at the FBI agent, hitting him in the head. He grabbed a five-foot-long metal pole over his head "with the end of the pole pointed toward [the FBI agent] as if intended to be used to impale rather than strike," the investigation found.

CAIR's Tampa director said the report raised "several concerns and key inconsistencies and ... many important unanswered questions." The failure to bring charges hurts the FBI's credibility, he wrote on Twitter.

8. Refusing to Condemn Hamas and Hizballah as Terrorist Groups.

CAIR officials are great about condemning "all forms of terrorism and religious extremism." But try to drill down and ask about specific terrorist groups and CAIR does everything but give a straight answer. They'll stick with the universal rejection of anyone who engages in political violence as spokesman Corey Saylor did in 2008. Or, they'll refuse on principle, as Hooper did in 2002 when he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that "We're not in the business of condemning."

That's consistent with Hooper's dodge in the weeks after 9/11. Challenged by journalist Jake Tapper, Hooper hedged when it came to Osama bin Laden, saying "If Osama bin Laden was behind it, we condemn him by name." Tapper was surprised — "why qualify the response?" he asked.

"Hooper said he resented the question."

Or, they'll go to bluster.

In that 2001 interview with Tapper, Hooper rejected the question about Hamas as "word games from the pro-Israel lobby."

This past November, CAIR-Los Angeles chief Hussam Ayloush reacted angrily to the very question. Simply being asked to condemn Hamas was "not acceptable," he said, and "proves that you have nothing but bigotry in you."

The group had no reservations condemning Israel, however, especially after it struck Hamas targets. CAIR condemned the killing of Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin. The statement didn't mention his role in Hamas, but cast him as "a 67-year-old quadriplegic and the most prominent Palestinian Islamic figure."

In 2008, CAIR called reporters to a news conference to condemn Israel's 2008 "Cast Lead" incursion into Gaza aimed at stopping rampant Hamas rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians. CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad demanded "that our government, the U.S. government, take immediate steps to end the immoral and illegal Israeli bombardment of Gaza and its population."

He said nothing about the Hamas rocket fire.

For CAIR officials, attacks on Israeli civilians may not be seen as terrorism, but as a form of "resistance."

7. Lying About it to Megyn Kelly and Fox viewers.

In his appearance on Fox last week, Hooper misled the audience.

"We've condemned Hamas, we've condemned every Hezbollah, we've condemned -- we've condemned every organization that's on the list of terrorist designated by the U.S. government," he said.

6. Standing by Accused Terrorists and Terror Supporters

Our 2008 dossier on CAIR featured an entire section devoted to CAIR's consistent behavior in casting doubt on terrorist and terror financing prosecutions. In each case, it was more than reminding people that, in our system, a person is innocent until proven guilty. To CAIR, these cases were inherently flawed, driven by politics, and unfair to Muslim Americans.

Among the examples:

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The conspiracy case against 11 Northern Virginia men who trained and planned to travel to wage jihad against American troops in Afghanistan after 9/11 was draconianand an example of "selective prosecution of Muslims since the 9/11 terror attacks." The 2008 conviction of five men tied to the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) "was based more on fear-mongering than on the facts," CAIR said in a statement. "It is particularly troubling that the government chose to use testimony from an anonymous witness, which deprives the defendants of their full right to confront their accusers. We expect the defendants to appeal this verdict and believe that it will eventually be overturned."

[size=16]It wasn't.

[/size]

The 2011 arrest of Mansssor Arbabsiar for plotting to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, which was tied to elements inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps's Quds Force was dismissed by key CAIR leaders as a trumped up entrapment case.

[size=16]A year later, Arbabsiar pleaded guilty, admitting that "he conspired with officials in the Iranian military who were based in Iran, to cause the assassination of the Saudi Arabian Ambassador while the Ambassador was in the United States." CAIR said nothing about that.

But that position is consistent for CAIR, which casts virtually all arrests of terror suspects in FBI sting operations as inherently suspect. CAIR-San Francisco representative Zahra Billootold a local television "that the FBI was looking for a sensational story" rather than stopping a threat when it arrested a man who believed he was about to blow up a packed Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. Walid, the Michigan director mentioned earlier, has saidthat the FBI "has recruited more so-called extremist Muslims than al-Qaida themselves."

CAIR officials also have claimed that the war on terrorism had become a war on Islam, a statement considered significant in radicalizing young Muslims. When we wrote about it in 2011, Hooper demanded a correction. CAIR officials, he argued, merely said there was aperception. Their emphasis on this issue, he argued, somehow had nothing to do with accepting or reinforcing that perception.

5. Working to silence/marginalize critics, especially fellow Muslims

This one is fresh from the headlines. CAIR helped pressure Brandeis University last week into withdrawing plans to bestow an honorary degree on author Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She renounced Islam, and is dedicated to combating abuse of women in Muslim societies, especially the incidents of female genital mutilation. It is driven from her personal experiences.

But CAIR likened the original Brandeis plan to honor Hirsi Ali "to promoting the work of white supremacists and anti-Semites."

CAIR has twice failed in attempts to get Zuhdi Jasser, a fellow Muslim who opposes CAIR's Islamist political agenda, removed from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Most recently, CAIR believed Jasser should be disqualified because they don't like people who have supported his work financially. Jasser was appointed to a new term a week ago.

CAIR even tried to intimidate Somali Americans who were trying to stem the flow of young men in the Minneapolis area who returned to Somalia to fight with the al-Shabaab terrorist group. It called two men "anti-Muslim" for participating in a seminar which included a discussion about al-Shabaab.

4. Trying to stifle any discussion radical Islam plays in terror attacks and plots.

When Army psychiatrist Nidal Hassan opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, CAIR argued that Hassan's religious motivation should not be part of the ensuing debate. Hassan, however, self-identified as a "Soldier of Allah" on his business card and gave a presentation called, "Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam." But Hooper went on a radio show to speculate that perhaps Hassan "just snapped ... when these things happen and the guy's name is John Smith nobody says well what about his religious beliefs? But when it is a Muslim sounding name that automatically comes into it."

CAIR officials downplay religious motivation in other terror plots and say terms like jihad and radical Islam should not be used in discussing terrorist plots and attacks by Muslims. In that vein, CAIR conspired with a political scientist in 2010 to gin up sales of a book which claimed that religious extremism was a minimal factor in suicide bombings.

3. Soliciting dictators for donations.

CAIR directly asked the late-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to underwrite a program to distribute Qurans. Awad praised Gaddafi as "the world Islamic popular leader." Law enforcement sources told the IPT that Awad met with officials representing Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in November 2009, months after Bashir was charged with crimes against humanity.

State Department records show that a CAIR delegation sought millions of dollars during trips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2006.

