Act For America News & Alerts please read regular updates

Help us find out where
the candidates stand!


A few weeks ago we began emailing our 2010 candidate questionnaire to federal candidates and candidates for statewide office.
To help us achieve the maximum response possible, we need your help.
These questionnaires were emailed to candidates for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General.
Please contact one or more such candidates and encourage them to fill out and email back the ACT! for America 2010 issues questionnaire. They can email the completed questionnaire to survey2010@actforamerica.org.
If they hear from voters like you, they will be more likely to respond.
And if you or someone you know is helping a candidate, your phone call will even be more important!
Your phone call will help us cut through all the noise and activity that is at a fever pitch with only five weeks to go until election day!
The questionnaire covers issues ranging from terrorism to sharia law. In mid-October we will post the questionnaires on our website, and of course our goal is to get as many candidates to respond as possible.
So please make today and tomorrow “Contact the Candidates Day”!
Thank you for your help.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make sure you receive all of your messages from ACT for America. Add actforamerica@donationnet.net to your address book as an approved email sender. If you found this message in your "Bulk" or "Spam" folder, please click the "Not Spam" button to notify your provider that these are emails you want to receive.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org

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.

Texas State Board of
Education warns book
publishers about biased
treatment of Islam


Dear Elaine,

Late Friday afternoon we sent a text message to everyone on our text messaging service telling them about the watershed vote cast that afternoon by the Texas State Board of Education. (If you would like to receive such breaking news text messages please click on the image above.)

As the WorldNetDaily story notes below, the Texas State Board of Education passed a resolution calling on school textbook publishers to stop giving preferential treatment to Islam in their books.

Brigitte Gabriel addresses this issue everywhere she goes, referring to a specific curriculum module that instructs students to memorize verses from the Qur’an and to pray the “shahada,” the prayer acknowledging Allah as one’s god. What we are seeing in school textbooks ranges from a whitewashing of Islam’s violent history to a kind of proselytizing for Islam that would never be tolerated by the ACLU if it were done in the name of Christianity or Judaism.

Because Texas is the largest purchaser of school textbooks in the country, this resolution is a loud and clear warning to textbook publishers.

Next year, our “sister” organization, American Congress for Truth, will be publishing a report on the bias and errors contained in school textbook treatment of Islam.



http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=207577

BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS

Texas warns book publishers: 'No more white-washing Islam'

State board adopts resolution calling for fairness regarding world's religions


Posted: September 24, 2010
5:30 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

The elected Texas Board of Education today adopted a resolution that warns textbook publishers to be careful and provide fair treatment of the world's religions – or face being snubbed by the state that buys more textbooks than any other.

The resolution, introduced by former Texas school board member Randy Rives, states: "Resolved, That the SBOE will look to reject future prejudicial social studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and/or by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."

The resolution, adopted on a 7-6 vote, declares that "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian half-truths, selective disinformation, and false editorial stereotypes still roil some social studies textbooks nationwide," including some "politically correct whitewashes of Islamic culture and stigmas on Christian civilization."

The resolution included pages of footnotes documenting the specific offenses discovered in various textbooks, including "patterns of pejoratives toward Christians and superlatives toward Muslims, calling Crusaders aggressors, 'violent attackers,' or 'invaders' while euphemizing Muslim conquest of Christian lands as 'migrations' by 'empire builders.'"

Jonathan Saenz, director of legislative affairs for the non-profit legal advocacy group Liberty Institute, told WND the vote "sends a strong message that Texas state board members, and really speaking on behalf of the people they represent, care about keeping textbooks accurate."

"They are against religious discrimination. That sends a message," he said.

Publishers, he said, "will have to live up to standards."

Saenz said the board, whose members are elected by voters, are serving their responsibility to be a "check" on the products used in the state's schools.

The resolution discusses world history textbooks officially adopted for use in Texas between 1999 and 2002, which may still be in some classrooms. The resolution also discusses textbooks used in other parts of the country. In Texas, world history textbooks are used at the high school level.

The resolution pointed out grounds for board concerns.

"In one instance, devoting 120 student text lines to Christian beliefs, practices, and holy writings but 248 (more than twice as many) to those of Islam; and dwelling for 27 student text lines on Crusaders' massacre of Muslims at Jerusalem in 1099 yet censoring Muslims' massacres of Christians there in 1244 and at Antioch in 1268, implying that Christian brutality and Muslim loss of life are significant but Islamic cruelty and Christian deaths are not."

Another point of contention is book authors "spending 139 student text lines on Christian beliefs, practices, and holy writings but 176 on those of Islam; claiming Islam 'brought untold wealth to thousands and a better life to millions,' while 'because of [Europeans' Christian] religious zeal … many peoples died and many civilizations were destroyed;' and contrasting 'the Muslim concern for cleanliness' with Swedes in Russia who were 'the filthiest of God's creatures.'"

The resolution noted the state's law requires reinforcement of "the basic democratic values of our state and national heritage," along with the requirement that "no instructional material may be adopted that contains content that clearly conflicts with the stated purpose of the Texas Education Code."

One book that was examined was "World History, Patterns of Interaction" published by McDougal. The footnotes noted that it has been reported that the Dubai royal family was a "major shareholder" in the Education Media and Publishing Group, which controls textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

"We're just trying to protect the school children of Texas," Rives told WND in preparation for the vote. "We have documented that in the past there was some pro-Islamic and anti-Christian literature in some of our textbooks. We want to put textbook companies on notice that if this happens again, it can cause your textbooks to be rejected."

Rives also noted the prominent national role Texas plays in textbook disputes.

"We are the largest buyer of textbooks in the United States, and publishers like to try to get others states to accept the same version [we use]. What we do in Texas influences the rest of the nation, and we need to take that seriously and make sure an agenda isn't pushed through the textbooks."

Rives told Alana Goodman of the Alexandria, Va.-based Culture and Media Institute, "In the social studies books we need to make sure that our democratic values are depicted and that's not just my opinion, that's what the Texas education code says."

Much to the dismay of the Dallas Morning News, the resolution also warns that "more such discriminatory treatment of religion may occur as Middle Easterners buy into the U.S. public school textbook oligopoly, as they are now doing."

DMN's Terrence Stutz reported that the resolution "offered no specific evidence of such investments," despite the footnote regarding the Dubai royal family.

As WND reported, American public school textbooks have been used to promote Islam, and publishing company executives are primarily responsible for the content of the texts.




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 [color:adc7=#000]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 “McCarthyism” Epithet

By Guy Rodgers

Executive Director


Dear Elaine,

Go to any playground in America and you’ll find children engaging in typical childish “conflict management.” They try to shout each other down. They call names, “you’re a poopy!” They put their hands over their ears and scream “I can’t hear you!”

And it’s exactly the kind of behavior we see regularly on display from the politically correct enablers of radical Islam.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has unveiled the latest, and predictable, name-calling tactic intended to put us in our place—we’re all supposedly engaging in “McCarthyism.”

In a September 21^st column, Robinson belittled Newt Gingrich for painting “Islam as the new Red Menace.” He dismissed any concern about a “stealthy insinuation of sharia into America’s legal system because no such thing is happening.”

And the kicker: “The ‘stealth jihadis,’ I suppose, must be like the ‘known communists’ on the list in Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hand.”

Robinson claims there is only one example of sharia here in America, the case of the New Jersey judge who ruled that a Muslim man committed no crime while beating and raping his wife, because he was acting consistent with his Islamic “practices.”

Robinson’s arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance.

Sharia has penetrated our financial system, in the form of sharia-compliant financial instruments offered by the likes of Citi Group and AIG. In an example of government accommodating sharia, Minnesota offers sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslims. Muslim prison employees, law enforcement officials, and even a Disneyland employee, have sued for the right to wear the hijab as part of their uniforms. Muslim parents in New Jersey are demanding private prayer rooms for their children in the PUBLIC elementary schools. According to a National Public Radio report in 2007, as many as 100,000 Muslims are living in polygamous marriages here in America. Harvard provided women-only gym hours to accommodate the demands of Muslims.

Of course, I could go on and on.

The Ground Zero Mosque imam was touted by politically correct elites as a paragon of interfaith tolerance. Now America knows Imam Rauf believes any government that does not practice sharia law is “unjust.”

Twenty years ago, those in the UK who spoke out against the coming of sharia were also ridiculed. Today there are some 85 sharia courts in the UK.

The playground antics of enablers like Robinson, who insist on calling names, conjuring up the demon of McCarthyism, and engaging in a foolish “see no sharia, hear no sharia, speak no sharia” will not change these facts nor diminish the threat.

But every time they launch into their sanctimonious condemnations of anyone who dares to expose the threat of stealth jihad, Islamists laugh at them behind their backs for being such dupes.

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

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 [color:b018=#000]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.

How the Ground Zero Mosque
controversy has changed the
debate

Petition now over 112,000 names.


Dear Elaine,

On September 16^th Human Events published a column by Brigitte Gabriel entitled “Waking Up to Radical Islam” (see below, highlights added).

Interestingly, just six days earlier, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim for whom we have a great deal of respect, penned a column for The Wall Street Journal, entitled “Questions for Imam Rauf from an American Muslim.”

In his column he wrote:

In your book, "What's Right With Islam," you cite the Brotherhood's radical longtime spiritual leader Imam Yusuf Qaradawi as a "moderate." Reformist American Muslims are not afraid to name Mr. Qaradawi and his ilk as radical. We Muslims should first separate mosque and state before lecturing Americans about church and state.

We applaud Dr. Jasser for his courageous stand against sharia law and his call for the separation of mosque and state, and we know there are other Muslim reformists in America who agree with him. So why do so many in our government and the media insist on shining their spotlight on Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), and MAS (the Muslim American Society)??




http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39006





Waking Up to Radical Islam

by Brigitte Gabriel (more by this author)

Posted 09/16/2010 ET


In spite of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s recent New York Times op-ed written to calm American concerns about the Ground Zero mosque, as the bright light of public scrutiny shines on this proposed mosque, Americans are discovering elements of radical Islam previously unknown to them.

The controversy has led countless Americans, puzzled and disturbed by the motivation and insensitivity of Imam Rauf and his backers, to begin evaluating the threat of radical Islam beyond the isolated context of terrorism.

Islam’s history has shown, for example, there is powerful symbolism in choosing where to construct mosques. Built on sites of military victories, mosques have traditionally symbolized the triumph and supremacy of Islam over all other religions and people: Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was built on top of Solomon’s Temple; the Umayyad mosque in Damascus is over the church of St. John the Baptist; more than 2,000 mosques are on the footprints of Hindu Temples in India.

While America does not have a religious center per se, in the eyes of radical Islam our “religion” is capitalism and the destruction of the World Trade Center was like the sack of Constantinople.

Does Ground Zero mosque Imam Rauf view his proposed mosque through this lens? Honestly, we can’t know for sure.

But even if he doesn’t, there is no doubt that many in the Muslim world will regard the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero as a tribute to Islamic victory over “infidel” America. Islamist leaders worldwide will employ the symbolism of a mosque at Ground Zero as a recruiting tool to jihad, swelling their ranks and escalating the threat against America.

This debate is forcing the American people to take a long- overdue look at the harsh reality of a political ideology which is in its very nature antithetical to the fundamental values of liberty and justice as practiced in America and Western societies.

People are asking the kinds of questions I had to confront decades ago: What exactly is “sharia law?” Why is there such an increase in homegrown jihadists today than ten or even five years ago? Who are the “moderate” Muslims, and why aren’t they speaking out more aggressively against the “radicals?”

Rauf and his supporters certainly did not anticipate the degree and intensity of the blowback they are getting. On the contrary, he quietly greased the skids for this project, meeting behind the scenes with various elected officials and opinion leaders to get their blessing.

Unfortunately, those he met with failed to do the due diligence that would have exposed his real agenda. They accepted at face value his soothing platitudes of tolerance and interfaith dialogue, platitudes for which he has shown contempt in writings and statements in the Arabic world.

Imam Rauf repeats these platitudes in his lengthy New York Times op-ed, clearly hoping that Americans will believe him. But thanks to probing investigations done by investigative reporters, bloggers and watchdog organizations, a robust debate has surrounded the proposed mosque.

More Americans now know that Rauf, as recently as March, said in Arabic that he opposes interfaith dialogue. They know he is a vocal supporter of sharia law, that he says governments which do not employ sharia law are “unjust” and that he has refused to label Hamas a terrorist organization. They know he has refused to sign the “Freedom Pledge,” issued by Former Muslims United, which pledges to oppose retaliation and punishment toward Muslims who leave Islam. The more Americans learn, the more concerned they become.

As a Lebanese immigrant I am as proud to be an American as at any time since I arrived in this great nation. Grassroots America is rising up in opposition to this symbol of Islamist victory, ignoring the hectoring and name-calling of our politically-correct “elites.”

Undoubtedly there are different reasons for why 70% of Americans oppose the building of the mosque. But whether the motivation is concern for the 9/11 victims or concern about the advance of sharia law that Imam Rauf advocates, the American people are saying “enough is enough.”

That is the only language Islamists understand.

Terrorists are only one manifestation of radical Islam. As Americans look even closer they will come to realize that the same ideology that produces a terrorist also produces a seemingly moderate Muslim who is dedicated to the advancement and imposition of sharia law. They will learn that the Islamist in a suit and tie, who wants to replace the Constitution with sharia law, differs from the terrorist only in the means to the end, not the end itself.


