65 Per Cent of French Believe French Civilisation Will Collapse
2:17
A survey released by polling firm Ifop has claimed that more than six in ten French people think that French civilisation as we know it will collapse.
The survey noted that a third of the people who believed in the collapse. think it will occur in a brutal fashion and put the time frame for the collapse within the next 20 year or so.
One of the chief reasons stated by respondents as the prime cause of a potential collapse is climate change, with 27 per cent stating that climate factors and overconsumption will spell the end for French civilisation, French media outlet L’Aisne Nouvelle reports.
Around 15 per cent of the respondents said that mass migration would be the cause of the collapse, while another 14 per cent stated that internal conflicts within French society, or even civil war, could precipitate it.
Many have warned of a potential civil war in France, including leading radical Islam scholar Gilles Kepel, who stated in 2016 that the “Jihadi Generation” had a goal to destroy Europe in a civil war and rebuild an Islamic society in the aftermath.
The following year, Belgian historian David Engels made a similar prediction saying that “in 20 to 30 years Europe will have become an authoritarian or imperial state, after a phase resembling civil war and decay.”
“I expect a civil war, which will force a fundamental social and political reformation in Europe, whether we like it or not, following the example of the decaying Roman Republic in the first century BC,” he added.
A Quarter of French Believe ‘Elites’ Using Mass Migration to ‘Replace’ Native Europeans breitbart.com/europe/2019/02…
974 people are talking about this
Mass migration is often termed in France as the “Great Replacement”, a term coined by prolific French writer Renaud Camus, and a poll released in February of last year suggested that up to a quarter of French believe in the theory.
Camus explained his theory of replacementism to Breitbart London in late 2018, describing it as people “being treated by managerial politics like an object, a simple product. A product, a producer, and a consumer all at once, a thing, a number, not a human being.”
Muslim Deceit and the Burden of Proof
In his recent defense of the Islamic doctrine
of taqiyya (dismantled here), Usama Hasan of the UK think tank
Quilliam made the following admission:
It is true that hardened
islamist terrorists, such as the Al-Qaeda & ISIS supporter Usman Khan who
murdered two people at Fishmongers’ Hall [after pretending to have been
“rehabilitated”], do misuse the principle of taqiyyah in order to further their
cause. However, the charge that all Muslims are generally religiously obligated
to lie, and do so routinely, is both dangerous and untrue.
However true
this may be, it is also irrelevant. After all, how is the infidel to know
which Muslim is and isn’t “misusing the principle of taqiyyah”?
Moreover, why should the burden of proof be on the non-Muslim -- who stands to
(and often does) suffer and even die from ignoring the role of deceit in Islam
-- and not on the Muslim, whose religion allows deception in the first place?
This is particularly so since more than a few “hardened islamist terrorists”
are convinced that their creed allows them to dissimulate to their heart’s
content -- so long as doing so can be seen as helping further the cause of
Islam.
In this, as
in virtually all things Islamic, Muslims have their prophet’s example -- two
that are especially poignant -- to turn to.
First is the
assassination of Ka‘b ibn Ashraf (d. 624), an elderly Jew. Because he
dared mock Muhammad, the latter exclaimed, “Who will kill this man who has hurt
Allah and his messenger?” A young Muslim named Ibn Maslama volunteered on
condition that to get close enough to Ka‘b to murder him, he needed permission
to lie to the Jew.
Allah’s messenger agreed. So Ibn Maslama traveled to Ka‘b and
began to complain about Muhammad until his disaffection became so convincing
that Ka‘b eventually dropped his guard and befriended him.
In another
account, after Muhammad and his followers had attacked, plundered, and
massacred a number of non-Muslim Arabs and Jews, the latter assembled and were
poised to defeat the Muslims (at the Battle of the Trench, 627).
But then Naim bin Mas‘ud, one of the leaders of these non-Muslim
“confederates,” as they came to be known in history, secretly went to Muhammad
and converted to Islam. The prophet asked him to return to his tribesmen and
allies -- without revealing that he had joined the Muslim camp -- and to try to
get them to abandon the siege. “For,” Muhammad assured him, “war is
deceit.”