2. Appearing on Iranian and Hamas television to criticize the treatment of Muslims in the United States.

Though the practice has waned, CAIR officials from throughout the country have proven more than happy to appear on Iran's Press TV and Hamas's Al-Quds television. The CAIR representatives rarely spoke about the freedom Muslims enjoy in America. Rather, they painted pictures of Muslims being demonized in America and unfairly targeted by law enforcement. The one time Hooper did say something positive, he followed it by saying, "there is also a sense of being under siege from these hate mongers that are constantly trying to demonize our faith."

When violent, anti-American protests broke out in Muslim countries in 2012, a CAIR officialtold Press TV that, "People have had enough of what is seen by them, what looks to them like America's war on Islam."

And the No. 1 example of CAIR being "extreme, objectionable, intolerant, whatever..."

The Palestine Committee.

Although it is a Muslim advocacy organization, CAIR was born from an original sin. It was part of something called the Palestine Committee, a Muslim Brotherhood umbrella organization created to support Hamas politically and financially. The evidence for this comes not from "Internet hate sites," as Hooper is fond of saying, but from internal documents seized by the FBI and admitted into evidence in the HLF trial.

Here's a Palestine Committee meeting agenda listing CAIR among its member organizations. Here's the committee's telephone list, including CAIR founders Awad and Ahmad (listed as Omar Yehya). Here's a federal judge's opinion that the government produced "ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR .... with Hamas."

CAIR has never acknowledged this history. They even tried to argue that the Palestine Committee never existed.

It didn't work.

This evidence is the reason that the FBI cut off relations with CAIR outside of official investigations in 2008.

"[U] ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner," an FBI assistant director explained in a 2009 letter. [Emphasis added]

The policy remains in effect, meaning the question has not been resolved.

Yet, in his interview with Kelly, Hooper tried to make relations between CAIR and the FBI seem fine, saying "we have relations, we're on a daily contact with the FBI on civil rights issues –on a variety of things."

Rather than acknowledge their record and try to claim things have changed, Hooper and CAIR engage in denial and deflection. Read through this Top 10 again. The examples cited come from the mouths of CAIR officials themselves or from court documents.

CAIR must fear what would happen if the broader public understands that, thus the emphasis on "Internet hate sites."

Ibrahim Hooper issued a challenge. We thank him for it. 

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[size=13]ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

[size=10]The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.
[/size][/size]

Dear Elaine,

You would expect that officials who serve one of our nation’s biggest terror targets, New York City, would set the example when it comes to strong, efficient anti-terror policies – and for years they have done exactly that.

The city’s recent disbanding of the NYPD Demographics Unit, which only gathered open-source information, is the latest example of a slow but steady erosion of those protections – thanks to New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who are more concerned with political correctness, than with protecting the citizens they serve.

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[size=32]NYPD Panders to Politics[/size]

by Patrick Dunleavy

[size=18]http://www.investigativeproject.org/4353/nypd-panders-to-politics

In a move designed to placate a small minority of New York City residents, the NYPDannounced that it was disbanding its Demographics Unit.

The unit, which was a small segment of the NYPD's Intelligence Division, came under fire following a series of articles published by the Associated Press using leaked documents showed widespread surveillance of Muslim communities in New York and elsewhere. Following the articles, several Muslim activist groups protested against the NYPD's Counter Terrorism strategies. What came next was a series of lawsuits filed by "victims" of the Department anti-terrorism policies.

The "victims" claimed that the NYPD program had "caused a series of spiritual, stigmatic, and pecuniary losses." The last being better translated as monetary losses.

But what had the unit actually done to deserve such castigation? It collected open source information of various neighborhoods in the greater New York area – i.e. "demographics" – where it was believed the greatest likelihood of Islamic terrorists would seek to assimilate themselves while plotting terrorist acts.

This belief was not based on conjecture but on solid precedent. In the late 1980s and early 90s, a small group of Islamic terrorists congregated in several area neighborhoods and frequented a select group of mosques that were in alignment with their radical theology.

The result was the first World Trade Center bombing on Feb. 23, 1993. The investigation into that attack uncovered an additional plot to blow up several national landmarks in the New York area, including the Statute of Liberty. John Miller, the new Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence for NYPD knows these facts. He wrote about them (in part) in his book, The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It.

But in comments reported this week regarding the disbanding of the unit, he said the unit wasn't necessary and that the police did not need to work covertly when it comes to gathering information on a specific group.

If that is true, then the next NYPD unit that could be disbanded is the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB). Formed in the 1970s, the OCCB has had enormous success against the Italian Mafia, "the Westies" of the Irish mob, Chinese Mafia, East German Mafia, and Russian Mafia and Colombian Drug Cartels using similar techniques and strategies as that of the Demographics or Zone Assessment unit. Those include surveillance, mapping, infiltration, use of informants, and covert operations.

Such a move by the Police Department would be deemed ridiculous. Is terrorism any less a threat to the city than organized crime?

The mayor and the department should listen to the entire New York City community and not a select few, or those who cry the loudest.

In regard to the allegations of illegal conduct by the Police Department in gathering information in the Muslim community at large, it should be noted the neither the FBI, the Justice Department nor the Inspector General for the CIA found evidence of illegality in the methods or strategies used by the NYPD Intelligence Division. In fact, in one of the lawsuits filed against them, U.S. District Judge William J. Martini found that the damages alleged were theoretical. The lawsuit made no claim of any actual injury.

As I noted when the opinion was issued, Martini found that it was "the Associated Press's unauthorized disclosure of the documents" that created any possible harm, not the surveillance itself, which took place wholly in public.

The plaintiffs also failed to show "that they were targeted solely because of their religion," Martini wrote. "The more likely explanation for the surveillance was a desire to locate budding terrorist conspiracies. The most obvious reason for so concluding is that surveillance of the Muslim community began just after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The police could not have monitored New Jersey for Muslim terrorist activities without monitoring the Muslim community itself."

In short, there were no illegal or harmful actions perpetrated on the Muslim community by the NYPD.

It also should be noted that the Justice Department's new rules for profiling allow the FBI to use demographic mapping as an effective tool in investigations. So the FBI will now do what the NYPD says is no longer viable. Such confusing policies often have demoralizing effects on the rank and file.

New NYPD Commissioner William Bratton recently said that the officers in the department suffered from "low morale." He blamed the previous administration for that.

So now what happens to the detectives who formerly worked in the unit? We are told they are being transferred into other divisions within the Intelligence and Counter Terrorism bureaus. They've become the scapegoats. Hopefully their careers will not be stigmatized by this action. I, for one, do not think such actions as these boost morale.

So what is the department going to do differently to address the threat of Islamic terrorism?

You can't deny it. New reports out of Yemen revealed the meeting of a large cadre of Islamic terrorists led by Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the head of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, calling for attacks on America.

"We must eliminate the cross. ... The bearer of the cross is America!" he says.