Brigitte Gabriel is an international terrorism analyst and a two-time New York Times best-selling author of Because They Hate and They Must Be Stopped. She is the president of ACT for America.org, the largest national security grassroots movement in the U.S.

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

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.

Video shows public school students on field trip praying at a mosque!


Dear Elaine,

Please click here to view a shocking video that contains footage of a 6^th grade public school field trip to a Boston mosque. (See background story below.)

The video, released by Americans for Peace and Tolerance reveals, among other things, students participating in Muslim prayer—and not a single teacher objecting or trying to stop it!

Brigitte Gabriel has been warning Americans about inappropriate and potentially unlawful activities that promote Islam in our public schools. Last December we told you about a furor that erupted in an Indiana elementary school where students were being prepped to sing a song praising Allah during the “winter festival.”

Please forward this email to everyone you know!



School Trip to “Moderate” Mosque: Inside Video Captures Kids Bowing to Allah
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 23:35

http://www.peaceandtolerance.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=129:
school-trip-to-moderate-mosque-inside-video-captures-kids-bowing-to-allah&catid=7:
our-statements&Itemid=39

Today, Americans for Peace and Tolerance released a video showing 6^th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told.

The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed’s 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools – the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

For the past three years we’ve been sounding the alarm about the radical leadership and Saudi funding of the Boston mega-mosque and the organization that runs it, the Muslim American Society, which has been labeled by Federal prosecutors as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving 23 years in jail on terror charges. For years, its board of trustees included Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was banned by Bill Clinton from the United States in 1999. Qaradawi now chairs the Muslim American Society’s university, which offers classes inside the mosque. Over half the mosque’s $15.5 million price tag was funded by wealthy Saudis and since it opened, several of its leaders, donors and members have been implicated in Islamic extremism.

Oussama Ziade, a big donor to the mosque, is now a fugitive in Lebanon after being indicted in 2009 for dealing in the assets of an Al Qaeda financier. Ahmad Abousamra, the son of the Boston Muslim American Society’s former vice-president Abdulbadi Abousamra, is now a fugitive in Syria, fleeing the country before being indicted in 2009 on charges of aiding Al Qaeda. One of the mosque’s imams, Abdullah Faaruuq, was captured on tape in 2010 telling followers to “pick up the gun and the sword” and to defend another local terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from the U.S. government. Siddiqui, who was one of the imam’s congregants, is an MIT graduate and Al Qaeda member awaiting sentencing for attempting to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan while shouting “death to America.”

The mosque leadership continues to be embraced by top Massachusetts political and religious leaders. These include Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, as well as a group of local progressive rabbis and Christian clergy, who all insist despite evidence to the contrary that the mosque is moderate and its critics are just bigots.

Indeed, this is a familiar refrain by leaders nationwide in response to the increasing public realization that Islamic leaders are not as moderate as they present themselves. Radicalism is growing and many moderate Muslims have been silenced. In various parts of the country, public schools are allowing Muslim extremists to promote Islam to our children. Something’s broken here. Our leadership is failing. It’s now up to ordinary citizens to fix it.





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.

U.S. has “no strategy”
for homegrown terror


Dear Elaine,

The National Security Preparedness Group has released a new study (see story below, highlights added) showing the U.S. is unprepared to combat the threat of homegrown terrorism.

As one member of the group put it: “The United States has failed to fundamentally understand and prepare for these threats.”

Certainly there are a number of reasons for this, but from our perspective one stands out: the failure to link the ideology of Islamism (“radical Islam”) to acts of jihad.

Jihadists do what they do because they believe in the call to jihad. This is ideologically driven. The belief that they will “assimilate” or become part of our “melting pot” is wishful thinking. Thus, a national security strategy of “see no jihad, hear no jihad, speak no jihad” is doomed to fail.



U.S. Has 'No Strategy' to Confront Homegrown Terror, Security Group Warns
Published September 10, 2010
| FoxNews.com

The report:
http://bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Final%20NSPG%20Threat
%20Assessment%20Report%20Sept%202010%20report%20w%20cover.pdf





The government has failed to anticipate the danger from homegrown terrorists, some of whom immigrated to the United States, and now faces the most complex set of threats since the Sept. 11 attacks, analysts on an organization headed by the two 9/11 Commission co-chairmen warned Friday.

Unveiling a new report a day before the nation marks nine years since the 2001 attacks, members of the National Security Preparedness Group said Al Qaeda and other terror groups are increasingly turning to U.S. citizens to carry out attacks on the United States. They cited examples where recruiters went after Somali populations and other groups living in the United States, saying that while the U.S. at one time may have thought its cultural "melting pot" would provide a "firewall" against radicalization from within, that assumption turned out to be false.

"The United States has failed to fundamentally understand and prepare for these threats," group member Bruce Hoffman said. "Terrorists may have found our Achilles' heel. We have no strategy to deal with this growing problem and emerging threat."

The report said U.S. authorities failed to realize that Somali-American youths traveling from Minnesota to Somalia in 2008 to join extremist Muslim groups was not an isolated event. Instead, the movement was one among several instances of a broader, more diverse threat that has surfaced across the country.

As a result, there remains no federal agency specifically charged with identifying radicalization or working to prevent terrorist recruitment of U.S. citizens and residents, said the report.

The group, headed by former 9-11 commission leaders Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, laid out a detailed description of domestic terror incidents such as the Fort Hood shooting spree last year in which 13 people died; the attempt to crash an airliner in December as it was landing at Detroit, Michigan; and last May's botched vehicle bombing in New York City's Times Square. Kean told Fox News that Al Qaeda is serious about recruiting U.S. citizens and "non-traditional terrorists" to carry out its attacks.

"The threat is real, coordinated. It's something Al Qaeda wants to do now," he said. "They're moving to these smaller attacks. ... Everything becomes more possible if you have an American passport."

He said the United States needs to respond better to this evolving threat.

"We've got to attack it with the same energy and concerns and verve that we have ... in the past," Kean said.

During the past year, terrorism experts and government officials have warned of the threat posed by homegrown radicals, saying terror recruits who go abroad could return to the United States to carry out attacks.

But the United States, the report said, should have learned earlier from Britain's experience.

Before the 2005 suicide bombings in London's transit system, the British believed that Muslims there were better integrated, educated and wealthier than their counterparts elsewhere.

Similarly, U.S. authorities believed that its melting pot of nationalities and religions would protect it from internal radical strife, the report said.

The terrorists, it said, may have discovered America's "Achilles' heel in that we currently have no strategy to counter the type of threat posed by homegrown terrorists and other radicalized recruits."

U.S. officials have acknowledged the need to address the radicalization problem, and for the first time, the White House added combating homegrown terrorism this year to its national security strategy. The FBI, meanwhile, has worked to reach out to the Somali communities in an effort to counter the radicalization of the youth.

The report also points to an "Americanization" of the leadership of Al Qaeda and its allied groups, noting that radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who encouraged the U.S. soldier accused in the Fort Hood shooting and others, grew up in the state of New Mexico. And Chicagoan David Headley played a role in scoping the targets for the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacks on Mumbai in late 2008 that killed more than 160 tourists and others.

Abroad, Al Qaeda, its affiliates and other extremist groups have splintered and spread, seeking havens in undergoverned areas of Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and places in North and East Africa. That diversified threat has intensified as militants reached out to potential recruits through the Internet.

Assessing future threats, the report lists potential future domestic targets, including passenger jets, Western or American hotel chains, Jewish or Israeli sites and U.S. soldiers, even at their own bases in America.

It also warns that it is no longer wise to believe that American extremists will not resort to suicide bombings. They point to Maj. Nidal Hasan's alleged shooting spree at Fort Hood as an example, saying he had written about suicide operations in e-mails, and that his attack appeared to be one.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/10/strategy-confront-homegrown-terror-security-
group-warns/




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.

Hezbollah and our
southern border

Short video asks why
Napolitano refuses to
act


Dear Elaine,

U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, Co-chair of the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus, penned an op-ed in The Washington Times recently (below) regarding the presence of Hezbollah on our southern border.

She also posted a short, 2:30 video that we encourage you to view and forward to your friends and family. Brigitte Gabriel has been warning America for some time now that Hezbollah is infiltrating our southern border and establishing terror cells here in the U.S.

The threat of Hezbollah terrorism coming across our southern border continues to grow—while Department of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano ignores calls for a task force to investigate this threat.



MYRICK: Hezbollah car bombs on our border

Why isn't Obama's Department of Homeland Security concerned?

By Rep. Sue Myrick

The Washington Times

An indictment was handed down Aug. 30 by the Southern District Court of New York that shows a connection between Hezbollah - the proxy army of Iran and a designated terrorist organization - and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border.

In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America - would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.

This most recent case brings up several questions: Why would a member of Hezbollah be in Mexico? Why would Hezbollah need thousands of weapons in Mexico? Why are members of Hezbollah willing to work with FARC? Perhaps to exchange weapons for drugs? If Hezbollah has guns in Mexico and wants drugs, isn't it logical to assume that it is trading with more accessible Mexican drug cartels?

This is just the most recent incident in which it's clear that Hezbollah may have a presence in Mexico and along our southern border. There have been more incidents - which have been ignored by the Obama administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

On June 23, I sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to establish a task force to investigate the presence of Hezbollah along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The evidence is there: Hezbollah's cooperation with countries across South America. Highly sophisticated tunnels for transferring drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, ones very similar to the tunnels dug by Hezbollah into Israel. The close relationship between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the increase in Iranian nationals traveling through Venezuela to receive false documents, which they use to cross into the United States. Mexican officials raising concerns about Hezbollah operatives possibly training Mexican drug cartel enforcers in making car bombs.

Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, has even been quoted as saying, "Hezbollah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. ... They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected."

Only a few weeks after I sent this letter, it was reported that Jameel Nasr, a Mexican national with ties to Hezbollah in Lebanon, "entrusted with forming a base in South America and the United States to carry out operations against Israeli and Western targets," was arrested by the Mexican government. Days later, a cell-phone-detonated car bomb - the first of its kind reported used by Mexican drug cartels - was deployed just across the U.S.-Mexico border in Juarez. On Aug. 27, another car bomb exploded in a U.S.-Mexico border state. These car bombs show an evolution in the tactics being used by the drug cartels and bear a strong resemblance to those employed by Hezbollah, raising questions as to who trained the cartels.

Doesn't the protection of the American public deserve answers? The primary role of the federal government is to protect its citizens. Unfortunately, the administration continues to sit by idly while security threats go uninvestigated. And that's all I'm requesting - an investigation to find out what's going on along our southern border.

To date, I have not received a response from the Department of Homeland Security informing me of any decision to investigate. How much more is it going to take?





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.

Mosque funder
and Hamas

Petition nearing
109,000 names


Dear Elaine,

So now we learn that a key funder of the Ground Zero Mosque is a former supporter of the Holy Land Foundation!

Yes, that Holy Land Foundation, which was shut down because it was funding Hamas. In the largest terrorism financing trial in American history, 108 guilty verdicts were handed down against Holy Land Foundation leaders.

No wonder Imam Rauf refuses to name Hamas a terrorist organization!



http://www.newyorkpost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/more_mosque_revelations_
yMtNnRzphiKKAGJQAksoQN


More mosque revelations

Posted: September 03, 2010

So now it transpires that a key money- man behind the proposed Ground Zero mosque is a one-time supporter of a group shut down by the feds because it was a front for Hamas.

No wonder the mosque's principal imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, refuses to discuss the project's finances.

Or, for that matter, refuses to speak harshly of Hamas -- an Iranian cat's-paw that's long been one of the deadliest Islamist terrorist organizations operating in the Mideast.

It was reported last night that Hisham Elzanaty -- an Egyptian-born businessman from Long Island -- provided a big chunk of the $4.8 million needed to buy the building that will be demolished to make way for the mosque.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Among other things, Elzanaty runs a Bronx-based medicial supply company that had to refund more than $300,000 in Medicaid payments in 2004-2005.

In 1999, he donated thousands to the Holy Land Foundation, later shuttered by the feds because of its Hamas ties.

All of this is, as they say, enough to give one pause.

But we doubt it will truly surprise any among the 71 percent of New Yorkers found this week by Quinnipiac University pollsters to oppose the mosque.

Mayor Mike and others think they are bigots, but most seem to have asked -- and answered to their own satisfaction -- a fair question:

How close to the scene of that deadly Islamist attack on America is too close to build a mosque?

Answer: The proposed site was close enough to have been hit by a landing-gear assembly from one of the crashed airliners on 9/11 -- and that's way too close.

They're also nervous about the project's backers -- even before Elzanaty popped up -- deciding that, with those folks involved, anywhere might be too close.

As The Post reported yesterday, Rauf has been catching iffy tax breaks since 1998 for an organization run from his wife's Upper West Side apartment.

How'd he do it? By telling the IRS the one-bedroom digs were actually a mosque where 500 people prayed daily.

These are only the latest revelations about the mosque's backers, who've run up a cumulative record of petty crime, slumlording and tax-scamming.

And that's being generous.

Rauf, who's due back in New York this weekend after a long trip abroad, has plenty of explaining to do to the people he's been thumbing in the eye for weeks.

First there is Elzanaty's role, of course.

Then there's the elephant in the room: Whence the $100 million needed for the mosque?

And then there is this.

At a forum in Dubai on Tuesday, Rauf appeared to call the 71 percent of New Yorkers who oppose his project religious "extremists."