Mas‘ud
returned, pretending to be loyal to his former kinsmen and allies, all while
giving them bad advice. He also subtly instigated quarrels between the various
tribes until, no longer trusting each other, they disbanded -- thereby becoming
a celebrated hero in Islamic tradition.
In the two
well-known examples above, Muslims deceived non-Muslims not because they were
being persecuted for being Muslim but as a tactic to empower Islam. (Even
the Battle of the Trench was precipitated precisely because Muhammad and his
followers had first attacked the confederates at the Battle of Badr and
massacred hundreds of them on other occasions.)
Despite these
stories being part of the Sunna to which Sunnis adhere, UCLA’s Abou El Fadl --
the primary expert the Washington Post once quoted to show
that Islam does not promote deceit -- claims that “there is no concept that would
encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal. That is a complete invention.”
Tell that to
Ka‘b ibn Ashraf, whose head was cut off for believing Muslim lies. The
prophet of Islam allowed his followers to deceive the Jew to slaughter him --
even though Ka‘b posed no threat to any Muslim’s life.
Especially
revealing is that, in Dr. Sami Makerem’s seminal book on the
topic, Al-Taqiyya fi’l Islam (Taqiyya in Islam), he cites
the two aforementioned examples from the prophet’s biography as prime examples
of taqiyya.
It comes to
this: even if one were to accept the limited definition of taqiyya as
permitting deception only under life-threatening circumstances (as Usama Hasan
and any number of apologists insist), the fact remains: Islam also permits
lies and deception in order to empower itself. Accordingly, and
considering that Islam considers itself in a constant state of war with
non-Islam (typified by the classical formulation of Dar al-Islam vs. Dar
al-Harb) any Muslim who feels this or that piece of deception over the infidel
is somehow benefiting Islam will believe that he has a blank check to
lie.
That’s the
inconvenient fact -- passingly admitted to by Usama Hasan -- that needs
addressing; and that’s why the burden of proof belongs on Muslims, not
non-Muslims.
Raymond
Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David
Horowitz Freedom Center; a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone
Institute; and a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
'Hating and Loving' for Islam
Understanding the roots of
terror.
January 17, 2020
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim
is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
During a New Year’s Eve Islamic terror attack that
took place in Russia minutes before the clock struck midnight, two Muslim
men—Akhmed Imagozhev, 22 and Mikail Miziyev, 18—drove their car into and
stabbed to death two police officers, one a married father of four. Other
officers subsequently shot one of the jihadis dead, while hospitalizing the
other.
An image of the two Muslim men
posing with knives was later found on social media. Beneath it appeared
the words, “love and hatred based on Tawhid!” This is hardly the first
time this ostensibly oxymoronic phrase appears in connection with Islamic acts
of terror. After launching a successful terror attack that killed two
policemen in the Kashmir Valley, the militant commander of Kashmir’s Hizb
al-Mujahidin—“the Party of Jihadis”—justified the murders by
saying, “We love and hate for the sake of Allah.”
Interestingly, in this
otherwise cryptic motto lie the roots of Islam’s conflict with the rest of the
world. “Loving and hating” is one of several translations of the Islamic
doctrine of al-wala’
wa’l-bara’ (which since 2006 I have generally translated as
“Loyalty and Enmity”).
The wala’ portion—“love,”
“loyalty,” etc.—requires Muslims always to aid and support fellow Muslims
(including jihadis, for example through funds or zakat). As one
medieval Muslim authority explained, the believer “is obligated to befriend a
believer—even if he is oppressive and violent toward you — while he must be
hostile to the infidel—even if he is liberal and kind to you” (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 64 ).
This is a clear reflection of Koran 48:29: “Muhammad is the
Messenger of Allah; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers,
merciful among themselves.”
But it is the bara’—the “hate,” the
“enmity”—that manifests itself so regularly that even those in the West who are
not necessarily acquainted with the particulars of Muslim doctrine sense
it. For instance, in November 2015, after a series of deadly Islamic
terror strikes in the West, then presidential candidate Donald Trump said, “I
think Islam hates us. There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous
hatred there. There’s a tremendous hatred. We have to get to the bottom of it.