And we know that at the top of al-Qaida's list of targets in the United States is New York City.

The Department does not deny this. It posted on its website the reality of the terrorist threat in New York City and the need to protect its citizens. "New York City has experienced first-hand the threat of international terrorism and remains number one on al-Qaeda's target list," it says. "The NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau is constantly fine tuning its strategies and operations to meet this threat head on."

Which makes the announcement to disband a segment of the overall Counter Terrorism initiatives all the more confusing. It appears to be nothing more than political pandering and placing the blame where it is not deserved.

Fine tuning strategy is one thing. Finding a scapegoat to satisfy the few is quite another.

Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections and author of The Fertile Soil of Jihad. He currently teaches a class on terrorism for the United States Military Special Operations School. [/size]

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ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

Dear Elaine,

According to the World Health Organization, more than 125 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The African Women’s Health Center of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, report that approximately 228,000 women and girls in the U.S. have either suffered the procedure or are at risk of having it done to them. Many of these young girls are subjected to FGM when they vacation in a country that sanctions the practice. In other cases, circumcisers are brought into the U.S. – even though FGM is illegal in this country.

ACT! for America has been working diligently at the state level to see legislation passed so that no girl ever suffers the horrors of FGM – either on U.S. soil or elsewhere.

---

[size=24][size=24]Mainstream U.S. Muslim Jurists Association Sanctions Female Genital Mutilation

By Andrew Bostom

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2014/04/10/mainstream-u-s-muslim-jurists-association-sanctions-female-genital-mutilation/

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America’s (AMJA ^[1]’s) mission statement maintains the organization was,

…founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America…AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation’s laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities…

A report in The Muslim Observer ^[2] published October 21, 2010 highlighting AMJA’s “seventh annual American conference of imams,” confirmed that the organization is accepted^[2] as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. AMJA and its “training” conference for American imams were described ^[2] in these banal terms:

The organization AMJA (Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America) has a list of scholars associated with it which stretches from Al-Azhar University to Virginia’s Open University, and back across the ocean to the professors at Saudi universities. Its website, amjaonline.com, provides fatawa on many issues and promises 24-hour access to scholars who can give legal opinions on the issues people face. AMJA focuses on providing fatwas to Americans, and believes it is able to provide culturally appropriate fatwas although many of their scholars are not American–because they have some American scholars and because of the technological ties that bind AMJA’s American scholars with those abroad. AMJA just had, in Houston, its seventh annual American conference of imams, and two local Michigan imams attended, namely Imam Musa of Bloomfield’s Muslim Unity Center, and Imam Ali of MCWS. Mr. Sadiqul Hassan of AMJA explained that “the event was the 7th annual imam workshop…” Mr. Hassan said that AMJA is “a fiqh council basically,” with “scholars who live abroad and inside the US; we have experts in different fields to educate about life in the US–fatawa are based on life in the US.”

AMJA rulings also support the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), which the United Nations has called ^[3] “a dangerous and potentially life-threatening procedure that causes unspeakable pain and suffering.” Fatwa #1639 ^[4] from Dr. Hatem al-Haj justified the horrific practice, by citing the canonical hadith ^[5] in which Islam’s prophet Muhammad endorsed its practice, stating:

[…] Some extremists from the west and their devout followers in the Muslim world like to brand all circumcision as female genital mutilation (FGM). For those, we say, why is male circumcision not MGM? Male circumcision is widely practiced in the west. Yet it would be considered by the Chinese MGM (Male Genital Mutilation).

The benefits of male circumcision are beginning to be more recognized in the medical societies, even though still contested by a few. Fifty years ago, no one knew that male circumcision has medical benefits. The same could be true with female circumcision. They may figure out the benefits of the practice in fifty or five hundred years. […]

Al-Haj then went on to implicitly sanction ^[4] the practice of taking a Muslim female outside of her American milieu to have the procedure performed—in violation of the US “TRANSPORT FOR FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION ^[6]” act.

The question is not to ban female circumcision because of the position of certain nations, but How do we regulate it as Muslims? What should we -western Muslims- do? For Muslims who live in the west, since it is not mandatory and it is at the same time illegal in the west, and would bring about harm to the people who practice it, I wouldn't advise having it done, as long as you are a resident/citizen of the west. We however should never doubt anything in our religion because of the bad publicity the media creates about it.

A concordant fatwa ^[7] issued in Arabic (translation by Al-Mutarjim ^[8]) on the website ^[9] of the Secretary-General of AMJA and the chief member of its Resident Fatwa Committee, Dr. Salah Al-Sawy, declares that FGM is “an honor” for women, Al-Sawy also acknowledges that the procedure—in accord with a continuum of Islamic rationale ^[5] from al-Jahiz in the mid-9^thcentury, to former Muslim Papal equivalent, i.e., Al-Azhar University Grand Imam Jad al-Haq through 1996—is explicitly implemented to reduce a woman’s otherwise unbridled “concupiscence,” i.e., lust:

But for the woman, the purpose [of circumcision] is the benefit that it has in lessening her lust, which is a wholesome request. There is no harm in removing it. In short, female circumcision is an honor (which) does not rise to the level of a duty, in clear language. Stated another way, it is neither forbidden nor required. 
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ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

[size=10]The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.
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Dear Elaine,

Recently, the Obama Administration released its Fiscal Year 2015 military budget. Its requests include slashing the number of U.S. Army troops to pre-WW II levels, and eliminating defense hardware such as the entire fleet of A-10 “Warthog” tank-killer aircraft.

As the world becomes ever more dangerous, our government is preoccupied with actions that will weaken our historically strong national defense – and all the while, other nations, like China, continue to increase their defense-related spending.

ACT! for America has been consistent in its strong opposition to dangerous defense-related budget cuts, and we will continue to do so.

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[size=32]Beijing’s breakneck defense spending poses a challenge to the U.S.[/size]

By Editorial Board

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/beijings-breakneck-defense-spending-poses-a-challenge-to-the-us/2014/03/12/359fc444-a899-11e3-8d62-419db477a0e6_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines

CHINA PRESENTS the rest of the world with a puzzle when it announces, each year, another big leap in defense spending. On March 5, it revealed a 12.2 percent increase over last year, to almost $132 billion,the second-largest military budget in the world after the United States (which remains far larger at $526.8 billion). The puzzle is not whether China can afford such a budget — clearly it can — but what does it need it for? What are China’s intentions and capabilities?

China has often asserted that its rise is peaceful. But that is hard to square with its more aggressive approach to asserting sovereignty and control over various maritime and air zones in recent years. In November, China announced the imposition of a new “air defense identification zone” over a broad swath of the East China Sea, demanding that planes identify themselves to China and obey its orders. While the United States is neutral in the region’s territorial disputes, it has made clear that it will not abide the air defense zone and has sent military jets through it without hewing to China’s demands. But Beijing’s move raised again the uneasy prospect of a military conflict, perhaps triggered by something as simple as an overflight error.