"The battlefront . . . is not between Muslims and non-Muslims," he said. "It is between moderates [and] extremists and radicals of all faith traditions."

We'd guess 71 percent of New Yorkers would include a representative cross-section of "all faith traditions."

Are they "extremists" for opposing the mosque?

New Yorkers hardly ever agree on any thing -- but they agree it's inappropriate.

Are they "radicals?"

If Rauf thinks so, then New York ain't the town for him.

Nor is there room for his mosque at Ground Zero.





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,

We at ACT! for America denounce and condemn, in the strongest terms, the upcoming Koran burning event organized by Pastor Terry Jones and members of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. Their proposed event is ill-conceived, counter-productive and unwelcome in a world where ideas and philosophies are best debated in the context of the issues and the facts. We find this an archaic act that serves no useful purpose, and as such is a regrettable instance of an inability or unwillingness to discuss the issues facing us in a reasonable and constructive manner.

ACT! for America is, and has always been, committed to exposing the threat of the political ideology of radical Islam and its sharia law through constructive debate, illumination of the facts, and a reasoned analysis of the implications of the threat.

Pastor Jones and his congregation are stooping to the tactics of and joining the inarticulate who express their anger and opposition through destructive and spiteful acts of denigration. What is the difference between his actions and the actions of Islamists destroying synagogues in Gaza or churches and Bibles in Lebanon, Bosnia and Egypt? We are better than that as Americans.

Always devoted,


Brigitte Gabriel

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

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.

“Cashing in on
Ground Zero”

Ground Zero Mosque
petition passes 105,000
names



Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Daisy Khan

Cashing In On Ground Zero

By Claudia Rosett Tuesday, August 24, 2010

- Forbes

Among the prime planners of a $100 million Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero, it’s not just Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is visiting the Middle East this summer at U.S. taxpayer expense.

The State Department is also about to send Rauf’s wife and Cordoba Initiative fellow director, Daisy Khan, on her own taxpayer-funded “public diplomacy” trip to the United Arab Emirates. Khan is scheduled to visit the UAE from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2, overlapping there with Rauf, for whom it will be the final leg of a three-country trip including Bahrain and Qatar.

The U.S. Embassy in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi has posted on its website an announcement of the impending visit by this husband-wife team. Rauf and Khan will be there, the announcement says, “to engage foreign audiences and build people-to-people ties” and to “discuss their experiences as Muslims living and working in the United States.”

What might their discussions entail? Rauf, since his Cordoba Initiative’s Ground Zero mosque project triggered a national uproar, has spent the summer as an enigma. Before embarking on his State-sponsored tour, he walled himself off for weeks in Malaysia, where he has longstanding ties and keeps an office. His Cordoba website now features a note that Rauf could not be available (apparently not even by phone) to explain himself to the people of New York because “he travels the world in his life-long endeavor to bring the message of moderation, peace and understanding to both Western and Islamic countries.”

In Rauf’s absence, Daisy Khan has been speaking prolifically from New York about the Cordoba House mega-mosque project (which the developer recently re-dubbed Park 51, and the Cordoba House is now describing as a “community center”). Her message, like the name of the project, has been morphing at speed. When Rauf and Khan won approval for their 15-story mosque-topped Cordoba House from a Manhattan community board this spring, they advertised their project as all about doing their part for harmony and healing near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

When it turned out that a majority of New Yorkers, and Americans generally, think this project is more like rubbing salt in a wound, Khan shifted focus. She’s now talking about the Cordoba project as a test of American religious tolerance. If a majority of Americans—cognizant that the Sept. 11 attacks were carried out by Muslims, in the name of Islam—think it’s inappropriate to stage that test near the edge of Ground Zero, Khan’s retort is that they must be bigots. In an interview last week with the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn, she lamented: “When will Muslims be accepted as plain old Americans?”

On Sunday, interviewed on ABC TV’s This Week by Christiane Amanpour, Khan ratcheted up her complaints. Amanpour asked, “Is America Islamophobic?”

Khan replied, “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims.”

For the State Department to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars sending someone with those views on a “public diplomacy” trip to the Middle East is a curious exercise. Rauf’s trip is costing $16,000. Khan’s will cost $12,000. If Khan will be collecting the same $496 per diem that Rauf will be getting in Abu Dhabi, this will include a joint $982 per day for creature comforts, as Khan spreads her opinions about Muslim life in America—and builds people-to-people ties in an Islamic state loaded with billions in oil wealth. State has told Rauf and Khan to refrain from conducting “personal business” while rubbing shoulders on the taxpayer dime, but how they follow up on any of those ties is presumably up to them.

A broader issue here is why Daisy Khan, self-proclaimed healer and bridge-builder of Ground Zero, is now styling herself as an aggrieved victim. America has delivered to both Rauf and Khan a life in which they have freely practiced their religion and been free to convert others—including a sister-in-law of their real-estate partner, Sharif El-Gamal. Both arrived in this country as immigrants, and had conferred upon them the full panoply of American rights and freedoms.

Rauf is of Egyptian descent, born in Kuwait. Khan hails from India’s Islamist hotbed of Kashmir. Rauf by his own account has held forth for more than 20 years at the Al-Farah mosque in lower Manhattan (there has been no outcry for the removal of mosques already extant in the area on Sept. 11; the issue is their plan to build a new one, provocatively close to the site of the destroyed Twin Towers). Rauf sits on the board of trustees of the Islamic Center of New York, a large facility established on Manhattan’s Upper East Side by his father, who also ran a big Islamic center in Washington. Rauf serves as an advisor to the Interfaith Center of New York, and, like Khan, has been welcomed to spread his messages by a long list of foundations and institutions, including Jewish centers, churches and schools. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, Rauf has been tapped for three previous taxpayer-funded “outreach” jaunts to the Middle East, two in 2007 and a third earlier this year.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, far from being shunned as Muslims, Rauf and Khan have enjoyed a boom business in “outreach.” Their lifestyle includes at least two homes in the U.S. and one in Malaysia, fancy cars and pricey clothes. Last October, in an article headlined “High Five With Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,” Forbes chronicled the imam’s pleasure in driving a Lexus GS400. Rauf also detailed how he enjoys Armani and Brioni suits, his wife likes her cashmere scarves, and he mentioned his fondness for handcrafted Persian rugs, especially those woven of silk. He added that he owns about 15 carpets dispersed between his homes in New Jersey and New York, and another 15 carpets “at my home in Malaysia.”

As for bigotry in America, the FBI in its most recent report on “Hate Crime Statistics,” released in 2008, does point to a group more victimized than any other, targets of 65.7% of all reported religious hate crimes. Those people are not Muslims, but Jews, victims of almost eight times as many hate crimes.

For Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan, Ground Zero has become a bonanza. Since their plans hit the headlines this spring, they have achieved celebrity status on a scale that millions in advertising, or less abrasive “outreach” efforts, could not buy. Their names are all over the news. Their project has become a fixture on the summer talk shows. In the escalating furor, along with the criticisms , they have received de facto endorsements from such prominent folks as New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama (whose supportive remarks about their project, delivered at an Aug. 13 Iftar dinner at the White House, are now featured on U.S. embassy websites worldwide; but whose later waffling is not). Their real-estate partner, El-Gamal, has told the press, “This might become the most famous community center in the world.” Whatever comes of this, Rauf, Khan and El-Gamal are likely to dine out on it—and well—for a long time.

And make no mistake. While the Cordoba Initiative is now implying on its website that the mosque and Islamic center is mainly about serving a neighborhood, and “is not located at Ground Zero,” Rauf himself told a very different tale to the New York Times last December. Back then, Rauf said the location’s chief attraction was its proximity to Ground Zero—so close that it is, as he noted, “Where a piece of the wreckage fell.” In Rauf’s view, that made for an ideal venue to make “the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.”

A majority of Americans then dared to disagree with this particular prescription of the self-described “Founder and Visionary” of the Cordoba Initiative. And now, the televised statement reverberating from Khan—on the eve of her $12,000 taxpayer-funded trip to join Rauf in the marble halls of Abu Dhabi and Dubai—is a denunciation of America as a Muslim-hating place, “beyond Islamophobia.”

What’s going on here is not a gauge of American religious tolerance. It has become a test of the extent to which Rauf, Khan, and their partners and donors, seen or unseen, are willing for their own aggrandizement to cash in on the agonies of Ground Zero. In this scheme, the thousands of Americans murdered on Sept. 11 in the name of Islam have by now become a backdrop for Daisy Khan’s claim that she is the victim of a Muslim-hating America. There’s an old name for this kind of stunt, and it isn’t bridge-building. It’s carpet-bagging.

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

ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org


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.

“Which Islam Will Prevail
in America?”

Andrew McCarthy, lead prosecutor in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was one of our featured speakers at the 2010 ACT! for America National Conference and Legislative Briefing. He is the author of the compelling book The Grand Jihad.

His recent commentary (below, highlights added) is well worth taking a few minutes to read.

Our petition opposing the Ground Zero Mosque now has over 104,000 signers. Have you signed yet?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244349/which-islam-will-prevail-america-andrew-c-mccarthy

Andrew C. McCarthy

Which Islam Will Prevail in America?
That is the real question at hand in the Ground Zero mosque debate.

The real battle for religious freedom lurks beneath the Ground Zero mosque controversy. It is sadly ironic that our public debate presents the mosque proponents as the partisans of liberty: That includes everyone from imam Feisal Rauf, the project’s sharia-touting sponsor, to President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, and the rest of the Islamist-smitten Left, to the GOP’s own anti-anti-terrorist wing. Yet, wittingly or not, when they champion this mosque and its sponsors, it is the agenda of an alien and authoritarian Islam that they champion — an Islam against which many American Muslims chafe.

When it comes to liberty, no one in this society has been given a wider berth than the Islamists, the purveyors of this authoritarian Islam, which is the mainstream Islam of the Middle East. Their vise grip on the American Muslim community has been cinched for two decades by the government, the media, and the academy. For our post-American ruling class, “Islamic outreach” means prostituting themselves for Saudi largesse; it means putting the “moderate” label on the Muslim Brotherhood — the Saudi-backed saboteurs whose American operatives boldly promise to “eliminate and destroy Western Civilization from within.”

The victims of this lethal charade include American Muslims. They, too, crave religious liberty and Western enlightenment. Our elites abandon them to the sharia-mongers. That freedom destroyers have been allowed to pose as freedom defenders ought to tell mosque opponents something: We have done a poor job of explaining the stakes.

In 1993, I headed up a prosecution team that was preparing to try the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven other jihadists for conducting a terrorist war against the United States. The case revealed this country’s Muslim divide.

On one side were patriotic American Muslims, without whom successful prosecution would have been impossible. Not only did they infiltrate the terror cells, they helped us shape the resulting evidence into a compelling narrative. On the other side were the Muslim Brotherhood’s satellites. These included outfits like CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), which was formed in 1994 by the Brotherhood’s Hamas-support wing, with seed money from an Islamic “charity” — the Holy Land Foundation — later shut down for financing foreign terrorist organizations. These Brotherhood satellites purport to speak for American Muslims. In fact, they speak for anti-American Muslims, most of whom are outside the United States. They demagogued the case as a phobic criminalization of Islam itself, just as they have libeled America since 9/11 as being “at war with Islam.”

Translating evidence into English turned out to be a Herculean challenge during our trial preparation. Most of our evidence was in Arabic, because almost all of our defendants had immigrated here from Egypt and Sudan, hotbeds of anti-American Islam. The resulting mounds of documents, wiretap recordings, and inflammatory sermons overstretched the Justice Department’s thin Arabic-language capacity. To ease the strain, we tried to retain some civilians as private contractors. A number of local Muslims expressed interest, but in the end they turned us down.

BROTHERHOOD ISLAM vs. AMERICAN ISLAM
Mind you, they wanted to help. They were as offended as anyone by what the terrorists had done. These folks were Americans. They were the kind of Muslims you’re never exposed to, given the media’s preference for jihad apologists who, when not applauding him, claim Osama bin Laden was “made in the U.S.A.” But the would-be translators wanted ironclad assurance that their assistance to the prosecution would be kept confidential. It was an assurance I was not in a position to give, so they politely declined.

Here’s the most depressing part: It wasn’t really a matter of safety. There was surely some element of that — it goes with the territory in terrorism cases. But these people were mostly worried that they and their families would be ostracized in their communities as traitors to Islam.

In Muslim communities, I learned, many people — especially American Muslims — were supportive of our investigations. Of course they didn’t like the light of suspicion being shined on Muslims, not any more than Italian Americans liked the attention our mafia cases thrust on their communities. Yet they tuned out the CAIR chorus, just as most sensible people tune out the grievance industry. They reserved most of their resentment for the malevolent, anti-American actors in their midst. They understood that public safety is the government’s highest obligation. As long as they could do it quietly, they were willing to help.

But doing it quietly was imperative. Most American Muslims are not instinctively different from other Americans. But American Muslim communities are peculiar. In many of them, the leadership of the mosques and Islamic centers is foreign (or at least foreign-influenced). This leadership tends to be anti-Western and arrogant, claiming an Islamic authenticity Americans are said to lack. Many American Muslims are intimidated into silence. They are cowed by the specter of being condemned as too American. In Islam, there is no more grievous offense than causing disunity through infidelity. It is no small thing when community leaders frame a Muslim as insufficiently loyal to the ummah, the notional Islamic nation.

