CAIR-DFW’s Immigration Double Standards
As the coronavirus has spread from China to more than 110 countries around the world, and as it has gone from epidemic to pandemic status, nations around the world have adapted their travel ban list to include countries with high outbreaks.
On February 28th, the annual pilgrimage destination for most of the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, joined other countries banning travel and imposed a travel ban to Mecca and Medina over public health concerns regarding the coronavirus.
Twelve Muslim-majority countries were put on Saudi Arabia’s travel ban list: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Somalia, Syria, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
Ten Asian countries were also placed on the list: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam.
The response from local Dallas Islamists to this news was muted and starkly in contrast to the fighting words used to describe Trump’s travel bans, border walls, or other immigration policies.
CAIR-DFW Executive Director Faizan Syed, for example, in an article in NBC-DFW stated that Saudi Arabia’s actions had caused confusion because a group of seventy students from DFW area Islamic schools were planning a trip to Mecca for spring break:
“Now that’s up in the air, and they might go, they might not go. It’s created a lot of tension in our community. No one really knows what’s going to happen next.”
Fellow local Islamist Yasir Qadhi in an interview with Public Radio International, admitted that his plans to take 150 students on a tour of Saudi Arabia were also up in the air, but it’s all good:
“Well, [we] do realize that this is not a permanent ban. Right now, we don’t know what’s happening with the hajj. This is a temporary ban on some countries for the umrah. Anytime you go outside of the mandatory season, it’s called an umrah. So, we’re kind of in limbo. We don’t know what’s going to happen when it comes to the hajj season in three months. We don’t know yet. So we are confused. We are flustered. We are a little bit worried and scared. All put together”
Contrast such rhetoric to that used to describe Trump’s latest adjustments to the 2017 travel ban that resulted in carefully coordinated airport protests across the country.
In February, in an article posted to its website entitled “What You Should Know About the Latest Travel Ban,” CAIR-DFW ominously declared that about three years after the first travel ban, “the Trump administration [has] expanded its travel restrictions targeting even more Muslims and immigrants of color. [emphasis added]”
There’s only one problem with such rhetoric. The majority of countries on this new list are not majority Muslim countries. Some like Nigeria have about an even split between Muslims and Christians, and other countries like Eritrea, Tanzania, and Myanmar are just not majority Muslim. Furthermore, there are more Muslim majority countries on Saudi Arabia’s own list than on Trump’s. Why has CAIR-DFW not decided to highlight the racism of Saudi Arabia’s list?
With Trump’s announcement this week that his administration will temporarily ban travel to 26 European countries, the number of non-Muslim countries on that list now vastly outweighs the number of Muslim countries.
The article links to the No Muslim Ban Ever website, where the attempt to delegitimize Trump is even more pronounced:
“The Trump administration continues to push white supremacist and exclusionary policies that discriminate on the basis of faith, national origin and immigration status. We invite you to join us and declare #NoMuslimBanEver to raise awareness, resist and dismantle these policies.”
The site also states definitively, “The Muslim and refugee bans are just one prong of Trump’s white nationalist agenda.”
Again, for clarity’s sake, the majority of the new countries added to Trump’s original list are not Muslim majority countries, and as of January, there is about an even split between Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries on the list. Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Kyrgystan are on the list and are Muslim majority. Venezuela, Myanmar, Eritrea, Tanzania, Nigeria, and North Korea are also on the revised list but are not majority Muslim.
Add to this list the following Christian majority countries as of this week: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
The split between Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries is now an even 20:80. 20% of the countries on the ban are Muslim majority and 80% are non-Muslim majority.
The page of the #NoMuslimBanEver which reveals its campaign policies provides a window into the full scale of CAIR-DFW’s push for open borders. Here are a few examples:
“End policies like bans, walls and raids that treat our countries as inherently suspect and foster bigotry and hate.”
(End policies like walls?)
The page also advocates that the #NoMuslimBanEver coalition “create safe spaces for people under threat by advocating for sanctuary policies, supporting sanctuary communities and offering physical sanctuary.”
In light of the coronavirus, the “Love Knows No Borders” campaign of Islamists like Dallas-local Omar Suleiman is looking more and more ridiculous. Is it okay now to revise this slogan to read “the virus knows no borders” as it passes blithely from country to country wreaking havoc, disrupting travel plans, closing schools, and overwhelming hospitals?
The rhetoric of CAIR-DFW and other local Islamists is becoming more and more absurd. The coronavirus is exposing CAIR-DFW’s double standards surrounding borders, walls, and immigration, especially as Saudi Arabia’s travel ban includes more Muslim-majority countries than Trump’s infamous “racist” “white supremacist” ban.
Anne-Christine Hoff is the Dallas Counter-Islamist Grid Research Fellow of Middle East Forum. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
Saudi Arabia's crown prince responds to coronavirus by getting rid of enemies
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is facing some existential problems. He's losing the war in Yemen, the coronavirus has forced him to scale back visits by millions to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and the plummeting price of oil on the back of a supply war with Russian President Vladimir Putin are together shaking the most fundamental underpinnings of his leadership — not to mention threatening a global recession.