China strives to be a regional superpower, not a global one, at least for now. It has put an emphasis on developing advanced weapons systems that could deliver what the United States calls “anti-access/area denial,” meaning to deter adversaries from areas that China claims — or to expel them. Thus, China is investing in weapons such as long-range cruise missiles and an anti-ship ballistic missile designed to hit an aircraft carrier. Such investments pose asymmetric threats to the United States and its allies. Andrew S. Erickson of the Naval War College [url=http://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Andrew Erickson_testimony1.30.14.pdf]presented[/url] estimates to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in January that China could build some 1,227 of the anti-ship missiles for what it costs the United States to build a single Ford-class aircraft carrier. It might take just one missile to kill a carrier.

China remains frustratingly opaque about what’s actually in the military budget. More transparency would go a long way toward easing anxiety about it. China’s defense spending is believed to be quite a bit larger than what is reflected in the official budget number. But there are also unseen restraints, including inflation and the fact that the Chinese economy appears to be slowing down.

China’s defense boost comes at a time when the United States and its allies are struggling with shrinking military spending. The United States has declared a broad pivot toward Asia, and it seems a wise priority, given China’s behavior and its resources. Even with breakneck increases, China’s defense spending, at official levels, is still just 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product, far lower than that of the United States. China can probably afford to fulfill its ambitions. That is no puzzle and will be a challenge to the United States and its allies for years to come.[size=16.363636016845703] [/size]

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ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

Department of Defense contractors are looking to make LOTS of money at the American taxpayers’ expense by doing business with the Iranian regime.

Yes, the same terror-sponsoring, human rights-abusing, theocracy that our government once had strong sanctions against. And all thanks to the small print in the “interim nuclear deal” that Secretary of State John Kerry is so excited about.

Outraged as we are? Call your Member of Congress and register your support forstrong sanctions against the Iranian regime until they fully dismantle their nuclear program.

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Pentagon Contractors Exploring Business with Iran

Companies with more than $107B in DoD contracts eyeing Tehran

By Adam Kredo

http://freebeacon.com/pentagon-contractors-exploring-business-with-iran/

Multiple companies currently exploring new business ventures in Iran are also cashing in on highly lucrative contracts with the U.S. Defense Department, raising questions about whether their dealings with Iran could run afoul of U.S. law.

At least 13 major international companies have said in recent weeks that they aim to reenter the Iranian marketplace over the next several months. The companies have received Pentagon contracts totaling well over $107 billion, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis that tracked DoD contracts awarded since fiscal year 2009.

Many of the companies, which include carmaker Renault and oil giants such as BP, have already sent high-level trade delegations to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials about striking new business deals.

Lawmakers, congressional insiders, and other experts expressed shock when presented with the figures detailing billions in taxpayer funds that have gone to companies eager to partner with Tehran.

These companies include %2C"fyear"%3A["2014"%2C"2013"%2C"2012"%2C"2011"%2C"2010"%2C"2009"]%2C"dept"%3A["9700"]}]Boeing and General Electric—which have DoD contracts worth $87 and $12 billion respectively—as well as the Italian oil company Eni, Merck, Safran, Vitol, Bosch Rexroth, Sanofi Pastuer, and AVL.

Lawmakers say that companies should be forced to choose between doing business with the Pentagon and doing it with Iran.

“The fact that major federal contractors are even considering business with Iran during this interim period demonstrates that we need to be incredibly vigilant in enforcing the existing sanctions,” said Rep Brad Sherman (D., Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“And even if their activity is technically not captured by our existing sanctions laws, these companies should know that Congress is watching,” Sherman said. “We will focus on defense and other federal contractors. And we will make sure that if there are deals that do violate the law, they will be debarred from federal contracting or worse.”

Sherman said that Congress’ next Iran sanctions bill should “include a near total ban” on business dealings with Iran.

“If you sell anything to Iran but food or medicine, you are ineligible for a federal contract, grant or other assistance,” he said. “At some point, you may have to say to these firms, you either do business with us or with them.”

While U.S. law has banned companies with federal contracts from doing business with Iran, a provision in the recently signed interim nuclear deal relaxed economic sanctions and provided a temporary window for companies to do limited business with Tehran.

The interim deal does not stipulate which companies can legally do business with Iran. However, it does outline permissible trade relationships.

Sanctions will be relaxed on Iran’s petrochemical industry, oil industry, auto industry, gold trading sector, and precious metals trade during the six months that the interim deal is in effect, according to guidance issued by the Treasury Department.

This means that these specific business activities will no longer be sanctioned for the next several months, providing Tehran a window in which to cash-in on potentially lucrative deals. Critics of the sanctions relief argue that it is bad policy to permit federal contractors to do business with a nation that aims to build nuclear arms and potentially use them on U.S. allies.

“Companies doing business with Iran in any way should not be rewarded with Department of Defense contracts until Iran has verifiably dismantled its nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missile launch technology programs and is no longer a state sponsor of terrorism,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

“These are the conditions set by Congress for the permanent lifting of the most important legislative sanctions,” Dubowitz said. “If companies want to reenter the Iranian market in the prescribed areas permitted under the Geneva agreement over the next six months, that’s their choice. But the U.S. taxpayer shouldn’t be rewarding those companies with lucrative defense contracts at the same time.”

Lawmakers separately warned automotive tire company Michelin on Monday that it could jeopardize its federal contracts by doing business with Tehran.

Aerospace firms Boeing and General Electric have also sought permission to resume business with Iran, prompting bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill.

“I am deeply concerned by reports that U.S. companies are exploring the possibility of resuming business with Iran,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), the House chief deputy whip. “My office has requested prompt explanations from the companies. Rest assured that I will continue to vigorously oppose any plan that economically strengthens the world’s deadliest state sponsor of terrorism.”

Top U.S.-Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman cautioned companies against rushing into the Iranian market during a recent congressional hearing.

“We would hope they wouldn’t go to Tehran and show restraint while we negotiate the comprehensive agreement,” Sherman said at the time.

However, international trade delegations have flocked to Iran since the interim deal went into effect.

Renault, for instance, resumed shipping car parts to Iran in January of this year. The French automaker has received at least $111,170 from the Pentagon, according to publicly available data.

BP representatives reportedly attended an Iran oil investor conference that included Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and the country’s oil minister.

Italy’s Eni also was reported to have met with Iran’s oil minister in December 2013, just a month after the interim nuclear deal was inked.

One senior Senate aide who works on the sanctions issue said that the Obama administration is sending a hypocritical message to the world by not cracking down on federal contractors.