American Muslims are also taken aback by the ease with which their community leaders straddle the line between preaching Islam and cheerleading for terrorists. Why, they wonder, does their government, the U.S. government, consistently elevate America-bashing Islamists who can’t give a straight answer when asked about Hamas and Hezbollah? Why not highlight Muslims who are pro-American and unambiguously anti-terrorist — Muslims who desperately need the support?

Most of the mosques and Islamic centers in our country are controlled, to a greater or lesser degree, by the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites. The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was established in the early Seventies to buy up property for the establishment of American mosques and “Islamic centers,” the latter being what the Brotherhood calls “the axis” of the Islamist movement in America. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) supplies literature and vets imams. Both NAIT and ISNA, along with CAIR and other Brotherhood groups, were identified by the Justice Department as unindicted coconspirators in the recent Hamas-financing prosecution against the Holy Land Foundation. These Islamists owe their vision to the Brotherhood. Just as important, they owe their livelihood, influence, and power to moneyed Middle East patrons, particularly the Saudis.

The Kingdom and the Brotherhood have combined for a half-century to put American Muslim communities in a stranglehold. They proselytize a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam — an amalgam of Saudi Wahhabism and Brotherhood Salafism — that is virulently anti-Western. Its instruction to Muslims in the United States, Canada, and Europe is voluntary apartheid: Immigrate but don’t integrate, infiltrate but don’t assimilate.

SHARIA OR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM?
This brand of Islam is designed to create parallel Muslim enclaves, resistant to America’s freedom culture and to Western civilization, just as it created the liberty-killing “no-go zones” now sprouting up throughout Europe. It is designed to snuff out religious freedom, pressuring American Muslims to adopt the Islamists’ social mores, financial practices, and anti-Western outlook. And the authoritarian device it uses to establish and control these enclaves is sharia, Islam’s legal and political framework, which aspires to control of all aspects of life — not just spiritual life, but all of life.

It is the Brotherhood’s objective to thread sharia through American law and culture. This mission drives imam Feisal Rauf’s work, as documented by the Center for Security Policy’s Christine Brim in an eye-popping report at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace website.

Since 2006, Rauf has been developing the “Sharia Index Project.” His partners in this venture include longtime Muslim Brotherhood honcho Jamal Barzinji, a top official at the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The IIIT, a major backer of the convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian, is one of the Brotherhood satellites that republished Rauf’s book, What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America, the book that was released in Malaysia under the more telling title, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. (The other Brotherhood organization behind the republication of Rauf’s book was the aforementioned ISNA.) As Ms. Brim explains, the purpose of Rauf’s Sharia Index Project is “to benchmark” every country’s compliance with sharia, with an eye toward pressuring them to adopt and enforce more.

The United States is not going to become a sharia state anytime soon. That obvious fact has commentators pooh-poohing the encroaching peril, even as we watch Europe succumb before our eyes, as if no-go zones, honor killings, the Balkanizing of society, and the strangulation of freedom could never happen here. On Tuesday, for example, in an otherwise insightful column on the Left’s incoherence in the mosque controversy, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto took an offhanded swipe at the “fringe right’s ravings about ‘Shariah.’” But are the concerns really “ravings,” and are they truly confined to a right-wing “fringe”?

It so happened that in the same day’s Journal, Bret Stephens penned a sharp essay about Muslim “moderates” who turn out not to be so moderate. As his counterpoint, he offered a courageous, progressive Muslim reformer, Irshad Manji. Rather than pretending that Islamic doctrine has nothing to do with terrorism, Ms. Manji is forthrightly confronting the doctrine and working to change it. What is it that needs change? As illustrated in her spellbinding book, The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith, much of what ails Islam is sharia sclerosis. Sharia, she elaborates, represents the legal opinions of classical Muslim jurists, frozen a millennium ago and, ever since, impervious to critical inquiry.

Frozen it remains thanks to atavistic zealots, prominent among them the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded by fundamentalists in the 1920s and lavishly funded by the Saudis since the 1950s, an outfit Manji correctly describes as “the al-Qaeda of its generation.” These Islamists are the true enemies of religious liberty. It is they who foreclose modern Muslims from the right to reason independently, to evolve.

Whether Ground Zero mosque proponents realize it or not, the cause they are advancing — against the will of the American people, and, perversely, under the guise of “religious freedom” — is the Islamist cause. It is the Brotherhood, not American Muslims, insisting that this monument must be imposed on this sacred spot.

It is a “considerable comfort,” Mr. Stephens writes, “to know that there are Muslims in the U.S. like Irshad who are working, tirelessly but mainly out of view, toward the cause of reform. They could use more support and recognition.” But, of course, their tireless work must happen “out of view,” because the Islamists have made it too dangerous for them to work openly. And they are denied support and recognition because the post-American ruling class has made its bed with sharia salesmen like Rauf, who blame America for 9/11 and can’t bring themselves to say Hamas is a terrorist organization.

By contrast, American Muslims grasp that 9/11 was an attack on their country, too. Their emerging leaders, such as Zuhdi Jasser and Steven Schwartz, have started organizations — respectively, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and the Center for Islamic Pluralism — that promote freedom and offer Muslims an escape from the Brotherhood’s clutches. As Messrs. Jasser and Schwartz relate, American Muslims understand the significance of Ground Zero to our nation, to the families of those who were slaughtered, and to the enemy against whom we are still fighting. They know that, in contrast to the innate intolerance of sharia states, the United States opens its arms to people of all faiths, including Muslims. Like Ms. Manji, they are struggling, against daunting opposition, to forge an Islam that embraces Western values, that reveres religious faith but denies it temporal authority.

The Ground Zero mosque controversy is not about religious liberty for Muslims. It is about which Islam will thrive in the United States: the one that is fighting Americans, or the one American Muslims are fighting for.

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

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.

Al Qaida under new
American Management


For 18 months we have been ringing alarm bells about the wisdom of President Obama’s campaign of apology and appeasement to the Muslim world.

We have contended that this will not improve our image in the Muslim world, and will in fact produce the opposite effect—emboldening Islamists and expanding their ranks.

The results are in.

A recent poll shows the Muslim world’s disapproval of the United States is virtually unchanged since 2008. Successful, unsuccessful and foiled terrorist attacks against the U.S. have skyrocketed (think Times Square bomber, Christmas Day bomber, Ft. Hood). Al Qaida has restructured its leadership, staffing it with long-time residents and citizens of America. See the chilling Investor’s Business Daily column below by Paul Sperry, who spoke at the June ACT! for America National Conference and Legislative Briefing.

Appeasement of those driven by a supremacist ideology, which radical Islam is, has never worked in the past. Not surprisingly, it’s not working now.




IBD Editorials

Under New American Management,
Al-Qaida Now Poses Inner Threat

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/ArticlePrint.aspx?id=543760

By PAUL SPERRY

Posted 08:17 PM ET August 13, 2010

If al-Qaida looks and sounds different as we approach 9/11's ninth anniversary, it's because it's under new American management. No fewer than four U.S. citizens and a permanent U.S. resident have risen to senior leadership posts.

These five English-speaking leaders are actively planning or facilitating attacks against their countrymen, while recruiting and radicalizing other American turncoats to carry them out.

By remaking itself into an American enterprise, al-Qaida is now more lethal than ever. Its new generation of leaders understands the way America works, having lived here for decades. They have a better sense of our security blind spots. They also know which kinds of attacks will produce both mass panic and maximum economic damage.

Al-Qaida's indigenous rebirth, moreover, befogs our military strategy. We're no longer at war with just a foreign enemy, but fellow Americans recruited by the enemy. They're supplied, in turn, by a seemingly endless stream of homegrown foot soldiers, fed by a native Muslim population once believed quiescent and nonthreatening.

Shockingly, the War on Terror has morphed into a mini-civil war, and it's posing major new challenges to its prosecution. We're now battling our own citizens. How do we deal with wartime traitors? Can the CIA assassinate them? Can it spy on them? What about their civil rights?

This muddies an already muddy war, and it's all part of al-Qaida's plan.

After 9/11, the group vowed to convert our own people against us, something once thought impossible. But it's managed to groom a startling number of American citizens and residents and install them in top leadership slots, including:

* Adnan Shukrijumah: The long-time Florida resident, who obtained a green card while living in the U.S. for more than 15 years, has replaced 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad as chief of al-Qaida's terror operations.

Believed to be directing U.S. terrorist cells from Pakistan, Shukrijumah, 35, recently was indicted as a conspirator in last year's plot to blow up the New York subway. There's a $5 million reward for his capture.

* Adam Gadahn: The California-born Muslim convert assists Shukrijumah and Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida's chief propagandist. He tailors the group's message to American Muslims, as well as disaffected minorities ripe for conversion.

In 2006, Gadahn invoked U.S. Muslims to attack military bases, singling out California's Camp Pendleton as a candidate for "a shooting spree." Three years later, a Muslim soldier went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood. Gadahn, 31, praised the attack and urged more.

The first American to be charged with treason in 50 years, Gadahn is hiding in Pakistan with a $1 million bounty on his head.

* Anwar Awlaki: Articulate and media savvy, the American-born cleric is al-Qaida's top recruiter of Western suicide cells.

Awlaki has recruited or radicalized countless homegrown terrorists, including the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square bomber, both English-speaking citizens. Authorities also believe he ordered the Christmas airliner attack, which puts Awlaki in the middle of the last three major terror acts on U.S. soil.

Thought to be bin Laden's heir, Awlaki has called on American Muslims to turn against their government, and has even justified killing American civilians. "Jihad against America is binding on every other (American) Muslim," he said.

The 39-year-old Awlaki lived in the U.S. for 21 years before fleeing to Yemen after 9/11. Treasury last month designated him a "key leader of al-Qaida" and froze his assets. He's also on the CIA's terrorist hit list.

* Samir Khan: A U.S. citizen who grew up in New York and Charlotte, N.C., the Web-savvy 24-year-old is now in Yemen helping Awlaki target American audiences as al-Qaida's newest propagandist.

Khan is editor of al-Qaida's splashy new organ, "Inspire," a Webzine that provides jihadists step-by-step instructions in English on making bombs that can elude bomb-sniffing dogs.

* Omar Hammami: The ex-Baptist convert to Islam grew up in the Alabama suburbs before joining al-Qaida.

He's now, at 25, a field commander in Somalia, another key al-Qaida hot spot, where he's recruiting and training U.S. jihadists. His trainees include dozens of Minneapolis college kids, including one who earned the dubious title, "first American suicide bomber."

This new cadre of al-Qaida leaders is enlisting a growing faction of the U.S. Muslim community, many of them African-American and white converts who don't fit the Arab terrorist profile. As many as three dozen U.S. converts are said to have gone through al-Qaida training in Yemen, where they've received Awlaki's blessing. They reportedly include blond-haired, blue-eyed types, fitting a profile of Americans that al-Qaida in the past could only dream of recruiting.

Its recruiting effort is made all the easier by some 15,000 jihadi Web sites, 80% of which are operating off servers based inside the U.S. Across the country, moreover, mosques and Islamic bookstores sell Awlaki's recorded sermons as CD box sets. It's all protected "free speech."

"Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie," Awlaki boasts. More and more, he warns, terror attacks will come "from within" ‹ even within our own military.

Meanwhile, the so-called moderates of the Muslim establishment are sitting on their hands. Major Muslim groups have refused to cooperate in terror probes until the FBI backs off mosques. Their cold war turned hot last fall, when a Muslim leader in Detroit died in a shoot-out with agents, triggering outcry throughout the Muslim community.

It's just a matter of time before a homegrown nut inspired by a radical mosque or Web site overcomes their bomb-making learning curve and successfully detonates one, blowing up a building or a mall or a plane inside America. And then we'll all wonder why more wasn't done to shut down these sites. Of course, by then we'll be sweeping up the remains of victims, and it will be too late.

"America cannot and will not win," Awlaki hisses. With Washington running from the war, disengaging from an enemy that now counts our own citizens among its senior ranks, we cannot afford to dismiss his words as bluster.

Sperry, formerly IBD Washington bureau chief, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration" and "Muslim Mafia."

.

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.

Our “Moderate Muslim” Problem

True reformers ignored

Petition numbers continue to grow

Bret Stephens’ recent column in The Wall Street Journal (below, highlights added) is a must-read. Thanks to the controversy surrounding the Ground Zero Mosque, more and more Americans, as well as many in the media, are beginning to focus on the threats radical Islam poses to America beyond those who are the actual terrorists.

In a recent appearance on the Michael Savage radio program, ACT! for America president Brigitte Gabriel went into great detail about the “moderate Muslim” problem Stephens discusses below. We have seen this “moderate Muslim” song and dance many times before, where government officials ignore the true Muslim reformers while spotlighting the likes of Imam Rauf. Think Abdurahman Alamoudi, touted as a paragon of moderation, feted at the White House—until he was convicted on terrorism related charges. He is now serving a 23 year prison sentence.

Here’s a question for those insisting Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a “moderate.” Why won’t he sign the “Freedom Pledge” sent to him by Former Muslims United? All it asks is that Muslim leaders oppose retaliation against Muslims who leave Islam. Rauf’s refusal to sign a pledge opposing any kind of retaliation against “apostates” proves that his words about “tolerance” are a sham designed to fool the gullible.

There are true Muslim reformers in America. Rauf isn’t one of them.