THESE ARE THE SHITBAG MUSLIMS WHOSE BORDERS WE HAVE DEFENDED FOR TWO YEARS. THE VERY SHITBAG SAUIDIS THAT THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS TO PROTECT AFTER THE SAUDIS INVADED US 9-11
MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman
Ben Hubbard. Random House/Duggan, $28 (384p) ISBN 978-1-9848-2382-3
Journalist Hubbard debuts with an incisive portrait of modern Saudi Arabia and 34-year-old crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, better known by his initials MBS. Though much about MBS’s early years remains unknown, Hubbard details his close relationship with his father, the governor of Riyadh, following the untimely deaths of two of MBS’s older half-brothers, and his willingness to threaten with violence those who don’t fall in line. After his father’s ascension to the throne in 2015, MBS took control of the royal court and became minister of defense. He implemented ambitious social and economic reforms, including rolling back the kingdom’s ban on women drivers, and courted Western investors with plans to build a $500 billion “smart city” near the Red Sea. He also declared war on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, escalated tensions with Iran and Qatar, detained hundreds of ministers and royal family members in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in a move billed as an anti-corruption push, and empowered underlings to aggressively silence dissidents—a campaign that led to the slaying of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Turkish consulate in 2018, severely damaging MBS’s international reputation. Hubbard enriches the narrative with informed discussions of Saudi history and culture, illuminating the kingdom’s complex blend of religious fundamentalism and technological ambition. This deeply researched and vividly written account provides essential insight into a figure poised to lead the region for the next half century. (Mar.)
Saudi Arabia's crown prince responds to coronavirus by getting rid of enemies
David A. Andelman
So what does he do? He takes a leaf out of President Donald Trump's playbook by getting rid of some of his most (allegedly) troublesome opponents. Instead of a simple purge, however, the crown prince, known by his initials, MBS, took the far more dramatic step of arresting his cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef; his uncle, Prince Ahmed bin Abdelaziz, as well as one of Nayef's brothers and one of Abdelaziz's sons. The first two have been charged with treason, which carries the death penalty. The crown prince was already in hot water for allegedly ordering the execution-style slaying of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. But with this escalation, the Saudi leader is pushing the boundaries once again to see what exactly he can get away with.
All these issues have been brewing for some time. The crown prince has given no quarter in five years of war in Yemen, which has turned very much into a proxy war with Iran — each power supporting opposing factions for control of this strategic corner of the Arabian peninsula.
The Saudis have long been watching anxiously as demand for oil ratcheted down and new energy sources, particularly from the United States, have come online. With the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, demand for oil has plunged even further.
To hold prices in line, the Saudis called an emergency meeting last week of the OPEC oil cartel to lower production quotas. Russia balked at OPEC's demand, led by Saudi Arabia, to cut 1.5 million barrels a day in output and stabilize prices at $40 a barrel. Putin has no problem with low oil prices, since Russia's cost of production is under $20 a barrel. But he would like to see America's fracking efforts — an already costly proposition to — become uneconomical.
Without a deal, Saudi Arabia said it would sell oil to China for a discount and potentially raise its own output by as much as 2 million barrels a day — moves that would result in flooding the market with oversupply. Oil prices around the world plummeted more than 25 percent Monday to $31 a barrel. Since oil still underpins the Saudi economy, accounting for 50 percent of its GDP and some 70 percent of its export earnings, this is a serious gamble for the crown prince, who has pledged to modernize and diversify his country's financial future.
And then along came the coronavirus. Here the crown prince has been forced to make some of the toughest decisions of his career. The one that has already sent shock waves through the Islamic world was his decision to suspend the year-round umrah pilgrimage in which as many as 20 million faithful — most from Saudi Arabia itself — take part every year. This has also raised the question of whether the annual hajj pilgrimage, which attracts millions Muslims more from every corner of the globe, would be allowed at the end of July.
Throughout, criticism of the crown prince has quietly been mounting at home. He wants desperately to succeed his father on the throne; King Salman is now 84 and said to be frail. Still, the day after the arrest of the four princes stunned the kingdom, the king was shown in photos released by the royal palace to be in good health, receiving foreign ambassadors and reading state documents. Perhaps the king is anxious to remain in power to welcome world leaders to the G-20 summit in Riyadh in November.
What has allowed the crown prince such a free hand? Certainly he has benefited from the unalloyed support of his father, who seems to accept his son's overt power grabs. Unanimity is vital since the next king is not chosen until the previous one has died. The crown prince clearly wants nothing left to chance.
But he also has innumerable enablers — world leaders and business leaders alike — who have repeatedly failed to confront the leader. Amazon's Jeff Bezos was photographed beaming next to him not long before the crown prince was revealed to have ordered the disastrous hacking of Bezos' cellphone.
Trump is a particularly bad offender. Trump has never fully accepted the conclusions of his own intelligence system that the crown prince personally ordered the savage murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi. Not surprisingly, Trump said nothing about the arrest of the four senior royals this past weekend.