“How is Congress supposed to take Wendy Sherman and [Treasury Department official] David Cohen seriously when mega defense contractors are among those companies heading back into Iran?” asked the source. “If the administration really wanted to enforce existing sanctions, they’d start by sending a shot across the bow at companies that get billions of dollars from the U.S. Government.”

A Pentagon spokesperson said that it follows “all applicable regulations in our contracting processes” and directed a Free Beacon reporter to contact the Treasury Department, which declined multiple requests for comment.[size=16.363636016845703] [/size]


ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

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President Obama has returned the once-banished Robert Malley to his inner circle by asking him to serve in a position in which he will manage the relationships between the U.S. and our allies in the Persian Gulf. This is the perfect spot for a vocal critic of Israel, endorser of Hamas and appeaser of Iran, no?

As Jonathan Tobin notes in his article below, “At a time when Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region are worried that the U.S. has turned its back on them as part of the president’s misguided pursuit of détente with Iran, the president has called back to service one of the foremost defenders of appeasement of terror.”
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[size=32]Robert Malley and the Shift to Appeasement

Jonathan S. Tobin

[size=13]http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/02/18/robert-malley-and-the-shift-to-appeasement-obama-foreign-policy/

Back in 2008 when Barack Obama first ran for president, one of the many signals he sent to Jewish groups to reassure them of his good will toward Israel and his foreign-policy bona fides was to sever ties with Robert Malley. Malley, a Clinton-era National Security Council staffer, is best known for his stand blaming Israel rather than Yasir Arafat for the collapse of the 2000 Camp David peace summit. His position as an informal advisor to the Obama campaign was a major liability for a candidate desperate to reassure Jewish Democrats that he could be relied upon to maintain the alliance with Israel. But when it became known in May of 2008 that Malley had met with Hamas terrorists, the Obama campaign severed ties with Malley.

It turned out that those who worried that Malley’s presence in the Obama foreign-policy shop was a sign of future trouble with the Jewish state were right. Despite his campaign promises and the fact that he failed to give an inveterate Israel-basher like Malley a job in his administration, President Obama spent most of his first term picking fights with the State of Israel before a reelection-year charm offensive. But now well into his second term, the president is finally rewarding Malley for falling on his sword for him during his first campaign. This afternoon it was announced that Malley is heading back to the White House to serve as a senior director at the National Security Council where he will be tasked with managing relations between the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies. While we are told the administration is making an effort to bolster its traditional ties to the region, Malley’s appointment sends a very different signal, especially to Israel.

At a time when Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region are worried that the U.S. has turned its back on them as part of the president’s misguided pursuit of détente with Iran, the president has called back to service one of the foremost defenders of appeasement of terror. Though Malley is merely one more member of a second-term team that is increasingly hostile to Israel, his joining the NSC removes any remaining doubt about where American foreign policy is heading.

At the time he was working for the Obama campaign, his defenders, including a gaggle of high-ranking Clinton foreign-policy officials, denounced Malley’s critics for what they claimed were unfair personal attacks. But the problem with Malley was never so much about his motives or his father’s role as a supporter of the Egyptian Communist Party and the Nasser regime as it was his own beliefs and policies.

By claiming as he did in an infamous article in the New York Review of Books in August of 2001 that the Camp David summit’s failure was Israel’s fault rather than that of Arafat, Malley demonstrated extraordinary bias against the Jewish state as well as a willingness to revise recent history to fit his personal agenda. Malley absolved Arafat from blame for refusing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of an independent state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza, and a share of Jerusalem. In doing so he not only flatly contradicted the testimony of President Bill Clinton and other U.S. officials present, but his justification of Arafat’s indefensible behavior also served to rationalize the Palestinian terror offensive that followed their rejection of peace.

In the years since then, Malley has remained a virulent critic of Israel and an advocate for recognition and acceptance of the Hamas terrorists who rule Gaza as well as engagement with Iran and other rejectionist states.

All this should have been enough to keep him out of any administration that professed friendship for Israel. But by putting him in charge of relations with the Gulf states, President Obama is also demonstrating that he is determined to continue a policy of downgrading relations with traditional allies in favor of better relations with Iran and other radicals. As much as Israel has cause for concern about the headlong rush to embrace Iran, the Saudis have just as much reason to worry, especially because of the administration’s failure to act in Syria, where Iran’s ally Bashar Assad appears to be winning his war to hold on to power. The Saudis are right to dismiss the president’s attempts to reassure them on Iran. Now that he has appointed a longtime advocate of embracing America’s foes, it’s not likely they will feel any better about U.S. policy.

The return to a position of influence of an Arafat apologist like Malley is one more sign of just how far the president has strayed from his campaign pledges on the Middle East. The U.S. drift toward appeasement of radical Islamists is no longer a matter of speculation but a fact. Any constraints on administration policies based in concern about alienating America’s allies are now a thing of the past. [/size][/size]
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[size=16.363636016845703][size=13]ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

[size=10]The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.[/size][/size][/size]

Alqa-Eda, as it is pronounced in Arbic, means “the base.” This meaning is the launching pad of the ideology that attacks us worldwide. The West lacks the backbone to accurately identify the ideology as the problem. Until we do, we will never win this war.


A new definition for al-Qaeda

By Katherine Zimmerman

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-new-definition-for-al-qaeda/2014/01/31/31283002-83a7-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html

What exactly is al-Qaeda? And who cares? Confusion about how to define the terrorist group is rife. Was al-Qaeda involved in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead? The Obama administration says no. Are the groups proliferating around Africa and the Middle East really part of the al-Qaeda that toppled the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon?

There is no simple answer. Al-Qaeda is a global terrorist organization that relies on secrecy to survive. Even al-Qaeda members are confused about each other’s status: The leader of the group in Yemen had toask his Algerian counterpart for clarification about Ansar al-Din’s relationship to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The covert nature of the network intentionally obscures many relationships.

Here’s the problem: According to recently declassified testimony of Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the House Armed Services Committee in October, the U.S. military regards itself as legally barred from going after the perpetrators of the Benghazi attacks (and, presumably, others who attack Americans) unless they are affiliated with al-Qaeda. The Obama administration’s parsing of words to deny al-Qaeda’s direct involvement effectively precludes a military response in these situations.

But the United States can neither disrupt nor defend itself from an enemy it cannot define. Nor are we safer because of arbitrary definitions. The question demands an answer: What is al-Qaeda?

Al-Qaeda’s leadership regulates the use of its name and resources; it has formally and publicly recognized affiliates in Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and West Africa. In each of these cases, the regional leadership pledged loyalty to the al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who accepted their oaths. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki may have been right when she said last month that “they don’t give out T-shirts or membership cards,” but any sensible definition of group membership must surely recognize the explicit and public exchanges of oaths of loyalty and command between Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri, on the one hand, and the leaders of overt franchises on the other.