Our 'Moderate Muslim' Problem
The Ground Zero mosque imam earns wide congratulations while true reformers go ignored.

• By BRET STEPHENS



Items of interest in the news media's coverage of "moderate Muslims":

• The New York Times, Oct. 19, 2001: "Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, spiritual leader at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Virginia, one of the nation's largest. . . . is held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West."

• NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, Dec. 9, 2004: "It's the TV industry's newest experiment, 'Bridges TV,' billing itself the 'American-Muslim lifestyle network,' featuring movies, documentaries, cartoons. . . . It's the brainchild of Aasiya Hassan, an architect, and her husband, Muzzamil Hassan, a banker, who are disturbed that negative images of Muslims seem to dominate TV, especially since 9/11."

• Boston Globe editorial, Aug. 4, 2010: "The simple fact is there's nothing threatening about the proposed Islamic center, which is being spearheaded by Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the most respected moderate Muslim leaders in the country."

See where this is going?

Most readers probably know of Awlaki as the U.S.-born imam who presided over the mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers. Awlaki also served as theological mentor to Fort Hood killer Nidal Malik Hassan, would-be Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. President Obama has authorized the military to assassinate Awlaki, now thought to be living in Yemen.


Associated Press

Al Qaeda Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, former poster child of moderate Islam.


As for Bridges TV, the saccharine story told by Brian Williams and reporter Ron Allen (complete with scenes of the family's domestic bliss in their modest home in Buffalo, N.Y.), came to an abrupt end in February 2009, when Mr. Hassan beheaded his wife after she had filed for divorce, evicted him from their home, and won an order of protection. Last week, Mr. Hassan's attorney defended her client on the grounds that he was, of all things, a "battered spouse."

Now we have the controversy over the Ground Zero mosque, opponents of which are being widely branded as bigots. As, no doubt, some of them are: There are bigots in any crowd.

Then again, is it bigoted to oppose bigots? Consider an interesting historical antecedent. In 1993, a controversy similar to the current one unfolded when residents of a Washington, D.C., suburb sought to use zoning laws to shut down the local mosque, ostensibly on grounds that it was a traffic nuisance. "Worshipers of many faiths said closing the popular mosque . . . would amount to discrimination against one of the area's fastest growing religions," the Washington Times reported at the time.

The mosque in question? None other than the Dar al-Hijra, later to be known as the "9/11 mosque." So were the petitioners who sought to shut it down bigots? Or is it that they got a whiff of its extremism, and didn't like the smell? "We are appalled at the ill will and friction," the paper quoted one Sylvia Johnson, "who said mosque-goers have yelled at her and blocked her driveway."

Here, of course, the argument will be made that, unlike Awlaki, Mr. Rauf really is a moderate. And that might well be so—by the standards of his native Kuwait. But a man who claims to condemn all forms of terrorism yet refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group is not a moderate by American standards, which happen to be the relevant ones when you're trying to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. Mr. Rauf still has a perfect legal right to go ahead with his scheme. But his supporters need to choose between defending him on grounds of his alleged moderation (in which case his views are relevant), or on the principle of religious liberty (in which case they're not). They can't have it both ways.

Which brings me to the fundamental problem with too many self-described moderate Muslims. A few years ago, my friend Irshad Manji made the point to me that "moderate Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam but they deny that religion has anything to do with it." [Editor’s Note: Exactly what CAIR representatives do.] By contrast, she noted, "reform-minded Muslims denounce terror that's committed in the name of Islam and acknowledge that our religion is used to inspire it."

That's a distinction worth pondering. It's also a considerable comfort to know that there are Muslims in the U.S. like Irshad who are working, tirelessly but mainly out of view, toward the cause of reform. They could use more support and recognition. As for the professional charlatans and secret radicals who claim to be moderate, it would be well if their cheerleaders in the media could inspect their credentials a little more carefully before lavishing them with praise. Because, when it comes to heralding the arrival of the long-awaited moderates, there's nothing more embarrassing than a case of premature congratulation.



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 latest: Your tax dollars sending the Ground Zero Mosque Imam on Mideast trip

Opposition, petition signers increase


Dear Elaine,

If you haven’t heard the latest bizarre twist in the unfolding controversy over the Ground Zero Mosque, take a deep breath.

The State Department is sending Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the driving force behind the Ground Zero Mosque, to the Mideast.

Paid for by your tax dollars.

America’s outrage and opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque is growing with every new revelation.

Our petition now has over 90,000 signers. If you haven’t yet signed, please add your name today!



Updated: Tue., Aug. 10, 2010, 8:59 AM
Feds funding Ground Zero imam's Mideast trip
By GEOFF EARLE in DC and BRENDAN SCOTT in Albany
Last Updated: 8:59 AM, August 10, 2010
Posted: 3:19 AM, August 10, 2010

The imam behind a plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero is set to depart on a multi-country jaunt to the Middle East funded by the State Department -- raising concerns that taxpayers may be helping him with the controversial project's $100 million fund-raising goal.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is taking the publicly funded trip to foster "greater understanding" about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States, the State Department confirmed yesterday.

"He is a distinguished Muslim cleric," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, when asked about the journey, reportedly to include stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar.

"I think we are in the process of arranging for him to travel as part of this program, and it is to foster a greater understanding about the region around the world among Muslim-majority communities," he added.

Crowley said no fund-raising for the mosque and cultural center during the trip would be permitted. "That would not be something he could do as part of our program," he said.

Abdul Rauf said funds for the center will come from Muslims and members of his congregation.

But a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf reported that he says he also will collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world -- raising the possibility his goodwill mission could help him build contacts in oil-rich states.

"Does the State Department have any idea they are sending a guy to the Middle East who is going to be fund-raising perhaps among the very same people he will be meeting with?" asked Debra Burlingame, a 9/11 family member.

"We know he has a fund-raising association with Saudi Arabia," Burlingame said, noting that the Saudis have contributed money to underwrite programs by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a not-for-profit that Abdul Rauf runs with his wife and that is one of the sponsors of the Ground Zero mosque. "He's going to the well, and how can they say they do or don't know what he's doing?"

Meanwhile, state regulators said the sale of an adjacent Con Ed building needed to complete the Ground Zero mosque -- as disclosed by The Post on Sunday -- might be subject to review after all, even as Mayor Bloomberg insisted the project has "nothing to do with Con Ed."

Public Service Commission spokeswoman Anne Dalton said state law requires the agency to sign off on the "transfer or lease" of any property a utility owns within its franchise area.

The question is whether Con Ed satisfied that requirement nearly four decades ago, when it granted a 99-year lease on the former substation site at 49-51 Park Place.



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.

What the Ground Zero Mosque Controversy Reveals About America’s “Politically Correct Elites”

Our petition now over 81,000 names strong!


Dear Elaine,

The Ground Zero Mosque controversy has exposed, once again, the Grand Canyon-wide divide that exists between the “heartland” of America and America’s “politically correct elites,” who insist on lecturing the rest of us about why we are wrong to oppose the 13 story mosque at Ground Zero.

The Wall Street Journal column below is a MUST READ in this regard. Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly slammed CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad’s refusal to answer two basic questions about the Ground Zero Mosque. Awad went so far as to say “there is no linkage between the Islamic faith and 9/11.” O’Reilly followed Awad’s appearance with a revealing interview with Newt Gingrich, who called the effort to build a mosque at Ground Zero a “political act.”

What started small has become a national groundswell. Brigitte Gabriel has done dozens of TV and radio interviews, helping raise national awareness and opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque, with approximately 60% of Americans now opposed. Our petition now has over 81,000 names. If you haven’t signed yet, please do so today.

The American Center for Law and Justice is filing a lawsuit opposing the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero, and boycotts of New York City are being discussed.

America, this is your opportunity to speak out! Enough of out-of-touch, politically correct elites dictating to the rest of us! Help us continue to mobilize public opinion by signing our petition and forwarding this email to everyone you know!




The Wall Street Journal/OPINION

August 4 2010

Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11

The enlightened class can't understand why the public is uneasy about the Ground Zero mosque.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

Americans may have lacked for much in the course of their history, but never instruction in social values. The question today is whether Americans of any era have ever confronted the bombardment of hectoring and sermonizing now directed at those whose views are deemed insufficiently enlightened—an offense regularly followed by accusations that the offenders have violated the most sacred principles of our democracy.

It doesn't take a lot to become the target of such a charge. There is no mistaking the beliefs on display in these accusations, most recently in regard to the mosque about to be erected 600 feet from Ground Zero. Which is that without the civilizing dictates of their superiors in government, ordinary Americans are lost to reason and decency. They are the kind of people who—as a recent presidential candidate put it—cling to their guns and their religion.

There is no better exemplar of that faith than New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though in this he is hardly alone. Compared with the Obama White House, Mr. Bloomberg is a piker in the preachments and zealotry department. Still, no voice brings home more unforgettably the attitudes that speak for today's enlightened and progressive class.

Immediately after the suspect in the attempted car bombing near Times Square was revealed to be Faisal Shahzad, of Pakistani origin, Mayor Bloomberg addressed the public. In admonishing tones—a Bloomberg trademark invariably suggestive of a school principal who knows exactly what to expect of the incorrigibles it is his unhappy fate to oversee—the mayor delivered a warning. There would be no toleration of "any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers."

That there has been a conspicuous lack of any such behavior on the part of New Yorkers or Americans elsewhere from the 9/11 attacks to the present seems not to have impressed Mr. Bloomberg. Nor has it caused any moderation in the unvarying note of indignation the mayor brings to these warnings. It's reasonable to raise a proper caution. It's quite something else to do it as though addressing a suspect rabble.

It's hard to know the sort of rabble the mayor had in mind when he told a television interviewer, prior to Shahzad's identification, that it "could be anything," someone mentally disturbed, or "somebody with a political agenda who doesn't like the health-care bill." Nowhere in the range of colorful possibilities the mayor raised was there any mention of the most likely explanation—another terrorist attempt by a soldier of radical Islam, the one that occurred to virtually every American who had heard the reports.

The citizens were, of course, right. Those leaders bent on dissuading them from their grasp of the probable cause of this near disaster were left with their red herrings hanging—but remembered. Mr. Bloomberg's "someone who doesn't like the health-care bill" would be inscribed in the golden book of howlers these events have yielded, along with Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano's brisk assurance there was no evidence this was anything but "a one-off."

The notion that it is for the greater good that the people be led to suspect virtually any cause but the one they had the most reason to fear reflects a contempt for the citizenry that's of longstanding, but never so blatant as today. It is in the interest of higher values, Americans understand—higher, that is, than theirs—that they are now expected to accept official efforts to becloud reality.

Such values were the rationale for the official will to ignore the highly suspicious behavior of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who went on to murder 13 Americans at Fort Hood. A silence maintained despite all his commanders and colleagues knew about his raging hostility to the U.S. military and his strident advocacy on behalf of political Islam.

Those who knew—and they were many—chose silence out of fear of seeming insensitive to a Muslim. As one who had said nothing in the interest of this higher good later explained, Maj. Hasan was, after all, one of the few top-ranking Muslim officers the army had.

In the plan for an Islamic center and mosque some 15 stories high to be built near Ground Zero, the full force of politically correct piety is on display along with the usual unyielding assault on all dissenters. The project has aroused intense opposition from New Yorkers and Americans across the country. It has also elicited remarkable streams of oratory from New York's political leaders, including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

"What are we all about if not religious freedom?" a fiery Mr. Cuomo asked early in this drama. Mr. Cuomo, running for governor, has since had less to say.

The same cannot be said for Mr. Bloomberg, who has gone on to deliver regular meditations on the need to support the mosque, and on the iniquity of its opponents. In the course of a speech at Dartmouth on July 16 he raised the matter unasked, and held forth on his contempt for those who opposed the project and even wanted to investigate the funding: "I just think it's the most outrageous thing anybody could suggest." Ground Zero is a "very appropriate place" for a mosque, the mayor announced, because it "tells the world" that in America, we have freedom of religion for everybody.

Here was an idea we have been hearing more and more of lately—the need to show the world America's devotion to democracy and justice, also cited by the administration as a reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City. Who is it, we can only wonder, that requires these proofs? What occasions these regular brayings on the need to show the world the United States is a free nation?

It's unlikely that the preachments now directed at opponents of the project by Mayor Bloomberg and others will persuade that opposition. Those fighting the building recognize full well the deliberate obtuseness of Mr. Bloomberg's exhortations, and those of Mr. Cuomo and others: the resort to pious battle cries, the claim that antagonists of the plan stand against religious freedom. They note, especially, the refusal to confront the obvious question posed by this proposed center towering over the ruins of 9/11.

It is a question most ordinary Americans, as usual, have no trouble defining. Namely, how is it that the planners, who have presented this effort as a grand design for the advancement of healing and interfaith understanding, have refused all consideration of the impact such a center will have near Ground Zero? Why have they insisted, despite intense resistance, on making the center an assertive presence in this place of haunted memory? It is an insistence that calls to mind the Flying Imams, whose ostentatious prayers—apparently designed to call attention to themselves on a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix in November 2006—ended in a lawsuit. The imams sued. The airlines paid.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser—devout Muslim, physician, former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy—says there is every reason to investigate the center's funding under the circumstances. Of the mosque so near the site of the 9/11 attacks, he notes "It will certainly be seen as a victory for political Islam."