But the crown prince's manipulations — and Trump's inaction — have a price. In the early morning hours on Tuesday, the prince and Trump talked on the phone, according to a White House official. Hours later, the Saudi prince flooded the oil market, hammering world stock, bond and currency markets.
This price war, of course, has implications for Trump's own re-election in November — especially if it threatens the American oil industry, which employs some 9.8 million American workers and is projected to add as many as 1 million more U.S. fracking jobs in the next five years.
The crown prince and Trump are currently facing a very similar set of challenges: The coronavirus threatening Americans at home and Muslims in Mecca and Medina; oil price and supply disruptions affecting the economies of both nations; unresolved and increasingly expensive wars respectively in Afghanistan and Yemen.
Perhaps now is the time to begin to break that circle of dependency before an impending crisis becomes a real crisis.
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Diaa Hadid/NPR
Diaa Hadid/NPR
International Women's Day: With Shoes And Stones, Islamists Disrupt Pakistan Rally
Demonstrators belonging to Islamist groups attacked an International Women's Day rally in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Sunday, hurling rocks, chunks of mud and even their shoes. The demonstrators, who were at a rival rally held by hardline Islamist organizations, were particularly enraged by one slogan the women's day rally adopted: "mera jism, mera marzi" – "my body, my choice."
Riot police set up large cloth barricades to dive the rival rallies, which flanked either side of a main road. But the police were also there to protect the women's day protesters, after the hardline men and women threatened violence.
As the protest was winding down, dozens of men tried to push through the barricade, including a man who held a little girl aloft on his shoulders. According to a video uploaded to Twitter by a BBC reporter, police used batons to push them back. Still, for the next few minutes, they hurled projectiles that scattered the women's day protesters, as journalists huddled behind concrete road dividers.
The hardline groups, their surrogates and conservative talking heads, took to the airwaves preceding the rally to condemn Pakistani feminists, accusing them of encouraging anti-Islamic vulgarity by raising a slogan that hinted that a woman had the right to do as she pleased.
The tensions even boiled over on a live talk show, where a screen writer swore at a prominent Pakistani liberal after she interrupted him by chanting the slogan. "Nobody would even spit on your body," he shouted in a clip widely shared on social media.
Conservative lawyers petitioned the courts in Pakistan's three cities to try ban the women's marches. One prominent Islamist opposition leader, known as Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, threatened protesters on Feb. 29, warning them not to chant "my body, my choice." "God willing, we will also come out into the streets, and we will destroy you," he warned. And a senior teacher at Jamiat Hafsa, a hardline women's seminary in the Pakistani capital, told NPR her students would halt the march by organizing a rival "modesty march."
"This is a march to stop that march," said the woman, who uses the name Bint Azwa (the women at the seminary often use first names or fake names to avoid being identified by security institutions that monitor their activities). "We are not going to let those women march the streets of our country, our neighborhood, with those vulgar chants."
The violence underscored how hardline Islamist groups played upon conservative outrage over the slogan "my body, my choice," to assert their presence in the Pakistani capital – and demonstrate their muscle.
The opposition leader Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman has struggled to find a toehold in Pakistan's freewheeling politics since his party was forced into opposition. The hardline Jamiat Hafsa was violently shut down in 2007, after a standoff that killed more than 100 people. The women returned to the seminary only this February, and have dared security forces to remove them again.
On Sunday, dozens of the seminary women turned up at the counter-rally, clad in long black robes, headscarves and face veils, segregated from dozens of men who stood in a nearby park. They stood in military-style rows, their fearsome appearance only jarred by blue, green and pink bows pinned to their shoulders, to identify which bus they should return on, explained one 25-year-old, who only gave her first name, Rubina.
"We don't want women to make choices for their bodies. The choice rests with God," she said. Nodding toward the women's day march, she described the women there as "naked." "These people don't even wear dupatas," she exclaimed, referring to the shawl that Pakistani women traditionally drape across their chests to signify modesty.
On the other side, at the women's march, hundreds of men, women and transgender Pakistanis clustered. Some waved the red flag of a leftist party. Others held up signs, including "my body, my choice," but they denounced so-called "honor" killings, where men murder their female relatives for bringing alleged shame onto the family. Some demanded to know the fate of female political activists who mysteriously disappeared.
"Pakistan is getting more and more divided over time," said Ambreen Gilani, a 41-year-old development consultant, gesturing to the Islamists across the road. The opposition to the women's march helped motivate another protester to turn up, Sukaina Kazmi, a chemical engineer. She gestured to her Muslim headscarf, "Our religion does not teach us any of the things they are standing up against, our religion actually does fight for women's rights," she said.
As the protesters regrouped and walked away from the dozens of men trying to assault them, one organizer, Anam Rathor, said the violence underscored why they were demonstrating. "This proves our point, and this movement is growing. And now we will have more people. The reason why they are throwing stones is because they are afraid of us and that makes us happy."
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