Many experts disagree about the extent to which locally oriented militants are officially part of al-Qaeda. The White House has focused on terrorists currently targeting the United States, which form a small subset of the overall al-Qaeda movement. In the course of the debate over Benghazi, that focus has narrowed further to the question of whether “al-Qaeda core” ordered a specific attack.

There is even disagreement over the definition of “core” al-Qaeda. Most administration officials suggest that it is the small group keeping company with Zawahiri in Pakistan. Others define it as veteran members of the al-Qaeda network, active before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But this core has long been dispersed, with only a small part still in Pakistan. Some members now lead regional franchises: Nasir al-Wuhayshi, bin Laden’s former secretary, is both emir of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaeda’s general manager.

In reality, al-Qaeda’s goals are furthered by the so-called core, affiliates and local groups that enjoy no formal relationships with the Zawahiri contingent. The Jamal Network in Egypt, al-Mulathamun in the Sahel and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) have a direct but informal relationship with al-Qaeda. The TTP poses a particular definitional problem because it has neither sought nor received formal membership in al-Qaeda, yet it conducted the attempted Times Square bombing in May 2010.

The greatest al-Qaeda threat to the United States is AQAP, which has attempted to attack the U.S. homeland three times since 2009 and whose leader is clearly a member of al-Qaeda core, despite his location in Yemen. Still, most of AQAP’s efforts in recent years have gone into seizing control of parts of Yemen, making it “locally focused.” And what to make of al-Shabab, the formally recognized affiliate in Somalia that does not use the al-Qaeda name? It has been fixated on Somalia but has conducted attacks throughout the region and recruits directly, and in English, from the American Somali community.

Al-Qaeda today is the realization of bin Laden’s broader vision. He did not limit himself only to the founding and running of al-Qaeda but imagined a network uniting like-minded groups extending far beyond state borders. The al-Qaeda operatives around bin Laden’s successor in Pakistan are — at least for the time being — hemmed in by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and they are under siege from Afghanistan-based U.S. drone attacks. But the al-Qaeda network — a defined set of groups running from West Africa to Southeast Asia — carries on bin Laden’s legacy and remains a danger.

An excessively narrow definition of al-Qaeda is just as dangerous as one that includes every Sunni Muslim extremist group. Clearly not all parts of the broader al-Qaeda network are equally dangerous. Nor does dealing with each automatically require the use of military force. Decisions to use force against al-Qaeda must be shaped by strategy and prioritization, like any other national security decision. But excluding large portions of the al-Qaeda network from consideration and hiding behind semantics guarantees strategic failure. Defining the enemy down is not the answer.

Katherine Zimmerman is a senior analyst at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and authored the report “The al-Qaeda Network: A New Framework for Defining the Enemy.” 

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

From the DailyCaller.com
11:10 PM 02/01/2014
By Reza Kahlili

A top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards boasted Saturday that his forces have plans in place to attack the United States from within, should the U.S. attack the Islamic Republic.

“America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised interview. “We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.”

Reports indicate that terrorist Hezbollah forces — allies of Iran — have infiltrated the U.S. and have mapped out targets.

“We will conduct such a blow in which they [America] will be destroyed from within,” Salami said.

This is the second warning by a high-ranking officer of the Guards in two weeks. The chief commander of the Guards, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Jafari, addressing Secretary of State John Kerry, said on Jan. 24 that a direct conflict with America is the “strongest dream of the faithful and revolutionary men around the world.”

Kerry had previously said that if Iran did not live up to the agreement reached in Geneva on its nuclear program, “all options are on the table.”

“Your threats to revolutionary Islam are the best opportunity,” Jafari had said. “Muslim leaders for years have been preparing us for a decisive battle.… Do you know how many thousands of revolutionary Muslims at the heart of the Islamic revolutionary groups around the world are awaiting for you to take this [military] option from the table into action?”

Gen. Salami went further, saying the Revolutionary Guards have taken into consideration America’s military ability and different scenarios under which the U.S. could attack Iran via a limited missile or air strike, or even a ground attack.

“All operational bases of the enemy in the region in whatever capacity and location are within our firepower,” Salami warned. “The American military option does not make a difference for us, and they can use this option, but they will have to accept the responsibility of devastating consequences.”

Salami asked whether America could control the spread of any war with the Islamic Republic: “Can they preserve their vital interest in the region in the face of endless attacks by Iran? Can they keep their naval assets and the Zionist regime [Israel] secure?”

Salami said that with the U.S. economy and debt, America is in no position to engage Iran militarily.

The general then taunted Washington, citing Iran’s political and cultural influence in Iraq. “The current has changed for the Americans so much so that they invest [by invading Iraq] and others [Iran] benefit.”

Regarding Syria, Salami said the United States does not have the ability to interfere in a country that has been engaged in a civil war for several years.

“The Americans cannot even conduct a military operation there,” Salami said. “[T]he conditions and the factors that facilitate the exercise of military power for them have for years been destroyed and today they (the Americans) are in an erosion of political, cultural and military power.”

The general said there are thousands of brigades ready to confront America both within the Islamic Republic and outside the country. He then warned Iran’s politicians to remain strong during the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and — based on the might of the country — not give in to U.S. demands.

Iran and the 5+1 world powers (the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany) reached an interim agreement in Geneva in November over the regime’s illicit nuclear program. Under the six-month agreement, Iran, in return for billions of dollars in sanctions relief, will keep much of its nuclear infrastructure, is limited to enriching uranium at the 5 percent level for six months, will convert its highly enriched uranium of 20 percent to harmless oxide, and will allow more intrusive inspections of its nuclear plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will be limited to searching only agreed-on facilities.

Iran, which has started to implement the first phase of the Geneva agreement, acknowledged receipt of the first installment of released funds and that over $500 million has been deposited into the country’s bank account in Switzerland.

The Islamic Republic spends billions of dollars supporting the terrorist group Hezbollah, its network of terror cells around the world and the Assad regime in Syria solidifying his grip on the country.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/01/iranian-commander-we-have-targets-within-america/?print=1

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).



ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

Something scary happened on Friday the 13[size=2]^th, but you’d hardly have noticed from the news reports.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 58-year old airport employee in a plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the city’s Mid-Continent Airport.

The man, Terry Lee Loewen, was a white convert to Islam who authorities say became “radicalized” over the Internet.

Loewen planned to drive a vehicle laden with explosives onto the airport and explode it—and himself—at the terminal where hundreds of unsuspecting travelers went about their normal business.

Luckily, the FBI had intercepted Loewen and his vehicle contained only dummy explosives planted by an FBI agent that Loewen believed to be a collaborator.

This plot received a great deal of exposure on the Drudge Report, but none of the major news agencies thought it worthy of an email news bulletin—except for Fox News.