The center may be built where planned. But it will not go easy or without consequence to the politicians intent on jamming the project down the public throat, in the name of principle. Liberal piety may have met its match in the raw memory of 9/11, and in citizens who have come to know pure demagoguery when they hear it. They have had, of late, plenty of practice.





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.

“Ground Zero Mosque” imam & taqiyya

Petition opposing the mosque now has over 76,400 names


Dear Elaine,

Andrew McCarthy, who headed up the prosecution in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was a featured speaker at the recent ACT! for America 2010 National Conference and Legislative Briefing.

McCarthy, author of the excellent book The Grand Jihad, recently weighed in on the controversy surrounding the “Ground Zero Mosque” and its imam—notably, a book written by the imam that has a very different name for Arabic-speaking audiences than for English-speaking audiences. (See commentary below, highlights added.)

A common tactic of “taqiyya” (sharia-sanctioned deception) employed by Islamists is to say one thing to English-speaking audiences and something quite different to Arabic-speaking audiences.

Opposition to the mosque continues to grow—as do the number of people who have signed our petition. If you haven’t yet done so, please click here to add your name today!




http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MmNhNTg0ZmY1NzA4NWJmMjM0YjI1MzAwNzljYjFiNDM

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com

Andrew C. McCarthy


July 24, 2010 4:00 A.M.

Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble

Meet the Ground Zero Mosque imam’s Muslim Brotherhood friends.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is the imam behind the “Cordoba Initiative” that is spearheading plans to build a $100 million Islamic center at Ground Zero, the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by jihadists on 9/11. He is also the author of a book called What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America. But the book hasn’t always been called that. It was called quite something else for non-English-speaking audiences. In Malaysia, it was published as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11.

Now it emerges that a “special, non-commercial edition” of this book was later produced, with Feisal’s cooperation, by two American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The book’s copyright page tells the tale:



Both ISNA and IIIT have been up to their necks in the promotion of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthless Palestinian branch, which is pledged by charter to the destruction of Israel. In fact, both ISNA and IIIT were cited by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in a crucial terrorism-financing case involving the channeling of tens of millions of dollars to Hamas through an outfit called the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. For the last 15 years, Hamas has been a designated terrorist organization under U.S. law.

Dawa, whether done from the rubble of the World Trade Center or elsewhere, is the missionary work by which Islam is spread. As explained in my recent book, The Grand Jihad, dawa is proselytism, but not involving only spiritual elements — for Islam is not merely a religion, and spiritual elements are just a small part of its doctrine. In truth, Islam is a comprehensive political, social, and economic system with its own authoritarian legal framework, sharia, which aspires to govern all aspects of life.

This framework rejects core tenets of American constitutional republicanism: for example, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, freedom to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, equality of men and women, equality of Muslims and non-Muslims, and economic liberty, including the uses of private property (in Islam, owners hold property only as a custodians for the umma, the universal Muslim nation, and are beholden to the Islamic state regarding its use). Sharia prohibits the preaching of creeds other than Islam, the renunciation of Islam, any actions that divide the umma, and homosexuality. Its penalties are draconian, including savagely executed death sentences for apostates, homosexuals, and adulterers.

The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad, is to implement, spread, and defend sharia. Scholar Robert Spencer incisively refers to dawa practices as “stealth jihad,” the advancement of the sharia agenda through means other than violence and agents other than terrorists. These include extortion, cultivation of sympathizers in the media and the universities, exploitation of our legal system and tradition of religious liberty, infiltration of our political system, and fundraising. This is why Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and the world’s most influential Islamic cleric, boldly promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe” through dawa.

In considering Imam Rauf and his Ground Zero project, Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood are extremely important. Like most Muslims, Rauf regards Qaradawi as a guide, and [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/12/us/nation-challenged-religious-opinion-muslim-scholars-back-fight-against.html?scp=6&sq=Imam feisal abdul rauf&st=cse]referred[/url] to him in 2001 as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim world today.” And indeed he is: a prominent, Qatar-based scholar whose weekly Al Jazeera program on the subject of sharia is viewed by millions and whose cyber-venture, Islam Online, is accessed by millions more, including Muslims in the United States. Not surprisingly, his rabble-rousing was a prime cause of the deadly global rioting by Muslims when an obscure Danish newspaper published cartoon depictions of Mohammed.

Qaradawi regards the United States as the enemy of Islam. He has urged that Muslims “fight the American military if we can, and if we cannot, we should fight the U.S. economically and politically.” In 2004, he issued a fatwa (an edict based on sharia) calling for Muslims to kill Americans in Iraq. A leading champion of Hamas, he has issued similar approvals of suicide bombings in Israel. Moreover, as recounted in Matthew Levitt’s history of Hamas, Qaradawi has decreed that Muslims must donate money to “support Palestinians fighting occupation. . . . If we can’t carry out acts of jihad ourselves, we at least should support and prop up the mujahideen [i.e., Islamic raiders or warriors] financially and morally.”

Qaradawi’s support for Hamas is only natural. Since that organization’s 1987 founding, it has been the top Muslim Brotherhood priority to underwrite Hamas’s jihadist onslaught against the Jewish state. Toward that end, the Muslim Brotherhood mobilized the Islamist infrastructure in the United States.

The original building block of that infrastructure was the Muslim Students Association (MSA), established in the early Sixties to groom young Muslims in the Brotherhood’s ideology — promoting sharia, Islamic supremacism, and a worldwide caliphate. As Andrew Bostom elaborated in a New York Post op-ed on Friday, Imam Rauf, too, is steeped in this ideology.

In 1981, after two decades of churning out activists from its North American chapters (which now number over 600), the Brotherhood merged the MSA into ISNA. In its own words, ISNA was conceived as an umbrella organization “to advance the cause of Islam and service Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.” That same year, the Brotherhood created IIIT as a Washington-area Islamic think tank dedicated to what it describes as “the Islamicization of knowledge.”

After Hamas was created, the top Brotherhood operative in the United States, Mousa Abu Marzook — who actually ran Hamas from his Virginia home for several years in the early Nineties — founded the Islamic Association for Palestine to boost Hamas’s support. One of his co-founders was Sami al-Arian, then a student and Muslim Brotherhood member, later a top U.S. operative of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which he helped guide from his perch as a professor at the University of South Florida. In 2006, al-Arian was convicted on terrorism charges.

Marzook and other Brotherhood figures established the Occupied Land Fund, eventually renamed the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), to be Hamas’s American fundraising arm. The HLF was headquartered in ISNA’s Indiana office. As the Justice Department explained in a memorandum submitted in the HLF case:

During the early years of HLF’s operation, HLF raised money and supported Hamas through a bank account it held with ISNA. . . . Indeed, HLF (under its former name, OLF) operated from within ISNA, in Plainfield, Illinois. . . . ISNA checks deposited into the ISNA/[North American Islamic Trust] account for the HLF were often made payable to “the Palestinian Mujahideen,” the original name for the Hamas military wing. . . . From the ISNA/NAIT account, the HLF sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook . . . and a number of other individuals associated with Hamas.

Ultimately, the HLF raised over $36 million for Hamas. At the height of the intifada, this was not about the social-welfare activities Hamas touts to camouflage its barbarism. As the journalist Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism has observed, “Ordinary Americans should be shocked and outraged to learn that Hamas was running its terror campaign from a sanctuary in the U.S.” In addition, prosecutors showed that ISNA was central to a 1993 meeting of top Brotherhood operatives, who were wiretapped “discussing using ISNA as an official cover for their activities.”

Meantime, in 1992, the IIIT contributed $50,000 to underwrite an al-Arian venture, the World & Islam Studies Enterprise (WISE), a front for Palestinian Islamic Jihad that ostensibly employed several members of the PIJ governing board. IIIT has been under federal investigation since 2002 — and after his terrorism conviction, al-Arian went into contempt of court rather than honor a grand-jury subpoena in the probe.

In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood’s American leadership prepared an internal memorandum for the organization’s global leadership in Egypt. It was written principally by Mohamed Akram, a close associate of Sheikh Qaradawi. As Akram put it, the Brotherhood

must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

The memorandum included a list described by Akram as “our organizations and the organizations of our friends,” working together to implement this sabotage strategy. Prominently included in that list were ISNA and IIIT.

The Ground Zero project to erect a monument to sharia overlooking the crater where the World Trade Center once stood, and where thousands were slaughtered, is not a test of America’s commitment to religious liberty. America already has thousands of mosques and Islamic centers, including scores in the New York area — though Islam does not allow non-Muslims even to enter its crown-jewel cities of Mecca and Medina, much less to build churches or synagogues.

The Ground Zero project is a test of America’s resolve to face down a civilizational jihad that aims, in the words of its leaders, to destroy us from within.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.




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.

Terror threat and

the border


Dear Elaine,

The op-ed below, written by Brigitte Gabriel, appeared today in the New York Post.

We encourage you to forward this to everyone you know.





Looming threat from illegals: terror

By BRIGITTE GABRIEL

Last Updated: 10:01 AM, July 30, 2010
Posted: 12:01 AM, July 30, 2010

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/looming_threat_from_illegals_terror
_fxLo773X6OkZJXUCLXVIXJ

Arizonans will be grateful for some extra help from the National Guard, starting Sunday, in protecting the border and fighting drug violence -- especially now that a federal judge has blocked key parts of their recent illegal-immigration law. But there's a more pressing border issue that goes beyond Arizona: the alliance between drug cartels and groups that aim to smuggle terrorists into our country through the Mexican border.

Last week's detonation along the Texas-Mexico border of an Improvised Explosive Device similar to those used in Iraq and Afghanistan strongly suggests that Hezbollah is working with the drug cartels -- and that America is unsafe. Law-enforcement officials and intelligence analysts believe that terrorist groups like al Qaeda have been working with such gangs as the ruthless MS-13 to smuggle terrorists into America.

Intel briefings and other sources suggest that al Qaeda spends as much as $50,000 to smuggle in a single terrorist, while Hezbollah, funded by Iran, pays as much as $10,000.

Indeed, some analysts estimate that thousands of terrorists have already been smuggled into the United States through the Mexican border since 9/11. Last year, a worker at the Mexican embassy in Beirut was caught selling visas to enter Mexico for $3,000 apiece. Hezbollah terrorists know that once they get to Mexico they can make their way here through our southern border.

A congressional report on homeland security acknowledges this threat. The report, "A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border," addresses the alarming rate at which the number of aliens referred to as "other than Mexican," or OTMs, are crossing the border. Many OTMs are nationals and terrorists from countries such as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our biggest threat is that a nuclear, dirty or biological bomb could be smuggled by OTMs into America soon.

Hezbollah, the most sophisticated terrorist organization today, trains al Qaeda members in centers in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley before they leave for terror destinations via Syria, my sources there report. The organization manufactures IEDs in Lebanon and has perfected their use since the 1980s.

An alliance between the drug cartels and Hezbollah is a symbiotic, win-win situation for both parties. Hezbollah can share its expertise in tunnel-engineering and bomb-making with the drug cartels. The cartels can then smuggle dealers and drugs through these tunnels, several of which have been discovered in recent years, while Hezbollah smuggles terrorists and munitions to be used in terror missions in America.

Hezbollah is Iran's proxy army and is trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. As Iran and America head into a confrontation over Iran's nuclear program, Iran must ensure it has sufficient operatives in America to retaliate when the time comes, and this alliance provides the means to get them here. That time is coming faster than we think.

Intelligence analysts think Hezbollah has at least 11 cells in America, including one in New York City. If provoked, perhaps via an Israeli strike, it is likely Iran will retaliate not only against Israel but against its strongest ally.

Our border-security crisis extends beyond illegal workers and employers looking for cheap labor. A suitcase bomb or biological bomb detonated in any major city in America would kill untold numbers of civilians and wreak havoc on our economy. Health care, prison housing and other costs for illegal immigrants would ultimately pale in comparison to such devastation.

Terrorists now have operational centers all over South America. They're learning Spanish and obtaining fake Spanish papers in case they're caught crossing over the Mexican border. The Tri-Border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay in South America has become a haven for international Islamic extremists. A State Department report notes that Hezbollah and other terrorist groups were using bases in Latin America to "raise millions of dollars annually via criminal enterprises."

Americans must put politics aside and act now to secure the Mexican border. Arizona families are in need of protection from the drug violence, but we must protect the millions of Americans living in major cities who are threatened by a suitcase bomb or the like smuggled through the Mexican border.

The time for bickering is over.

Terrorism analyst Brigitte Gabriel, author of "Because They Hate," is president of ACTforAmerica.org.

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

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.

Congressman Lamar Smith, Texas,
Links Secure Borders to National Security
By Kelly Cook, National Field Director

Dear Elaine,

In a major statement just released, Congressman Lamar Smith, representing the 21^st Congressional District of Texas, and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, demonstrated the kind of common sense that is so often lacking in Washington, DC, today.

Why not secure our borders and get tough on illegal immigration? Our porous borders are currently a free and dangerous pass into our nation for those who wish to do us harm. Why do the Eric Holders and Janet Napolitanos of the world literally recoil at the thought of actually keeping our threats at bay?

ACT! for America salutes the many great men and women in the U.S. Congress who get it. Do not be guilty of “throwing all the bums out”! Be selective. The “bums” need to go, but let’s leave the heroes in place who are providing leadership in Washington, DC—heroes such as Congressman Lamar Smith.