A plot like this would have stopped the presses just 15 years ago. Today, it’s just another news story on a busy news day. In another week or so, very few people outside of Kansas will even remember Terry Lee Loewen’s name, or that he was arrested for attempting to carry out mass murder in the name of Jihad. America is becoming desensitized to jihadi terrorism and that is unfortunate. Islamic Jihad is becoming a customary part of our everyday lives.

What is frightening about the homegrown terrorism that we’ve been seeing the last few years is that those terrorists—or would be suicide bombers—seem to be normal Americans.

Loewen lived in a quiet, middle class, suburban neighborhood in a modest, one-story ranch-style home. In the local newspaper The Wichita Eagle, his neighbors described him as “normal:”[/size]

Constance Reed and her daughter, Kyia, lived down the street from Loewen on the 3900 block of East Funston in southeast Wichita. “I can't believe it,” said her daughter, Kyia. “We just went trick or treating down there a month or so ago. It’s a normal house, normal decorations. We saw him and his wife; both normal people.”

Americans need to understand that this is the pattern—not the exception—when it comes to the homegrown Jihadist terrorists. They don’t stand out—by design. In my first book Because They Hate, I discuss watching a news interview of Mohammad Atta’s landlord. Atta as you recall was the 9/11 terrorist attack’s ringleader. To hear the landlord describe Atta and his roommates and guests, you’d have though Atta and his roommates were Boy Scouts. The landlord got that impression because Atta cultivated that image; he knew how to blend in with suburban America and he made a deliberate effort to do so.

Mohammad Atta wasn’t the only one.

• Faisal Shahzad, the Jihadist terrorist who attempted to set off a bomb in Times Square in New York City on May 1[size=2]^st, 2010, lived in suburbia and was often seen walking his neighborhood with his two little girls.

• Najibullah Zazi, who pled guilty in a plot to bomb the New York City subway system, lived a quiet life in Flushing, New York , attended Flushing High School and, for 5 years, operated a coffee and pastry cart on Wall Street, complete with a “God Bless America” sign on display.

• Nineteen-year old Hosam Smadi, who was convicted in a plot to blow up a Dallas skyscraper in 2009, was described by many that knew him as “one of the nicest men they had ever met.” The NBC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth described him in a story: “He was a mixture between wannabe gangster and wannabe rock star”… “Everybody loved Sam. He liked to hang out and have fun.” Part of the fun Smadi had in mind was committing mass murder in the name of Jihad.

And I can go on and on…

Jihadist terrorists are all too often your normal next-door neighbor. They are not abnormal looking and typically do not stand out. It takes a well-informed person about the ideology of Jihad to spot the changes of behavior and ask the right questions. The problem we are facing as a society is that we have the blind leading the blind. This willful blindness is coming from the top down. From the office of the president who has purged all terms of Islamic Jihad, Jihadism, Islamic terrorism out of our national language lest we offend Muslims.

Case in point was the Boston bombing. The Russian intelligence turned in a recorded phone conversation between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother discussing Jihad to the FBI to alert them to the coming threat. The FBI didn’t understand the seriousness of that conversation because, since the purge by President Obama in 2009, the FBI is taught that Jihad is basically Islamic Yoga to better yourself.

We as Americans must come to grips with the fact that we now have an enemy that is living and working amongst us. We must become educated as to their ideology and doctrine and accept the fact that they hate us because of that doctrine and ideology. It’s not a pleasant thought, but whether we want to admit it or not, those are the facts and it is their reality. As a result, it has now become our reality too. It is also our national duty as American citizens to identify the threat, create an open national dialogue about the ideology of Jihad and do whatever we can to protect our citizens against it. Anything less than that would be a betrayal to all the great American leaders who came before us and gave their all to create the greatest, most powerful nation on the face of the planet. [/size]


ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

The power of one!
ACT! For America’s Members
Making a Difference for America

When everyone does a little, together we can accomplish a lot. This has been our motto at ACT for America from day one. People sometime say to me: “what is my voice going to do, I am only one person?” As you see from the example below, if only one person challenges their elected official at a Town Hall meeting, in every city in the nation, we can make a difference for our country and in this case keep the Benghazi issue alive until we get answers.

That point was driven home forcefully recently at a town hall meeting held by Representative Ann Kuster when one of our members asked the congresswoman a simple question about where she stood on the issue of establishing a select committee to investigate the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya.

As you can see in the video linked below, Rep. Kuster was clearly caught off guard by the question and attempted to brush off the question, first by claiming that Benghazi was not in the Middle East, and then showing complete ignorance about the movement to establish the select investigative committee, something that has received extensive media coverage for several months:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEeX8q1NQ4w (Preview)
Renowned columnist Mark Steyn recognized our member’s exchange with Rep. Kuster in a column this week, written in his unique and witty style. Steyn points out that the questioner is well-informed but, in this case, the Congresswoman is “low information”:

To our 270,000 members we say: Keep up the good work! It would be great if every member of Congress who holds a town hall meeting could be asked the same question that was asked of Rep. Kuster in New Hampshire. We owe Ambassador Stevens and the other three brave Americans who lost their lives that day the truth and to hold our elected officials accountable for their action or lack of.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
Not Kuster's Last Stand, Alas
By Mark Steyn

The Democrats had a very good night in New Hampshire in November 2012, and swept away, among many others, my congressman. Charlie Bass was nobody’s idea of a rock-ribbed conservative, but he wasn’t an idiot. By contrast, look at Bass’s successor, Democrat Annie Kuster, when asked a question about Benghazi.

First, she has no idea what “Benghazi” is.

Then, pleading in mitigation that she’s there to talk about the Middle East, she reveals that she has no idea where Benghazi is.

Finally, when her constituents helpfully point out that Benghazi is in Libya, she turns to the side and gives that pitiful look that is the single thing I most loathe about American politics – the look a floundering empty suit gives to her minder when she needs him to come and rescue her. Which the minder immediately does.

This isn’t an especially partisan point, but I’m so weary of post-modern ventriloquist’s dummies who can’t be allowed near their constituents without the protection of a phalanx of aides. In this video, the voters are well-informed, but they have a low-information Congresswoman.


ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

Jihad: “Spreading Like Wildfire”

By Brigitte Gabriel

Just over a week ago, Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence committees respectively, warned America that we are not safer today from the threat of Jihadist terrorism than we were several years ago. We told you about their discussion on this matter on CNN’s Sunday morning news show, State of the Union, in an email bulletin last week, but it is worth reviewing their appearance again:

http://sotu.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/01/intel-chairs-were-not-safer/

It turns out that Feinstein and Rogers aren’t the only Democrat and Republican who agree that the threat from Jihadist terrorism is worse today than it was years ago—and that the threat is actually getting worse.

On Sunday, The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/8/rep-mike-mccaul-al-qaedas-run-false-narrative) reported that members from both sides of the aisle are skeptical of the Obama administration’s portrayal of President Obama as a great “terrorist fighter.”