Mr. Smith was one of several Members of Congress who addressed our Legislative Briefing on Capitol Hill this past Tuesday and represents the kind of leadership needed to guide our nation through the rough waters ahead. ACT! for America sincerely thanks him for investing the time and resources to address this critical issue. We stand with him.

See below for his full comments.


Immigration Enforcement and Secure Borders Are What Will Keep America Safe From Terrorists

Rep. Lamar Smith - July 01, 2010

When naturalized U.S. citizen Faisal Shahzad was arrested for his terror plot to detonate a bomb in Times Square, it exposed more than the ongoing attempts by international terror organizations to attack America and the weaknesses in our intelligence gathering. The arrest of Faisal Shahzad was another in a long line of examples that demonstrate the need to secure our nation’s borders and enforce our nation’s immigration laws to keep terrorists from entering the United States.

For years, we’ve known that strong border security is a fundamental component of national security. If we don’t know who is coming into the country, then we don’t know what harm they might do us.

The Times Square bomber was able to gain U.S. citizenship because a background check failed to identify him as a threat. Shahzad attempted to blow up a car left in Times Square. Fortunately, his attempt failed due to alert citizens and a poorly constructed bomb. He recently pled guilty to terrorism charges and is awaiting sentencing.

Similarly, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, had previously been given a visa to enter the U.S. But even after his own father called to alert authorities that Abdulmutallab might have been radicalized, his visa was not revoked and he was allowed to board a plane to the United States. As the plane approached its destination—Detroit—Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb under his clothing, in an attempted suicide attack. His plot also was thwarted by alert passengers and a poorly made bomb.

Our national security policy should consist of more than relying on dumb bombers and smart citizens. Sooner or later, a terrorist is going to build a bomb that works.

In both of these terror attempts, our immigration system failed to keep these terrorists either from entering the U.S. or becoming citizens. Strong immigration enforcement and border security are the first line of defense against terrorists. If we can prevent terrorists from entering the U.S., we can prevent attacks on U.S. soil.

This is not the first time that our immigration system has been used by foreign terrorists to gain a safe haven in the United States. The 9/11 hijackers also received visas to come to this country. And once they were here, all but one of the 9/11 hijackers acquired some form of a U.S. identification document. These forms of ID ultimately helped them board commercial flights on 9/11.

Following the devastating attacks, Congress appointed the 9/11 Commission to examine intelligence failures that led to September 11. The 9/11 Commission recognized these immigration-related weaknesses as part of the problem.

To keep terrorists—who may already be in the U.S. illegally—from getting valid forms of ID, Congress passed the REAL ID Act. The law prohibits illegal immigrants -- including terrorists -- from obtaining forms of identification that can be used for federal identification purposes such as boarding planes and entering federal buildings. Regrettably, the Obama administration supports repealing the law.

To address visa security, Congress created the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Visa Security Program. The goal was simple: increase the security of the visa process at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world. At visa-issuing posts where the program exists today, 100% of applicants receive additional screening. Unfortunately, such screening only exists at 14 locations out of a list of the 29 designated “highest-risk” posts worldwide. At other posts, less than two percent out of 5.8 million applications receive additional screening.

The Abdulmutallab “near miss” is a reminder that we need full screening of visa applications at all “high risk” posts. That’s why Republicans in the House and Senate introduced the Secure Visas Act of 2010. It mandates that the Department of Homeland Security maintain the Visa Security Program at the 14 consular posts that already have them and create new units at the 15 other posts that ICE has designated as “highest-risk.”

Terrorists may also be exploiting weaknesses in the Southwest border to enter the U.S. illegally. In 2007, then Director of National Intelligence Admiral McConnell confirmed that the U.S./Mexico border is a gateway to the U.S. for terrorists. According to recent news reports, the Department of Homeland Security issued a terror watch regarding possible illegal crossings into the U.S. by terrorist suspects and recruiters. The report came from Texas authorities who allegedly were warned that Somali terrorists—members of Al Shabaab, a group aligned with Al Qaeda—are illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

It makes no sense to deny the link between immigration enforcement and national security. If we want to prevent attacks, we need to keep terrorists from getting visas and stop them from coming to the U.S. and obtaining citizenship. That means enforcing our immigration laws, not ignoring them!

Terrorists will use any means possible to enter the U.S. The only way to guarantee that we will not have another terror attack on U.S. is to strengthen border security and enforce our immigration laws. Until we do that, Americans will remain vulnerable to attacks.

Lamar Smith represents Texas’ 21st district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.

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

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.

Muslims-Only Enclave in Philadelphia

Your contribution will help us bring news like this to 40 million households!

Dear Elaine,

There are over 750 “no-go zones” in France, Muslim enclaves where non-Muslims, even law enforcement officers, do not enter for fear of their lives.

There are dozens of sharia courts in Britain.

And now there appears to be a “Muslims-only” enclave in Philadelphia – financed with your tax dollars!

This must-read story (below, highlights added) didn’t get coverage in the major media.

But it’s precisely the kind of news the ACT! for America television program will cover.

We’re almost 90% of the way to our “Media Month” campaign goal. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the over 1,300 people who have responded thus far with monthly or one-time contributions.

If you haven’t yet responded and you are able to help us, please click here to respond today. If you prefer to mail a check, please click here to print out a reply form.

Your monthly Patriot Partner contribution or one-time Contributing Member contribution will help us cross the finish line and beam a weekly news and talk program into 40 million households nationwide!




Exclusive: ‘Muslims-Only’ Enclave Thrives In Philadelphia

Paul Williams, PhD
May 20, 2010

www.familysecuritymatters.org | Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, an Islamic enclave is being carved out of the heart of the City of Brotherly Love. And how generous have you been with your tax dollars? You just gave $1.6 billion for the privilege of turning over all this cash to the Islamic community.

The person doing the carving is Kenny Gamble, the author of such hit songs as “Love Train” and “Me and Mrs. Jones.”

So far Americans have shelled out $1.6 billion in federal grants, loans, and “charitable” gifts to create an alleged “Muslims-only” community.

A convert to Islam, Gamble, now known as Luqman Abdul Haqq, is affiliated with the National Ummah Movement which seeks to establish sovereign Islamic enclaves ruled by shariah (Islamic) law within major cities throughout the U.S.A. The movement was started by Jamil al-Amin (the former H. Rap Brown), who is now serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison for killing two police officers in Atlanta.

Gamble managed to collect the $1.6 billion through Universal Company, a so-called “charitable organization,” which he formed in 1993. Gamble and his spokesmen say that the non-profit company provides a public service by cleaning up a blighted section of the south Philly, but local residents say that Universal has really used the $1.6 billion to create a Muslim ghetto. This allegation is supported by Gamble himself. Speaking to his fellow Islamists, the former songwriter quipped: “We are not here for Universal, we are here for Islam.”

The proof is in the pudding. The 800 block of South 15th Street now contains the United Muslim Masjid, an Islamic center, and a madrassah (charter school). All of these organizations have been created and sustained by Gamble’s enterprise. Rotan Lee of the Philly YMCA says: “You look up and down the street and see men, women and children in traditional Muslim dress everywhere; you see the masjid right across from Kenny's house and security guards on the corners in kufis.”

On the website of the Muslim Alliance of National American, the directors of Gamble’s company made the mistake of betraying their true intent by saying: “By the Blessing and Mercy of Allah (SWT), the efforts of Universal Companies serve as a national model for what can be done with commitment, compassion, focus and careful planning and execution. Just another proof positive of the words of the Qu’ran where Allah (SWT) states: ‘Let there arise from among you a small group of people, inviting to all that is good. They enjoin the good, and forbid the evil, and it is they who attain success.’ (3: 104).”

Proof of Gamble’s ties to National Ummah Movement was provided by a conference call from Jamil al Amin to the United Muslim Masjid., a mosque G founded on 15th Street. A transcript from the mosque reads as follows: "...A highlight of one meeting was when we had Imam Jamil Al-Amin on speaker phone talking to us from his Georgia prison. MANA (Muslim Alliance in North America ) and its members have raised and donated several thousands of dollars to his family and legal defense team. Imam Jamil has recently been transferred to a "supermax" prison in Colorado, and we ask that you make du'a for him." [source]

Further proof of the Ummah connection comes from Gamble’s role in the creation of theMANA, an organization formed to free Jamil al-Amin from federal prison and to advance the Islamic take-over of the United States by “cultural jihad” - - pushing for black/Muslim privileges under the guise of equal opportunity and civil rights.

Some of the Ummah mosques maintain armed militias. Others provide training in martial arts and guerilla warfare. Almost all operate beneath the radar of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials.

On October 28, 2009, the FBI raided a warehouse and two houses in Detroit and arrested eleven Ummah members on charges of mail fraud, the illegal possession of firearms, trafficking in stolen goods, and altering vehicle identification numbers. In the course of the raid on the warehouse, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, the ringleader of the group, opened fire on the federal agents and was killed in the ensuing gunfight.

Luqman Abdullah was the imam of the Masjid al-Haqq in Detroit, a mosque that was part of the Ummah network. He sought to claim a section of blight-ravaged Detroit for his group in order to establish a sovereign Muslim enclave governed by sharia (Islamic law). In his sermons, Imam Abdullah called upon his followers to launch an “offensive jihad” against U.S. officials and to carry and use firearms.

Imam Abdullah, along with Kenny Gamble, was a founder of MANA. Another founder was Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and imam of Masjid al-Taqwa in Brooklyn.

So…how did Gamble squeeze $1.6 billion out of Uncle Sam?

Stay tuned.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., is the author of The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World, The Al Qaeda Connection, and other best-selling books. He is a frequent guest on such national news networks as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NPR. Visit his website at http://thelastcrusade.org.

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

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.

Iran, the master puppeteers in the Middle East

Dear Elaine,

Yesterday an op-ed by ACT! for America president Brigitte Gabriel, about the recent Gaza Flotilla incident, appeared in The Washington Times (see below).

While much of the world raged at Israel's legal right to enforce the blockade of Gaza, Iran continued its headlong march toward acquiring nuclear weapons.

We believe one of Iran's goals is to use nuclear weapons to initiate an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on the U.S. We discussed this in several emails about a year ago.

Tonight at 6:00 EDT a program about the EMP threat, entitled "Electronic Armageddon," will air on the National Geographic channel.




GABRIEL: Master puppeteers

World misses new report on mullahs' nuclear capability

By Brigitte Gabriel
June 18, 2010

The Washington Times | While world media and political attention is focused on the Israel-"Freedom Flotilla" incident, Iranian mullahs in Tehran are celebrating their brilliant war strategy in advancing their nuclear program. As world-renowned masters of the game of chess, Iranian mullahs can add "strategic marketing, public relations and media planning" to their resume.

Iran, anticipating a damning report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) revealing Iran has more than 2 tons of enriched uranium (two warheads' worth), had been actively working with Israel's enemies to divert world attention away from the alarming findings. The IAEA report, released on May 31, the day of the raid, was virtually unreported by the media, as all eyes had turned to Israel and Gaza.

Iran is manipulating operations in the Middle East and building alliances with like-minded jihadists driven by the same goal. Iran's strategic operations surrounding Israel include setting up bases of operation and creating controlled and planned conflicts as part of a bigger strategy not only to suffocate Israel but also to distract the world community from its own nuclear development plans.

Iran began building its base in Lebanon in 1982 with the creation of Hezbollah. By combining nearly 10 Islamic terror groups that shared the same ideology as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran created a proxy Iranian army on Israel's northern border. After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Iran seized the opportunity to extend a helping hand to Hamas, a Sunni group that shares the Iranian Shi'ite leadership's aspiration to wipe Israel off the map.

As evidenced by weapons and material recovered from the ship MV Francop in November 2009, Iran is not a stranger to using the high seas as a way to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran has been working with North Korea, Syria, China and Russia and is actively courting Turkey to create a counterbalance to American power in the Middle East. A Russian submarine flying an Iranian flag docked in Beirut last month, where what is believed to be chemical weapons were unloaded by people wearing "hazmat" or chemical warfare suits. Syria, working with Iran, has supplied Hezbollah with Scud missiles able to reach all of Israel. Iran's plans for Israel are as clear as the writing on the wall.

This summer could easily reprise the war of 2006, when Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon opened a two-front confrontation against Israel, sparked by Hamas' and Hezbollah's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. The conflict dragged Israel into an all-out war with Lebanon, and Iran and Syria were content to pull the puppet strings.

As a result of the flotilla incident, a Syrian television show already has called for suicide bombers to attack Israel; the head of the Palestinian Islamic council on Lebanon is calling for the kidnapping of Israelis; the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is calling for withdrawal from the Arab Peace Initiative; and the Muslim Union of Islamic scholars is calling for the cancellation of all peace agreements with Israel.

And who is talking about the IAEA report of Iran having two nuclear warheads' worth of enriched uranium? Virtually nobody.

Score: Iran: 1, Israel/America/IAEA, 0.

You can hear the laughter all the way from Tehran.

The flotilla incident is nothing more than a spark in a larger web of explosives set and organized by Iran and is the first step toward accomplishing Iran's ultimate goals. First, create whatever distraction is necessary, preferably one that inflames world hatred of Israel, to buy time to finish the bomb. Second, attain the bomb and become the Islamic superpower of the world, with the ability to wipe Israel off the map. This will usher in a new era of hegemony in the Middle East.

The stakes are high, and time is running out. Western governments must stand together against Iran and the new axis of tyrannical power that is developing. While it is Israel that will soon face a nuclear-armed Iran, in the long term, it will be Europe and America facing an Iran capable of projecting its totalitarian ideology across the globe.

Brigitte Gabriel is author of "Because They Hate" and "They Must Be Stopped" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and 2008). She is the president of ActforAmerica.org.

-------------
ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org

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=7]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]

Oklahoma’s amendment banning sharia law comes not a moment too soon

Building a firewall against sharia


Dear Elaine,

The oil spill in the Gulf is a painful reminder that you don’t wait until disaster happens before creating a credible plan of action to prevent it.

Those, like ABC News, who would belittle Oklahoma for passing an amendment banning sharia law clearly aren’t paying attention to sharia’s equivalent of an “oil spill” in Britain.

A new report (see story below) released by One Law for All on the status of sharia law in Britain documents just how bad the situation there has become.

Had Britain taken pre-emptive action as Oklahoma has, the cancer that is sharia law would not be eating away at Britain’s legal framework. A firewall would have been in place to prevent this from happening. Ironically, in the name of tolerance for Muslims, Britain now allows sharia discrimination against Muslim women and children.

Our “Media Month” campaign to raise the funds to produce our own TV news and talk program continues to push toward achievement of our goal.

By informing potentially millions of Americans of the seriousness and imminence of the threat arrayed against us by radical Islam and global jihad, we will help position America to build firewalls before that threat becomes a cancer that can’t be stopped.

You can help us reach our goal and get our TV news and talk show on the air. Simply click here to make a monthly Patriot Partner pledge or a one-time Contributing Member gift. Or if you prefer to make a gift with a check, you can click here to print out a reply form.



June 21, 2010

New Report – Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights

By Editor
June 17th, 2010
www.onelawforall.org.uk


A new report by One Law for All has found Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals to be in violation of UK law, public policy and human rights (see report here).

The report is being launched to coincide with a 20 June 2010 rally on the issue of Sharia law. Based on an 8 March 2010 Seminar on Sharia Law, research, interviews, and One Law for All case files, the report has identified a number of problem areas:

- Sharia law’s civil code is arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular. With the rise in the acceptance of Sharia courts, discrimination is being further institutionalised with some UK law firms additionally offering clients advice on Sharia law and the use of collaborative law.

- Sharia law is practiced in Britain primarily by Sharia Councils and Muslims Arbitration Tribunals. Both operate on religious principles and are harmful to women although Muslim Arbitration Tribunals are wrongly regarded as being of more concern because they operate as tribunals under the Arbitration Act 1996, making their rulings binding in law.

- Sharia Councils, on the other hand, claim to mediate on family issues but in practice often this differs little from arbitration: they frequently ask those appearing before them to sign an agreement to abide by their decisions; they call themselves courts, and the presiding imams, judges. Their decisions are then imposed and regarded as having the weight of legal judgements.

- There is neither control over the appointment of “judges” in Sharia Councils or Tribunals nor an independent mechanism for monitoring them. Clients often do not have access to legal advice and representation. The proceedings are not recorded, nor are there any searchable legal judgements, nor any real right of appeal.

- Sharia law cannot be compared to secular legal systems because it is considered sacred law that cannot be challenged. There is no scope to look at the interests of the individuals involved, as required by UK family law.

- These legal processes ignore both common law and due process, far less Human Rights, and provide little protection and safety for women in violent situations.

- There is a general assumption that those who attend Sharia courts do so voluntarily and that unfair decisions can be challenged in a British court. Many of the principles of Sharia law are contrary to British law and public policy, and would in theory therefore be unlikely to be upheld in a British court. In reality, however, women are often pressured by their families into going to these courts and adhering to unfair decisions, and may lack knowledge of English and their rights under British law. Moreover, refusal to settle a dispute in a Sharia court can give rise to threats and intimidation, or at best being ostracised.

According to Maryam Namazie, spokesperson of the One Law for All Campaign and an author of the report, “The existence of a parallel legal system that is denying a large section of the British population their fundamental human rights is scandalous. Our findings show that it is essential to abolish all religious courts in the UK. Their very existence and legitimisation puts pressure on vulnerable women not to assert their civil rights in a British court. As long as Sharia Councils and Tribunals are allowed to continue to make rulings on issues of family law, women will be pressured into accepting decisions which are prejudicial to them and their children.”

The report recommends that Sharia courts be closed on the grounds that they work against rather than for equality, and are incompatible with human rights. Recommendations include:

1. initiating a Human Rights challenge to Muslim Arbitration Tribunals and/or Sharia Councils
   
2. amending the Arbitration Act under which the Muslim Arbitration Tribunals operate in a similar way to which the Canadian equivalent of the Arbitration Act was amended in 2005 to exclude religious arbitration
   
3. launching a major and nationwide helpline and information campaign to inform people of their rights under British law
   
4. proposing legislation under the EU Citizens Rights Initiative to address the issue EU-wide, and
   
5. strengthening secularism and the separation of religion from the state, the judicial system and education, in order to more fully protect citizenship rights.
   

The full report can be downloaded here.

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

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.

A Muslim Speaks Out Against the “Ground Zero Mosque”

There’s still time to sign our petition opposing the “Ground Zero Mosque”


Dear Elaine,

On May 24^th, the New York Post published an important op-ed written by our friend and colleague, Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

You can read Dr. Jasser’s op-ed here. Following is a short excerpt.

I am an American Muslim dedicated to defeating the ideology that fuels global lslamist terror -- political Islam. And I don't see such a "center" actually fighting terrorism or being a very "positive" addition near Ground Zero, no matter how well intentioned. To put it bluntly, Ground Zero is the one place in America where Muslims should think less about teaching Islam and "our good side" and more about being American and fulfilling our responsibilities to confront the ideology of our enemies.

How we wish that the White House, Congress, and our law enforcement and intelligence communities would reach out more to Muslims like Zuhdi Jasser, instead of legitimizing Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations that were named unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.

Organizations like ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) and CAIR (Council on American Islamic-Relations).

If you haven’t yet signed our petition opposing the “Ground Zero Mosque,” will you take 60 seconds and join the over 52,000 who have signed it thus far?

Thank you!

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

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.

How to fight political correctness in the media?

How about our own television program!!

by Brigitte Gabriel


You read it right—so please read on!

ACT! for America is poised to launch its own TV program going into 40 million homes in the US.

We have been given, FREE OF CHARGE, cable TV airtime for 26 half-hour weekly programs.

The company giving us this free airtime, worth $300,000, owns cable networks that go into 40 million homes.

They also own state-of-the-art webcasting technology which will allow us to broadcast these half hour shows on the web in high quality, increasing our viewing audience. So even people who don’t get the cable channels on which the show will air will still be able to watch them!

Our plan for the show is a news/issues/talk format, with additional segments on ACT! for America activities, projects by chapters, legislative action alerts, and more.

Imagine what we could have said and done on our own show in the aftermath of the Ft. Hood jihadist attack. Imagine what we could be broadcasting to people about the proposed mosque at 9/11 “ground zero.” Or the “Gaza Flotilla.”

Imagine the truth we could get out without having to go through the filter of the politically correct media!

But to make this TV program a reality, I need your help.

While we have been given the air time, we must raise the money to produce the shows. A typical show of this kind costs $50,000 to produce, but we have ways to do a high-quality production for only $11,500 per show.

This means we have to raise $299,000 to produce all 26 shows—which will be aired not once, but twice, for a total of 52 showings!

To date we have raised $125,000 for production, so we’re 42% of the way there.

To raise the additional $174,000 I have designated the month of June as “ACT! for America Media Month.”

We need 1,000 people who will make an average one-time gift of $50. We need 500 people who will become Patriot Partners with a monthly commitment averaging $15 a month for one year.

For some of you who would like to sponsor an entire show for $11,500 we want to give you this opportunity—and recognize you on the air by crediting you “This show made possible by the generous contribution of (your name).”

If we can reach these goals, the total amount donated and pledged will be $140,000. I am confident we can raise the remaining $34,000 from donors at events we will be having in the next few months.

Can I count on you to respond today—even this very minute?

To make a one-time gift online, simply click here. To become a Patriot Partner, please click here. Our online donation process is safe, simple and secure. If you prefer to mail a contribution instead of donating online, you can print out a reply form by clicking here.

This is an historic moment for us. Words alone really can’t describe what this means.

No other organization in America doing what we do, committed to combating the threat of radical Islam and global jihad, has its own television program.

Through cable TV and the web, we have the potential to reach millions of people with an unfiltered, unvarnished, “non-politically correct” program.

But we can’t make this golden opportunity a reality without your help.

As a special “thank you” to every person who responds to this appeal, I will send to you an autographed DVD of our very first program. This will be in addition to the gift you will receive based on the amount of your monthly or one-time gift (these are described on the online donation page). Those who sponsor one or more programs will be acknowledged on the program in whatever way they choose and receive an autographed DVD of that program.

In the years to come, when ACT! for America’s presence is everywhere on TV and radio, you’ll be able to point with pride to your autographed copy of the FIRST television program we ever produced or the show you sponsored.

A program made possible with your generous financial support. This could well become a collector’s item.

So please, don’t delay. The sooner we raise the funds for production, the sooner we can be on the air.

To make a one-time gift online, please click here. To become a monthly contributing Patriot Partner, please click here. To print out a reply form to mail a contribution, please click here.

Thank you in advance for helping us make this historic opportunity a reality. I am humbled every day by the generosity and volunteerism of our ACT! for America members like you.

Always devoted,


Brigitte Gabriel
President and CEO, ACT! for America

Contact New York Mayor Bloomberg…

…Urge him to reverse course on the “Ground Zero Mosque”

And please sign our petition if you haven’t yet done so!

by Brigitte Gabriel

As we near the end of our petition drive opposing the “ground zero mosque” (we now have over 46,000 names!), some ACT! for America chapter leaders and members have asked us what we plan to do next.

Thus far, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and nearly all of the members of the Community Board 1 have turned a deaf ear to New Yorkers and families of 9/11 victims.

With our petition, we will get the Mayor’s attention.

But there is more we can do to make our petition even more effective.

NOW, from all across America, we need thousands of phone calls raining down on his office, and thousands of emails pouring into his inbox!

We need to send a clear message:

“Dear Mayor Bloomberg, We appeal to you, on behalf of the thousands of family members of victims of 9/11, to reverse your position and urge Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to locate his mosque somewhere other than at “Ground Zero.” Imam Rauf’s writings and public statements make it clear that he believes in the same sharia law that motivated the 9/11 jihadists. This we find unacceptable. 9/11 was an attack against ALL Americans not just New York City. Your decision represents and affects us ALL. Should you choose not to reverse your position regarding this mosque, please understand that we will take this personally and we will take our tourist and business dollars elsewhere! We cannot in good conscience support a city whose leadership has so little respect for 3,000 dead Americans that it would permit a mega “shrine” at ground zero to the same sharia ideology their killers used to justify their reprehensible actions! Mayor Bloomberg, we appeal to you to act FOR America and not AGAINST her. Thank you for your consideration.”

PLEASE TAKE ACTION!

I urge you today to place a phone call and/or send an email to Mayor Bloomberg’s office. Using a message similar to the one above, let him know, respectfully but unequivocally, that you are joining thousands of other Americans who will not spend their dollars in New York City.

If you live in New York City, you can call the mayor’s office at 311. Outside of New York City, call 212-NEW-YORK. To Fax a message, dial 212-788-8123. To send an email: http://www.nyc.gov/html/mail/html/mayor.html

PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO OTHERS SO THAT THEY, TOO, CAN JOIN US IN THIS ACT OF PROTEST!

We have done this successfully in the past. When Tyson Foods of Tennessee approved a union contract that dropped Labor Day as a paid holiday and replaced it with a Muslim holiday, thousands of ACT! for America members called Tyson Foods.

Tyson responded to our telephone campaign and reversed course, restoring Labor Day as a paid holiday. TOGETHER WE CAN DO IT AGAIN!!!

Always devoted and eternally thankful,


Brigitte Gabriel

President and CEO, ACT! for America

www.actforamerica.org

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

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.

Massachusetts leaders ignore the facts, embrace radical Islamists

Some disturbing similarities to the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy

Over 44,000 have signed our petition opposing the “Ground Zero Mosque”—Have You?

For years, many Massachusetts political and religious leaders have ignored the truth about the people behind the mammoth Islamic Cultural Center in Boston.

They didn’t ask questions. Then they ignored the answers to the questions they wouldn’t ask.

This must-see seven-minute video documents what they’ve ignored—and the terrorist consequences for all of us.

Now we face another mammoth “Islamic Cultural Center” project—this one at 9/11 “ground zero.”

As in Boston, many New York political and religious leaders have refused to ask questions, nor have they listened to the answers to the questions they won’t ask.

And they have thus far turned a deaf ear to the families of the 9/11 victims.

We’re not suggesting that at this time there is evidence that the leaders behind the “ground zero mosque” have overt ties to the likes of the terrorists involved in the Boston Islamic center.

But as more and more disturbing information about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is uncovered, it is clear there are things he did not want New York politicians to know as he courted them with the kind of multicultural sweet talk they so wanted to hear.

For instance, it is clear he wants sharia law imposed here in the U.S.

What else don’t we know?

New York’s politicians need to hear from US! If you haven’t already done so, please sign our petition opposing the mosque at ground zero.

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

ACT for America is an issues [color:5e29=#000]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.