Some members of Congress are resentful of the administration promoting what they see as a “false narrative” of Obama as the hero that killed Osama Bin Laden, while Al Qaeda grows and spreads. Other members of Congress are concerned that Al Qaeda and other Jihadist terror groups are active in more safe havens today than ever before with more Jihadi warriors fighting in more places than ever before.

Given that Al Qaeda was able to launch the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks from a single safe haven in Afghanistan, the proliferation of Jihadist terrorism in more places than ever is rightly seen as a threat to US national security.

For instance, Rep. Michael T. McCaul of Texas, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN on Sunday that Al Qaeda and Jihadist ideology was “spreading like a spider web, like a wildfire through Northern Africa and the Middle East.” He also reported that the threat to America has become greater in recent years, despite assurances from President Obama, particularly during politically-tainted presidential campaign speeches.

We cannot emphasize enough how dangerous it is for the President of the United States to be spreading a false narrative about the status of our enemies in the war on terrorism.

First, by claiming repeatedly that Al Qaeda is “on the path to defeat” (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/7/obama-al-qaeda-way-defeat) and “on the run,” (http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/08/07/Reporters-Grill-St-Dept-Over-Obamas-Al-Qaeda-On-The-Run-Comments), when the available evidence suggests that Al Qaeda is growingstronger, Obama is encouraging Americans to let down their guard. Not just ordinary American citizens, but our first responders as well. Leadership is more important to a war effort than any other form of endeavor and our nation’s leaders’ words matter.

We aren’t talking about a few isolated incidents of exaggerations or misstatements either. As CNSNews reported in November of 2012, just two months after the terrorist attack in Bengahzi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of 4 Americans, Obama was almost constantly stating that Al Qaeda was being “decimated”: (http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-touts-al-qaeda-s-demise-32-times-benghazi-attack-0).

This brings us to the second negative impact of the Obama administration’s false narrative. By repeatedly claiming that Al Qaeda is defeated, the president is almost daring the Jihadists to prove him wrong. Early on in Operation Iraqi Freedom, President Bush was criticized for uttering the words “bring it on,” when asked about the Jihadist insurgents in Iraq. But that quip was nothing compared to Obama’s repeated claims that Al Qaeda is through. It has rightly been compared to “spiking the football,” and is no doubt viewed as a taunt by Al Qaeda.

By saying that Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat when they are clearly growing stronger in more safe havens than ever before, Obama is waving a red cape in front of a bull. It might be okay if Al Qaeda was in fact close to defeat, but taunting a strong Al Qaeda could result in Americans paying the ultimate price for Obama’s boasts.

At ACT! For America, our role as the largest, fastest growing grassroots national security organization is to ensure that our leaders act and speak responsibly and that our fellow citizens are educated about the threats that America faces. All of us need to make certain that our elected officials know that we will not tolerate cavalier, irresponsible rhetoric when it comes to the war effort. We must thank our fighting men and women for the victories that they fight for, but we must never let down our guard for the sake of political expediency.

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.

The Taliban: America’s Enemy
By Brigitte Gabriel

Dear Elaine,

The Taliban have recently published the autumn edition of their magazine, Azan.

This is the fourth issue of the magazine and is significant in that it calls for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home or fight in foreign battlefields, urging recruits to even leave behind their children or elderly parents (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/10503925/Taliban-magazine-urges-jihad-and-profiles-the-Honda-125.html)

Surely such calls to Jihad are nothing new, so why is this particular publication important?

Because it has been released just a few days after the Obama administration was quoted saying that“the Taliban are not our enemies and we don’t want to fight them.” (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/11/27/Karzai-Will-Sign-Agreement-with-U-S-Says-Obama-Administration-Claimed-Taliban-Not-Our-Enemy)

Such statements about the Taliban are nothing new from the Obama administration. Vice President Joe Biden told Newsweek magazine the same thing almost exactly two years ago (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/vp-biden-says-that-the-taliban-per-se-is-not-our-enemy/).

Not only are these statements from the administration disheartening because our brave troops have been fighting Taliban Jihadis for a decade, they also demonstrate a profound ignorance about Jihadist doctrine.

Jihadist doctrine does not regard nationalities or international borders as significant. Under their doctrine, Jihad is to be waged to make Allah’s law and religion supreme around the entire world. With their latest magazine, the Taliban clearly demonstrate adherence to that doctrine with their call for Muslims in the West to launch attacks at home.

What’s more this is not something new from the Taliban. When they seized power in Afghanistan in 1996, they announced that Afghanistan was to be a launching pad for global Jihad and invited Jihadi fighters to come to their country. Jihadis from all over the Islamic world and even parts of the West and the Pacific Rim heeded that call and gravitated to the new Shariah-ruled outpost established by the Taliban regime.

Among those who relocated to Afghanistan was Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We know the rest: Al Qaeda launched its attack on America from Afghanistan and the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda from the US when America sought to bring justice down on them.

How anyone can look at these facts and conclude that the Taliban are not our enemy is mind-boggling. The idea that the Taliban want to strictly limit their evil designs to Afghanistan is absurd.

Moreover, the Taliban have in fact been involved in terrorist plots and activity on US soil:

• In May of 2011, six people, including two Imams at a Florida mosque, were indicted for providing material support to none other than the Taliban (http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/May/11-nsd-621.html).

• Faisal Shahzad, the Jihadist who attempted to detonate a Vehicle-Born Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) in New York’s Time Square in May 2010, was trained at a Taliban camp and, according to Attorney General Eric Holder himself, “the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack…We know they helped facilitate it. We know they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.” (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LE12Df01.html)

• Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American who pled guilty in a plot to bomb the New York City subway in 2009, traveled to Afghanistan to join the Taliban when he was recruited by Al Qaeda to go back to America to attack targets in the US homeland. This shows the continued, close cooperation and collaboration between the Taliban and Al Qaeda (http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/345).

Conclusion

The Taliban are committed Jihadists. As such, they are undoubtedly an enemy of America. They have killed and wounded thousands of US GIs in combat over the past decade and they have, from the time they originally seized power in Afghanistan to today, involved themselves with other Jihadist organizations from around the world. Jihadis do not limit their scope based on political borders; their stated goals are global. To say that the Taliban are not the enemy of the United States is to demonstrate a profound ignorance of the doctrinal basis for the threat from Jihad. When that ignorance comes from the executive branch of the US government, it can only be described as frightening.

ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our emails and on our website are only intended to provide information, news and commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much of this information is based upon media sources, such as the AP wire services, newspapers, magazines, books, online news blog and news services, and radio and television, which we deem to be reliable. However, we have undertaken no independent investigation to verify the accuracy of the information reported by these media sources. We therefore disclaim all liability for false or inaccurate information from these media sources. We also disclaim all liability for the third-party information that may be accessed through the material referenced in our emails or posted on our website.