There’s an unbelievable hatred of us.”
This “tremendous” and
“unbelievable hatred” is not a product of grievances, political factors, or
even an “extremist” interpretation of Islam; rather, it is a direct byproduct
of mainstream Islamic teaching. Koran 60:4 is the cornerstone verse of this
doctrine and speaks for itself. As Osama bin Laden once wrote:
As to the relationship between
Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High’s Word: “We renounce
you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah
alone” [Koran 60:4]. So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from
the heart. And this fierce hostility—that is, battle—ceases only if the infidel
submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed
[i.e., a dhimmi], or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable.
But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great
apostasy!… Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between
the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred—directed from the
Muslim to the infidel—is the foundation of our religion. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p.
43).
Similarly, the Islamic
State confessed to the West in the
context of Koran 60: 4 that “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are
disbelievers.” As for any and all political “grievances,” these are
“secondary” reasons for the jihad, ISIS said:
The fact is, even if you were
to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping
our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating
you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam. Even if you were to pay jizyah and live
under the authority of Islam in humiliation, we would continue to hate you.
Koran 58:22 goes as far as to
praise Muslims who kill their own non-Muslim family members: “You shall find
none who believe in Allah and the Last Day on friendly terms with those who
oppose Allah and His Messenger—even if they be their fathers, their sons, their
brothers, or their nearest kindred.”
According to Ibn Kathir’s
mainstream commentary on the Koran, this verse refers to a number of Muslims
who slaughtered their own non-Muslim kin (one slew his non-Muslim father,
another his non-Muslim brother, a third—Abu Bakr, the first revered caliph of
Islamic history—tried to slay his non-Muslim son, and Omar, the second
righteous caliph, slaughtered his relatives). Ibn Kathir adds
that Allah was immensely pleased by their unwavering zeal for his cause
and rewarded them with paradise. (The Al Qaeda Reader, 75-76).
In fact, verses that support
the divisive doctrine of al-wala’
wa’l-bara’ permeate the Koran (see also 4:89, 4:144, 5:51,
5:54, 6:40, 9:23, and 60:1). There is one caveat, captured by Koran 3:28:
when Muslims are in a position of weakness, they may pretend to befriend non-Muslims, as long as the hate carries on in their hearts (such is taqiyya; see here, here, and here for examples; for other
Islamic sanctioned forms of deception, read about tawriya, and taysir).
Little wonder, then, that
America’s supposed best Muslim friends and allies—such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar—are on
record calling on all Muslims to hate. According to a Saudi governmental
run website, Muslims must “oppose and hate whomever Allah commands us to
oppose and hate, including the Jews, the Christians, and other mushrikin [non-Muslims],
until they believe in Allah alone and abide by his laws, which he sent down to
his Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him.”
Indeed, because enmity for
non-Muslims is so ironclad in the Koran, mainstream Islamic teaching holds
that Muslim men must even hate—and show that they hate—their
non-Muslim wives, for no other reason than that
they are “infidels.”
If Muslims must hate those
closest to them—including fathers, sons, brothers, and wives—simply because
they are non-Muslims, is there any surprise that so many Muslims hate foreign
“infidels” who live oceans away—such as Americans, who are further portrayed
throughout the Islamic world as trying to undermine Islam?
In short, jihad—or terrorism,
war on non-Muslims for no less a reason than that they are non-Muslims—is
simply the physical realization of an overlooked concept that precedes it:
Islam’s unequivocal command for Muslims to hate non-Muslims.
THE KORAN
BIBLE OF
THE MUSLIM TERRORIST:
“The
Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys
are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush
Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL IMANI
Koran
2:191 "slay the unbelievers wherever you find them"
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".
Koran 3:21 "Muslims must not take the infidels as friends"
Koran 5:33 "Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam"
Koran 8:12 "Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran"
Koran 8:60 " Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels"
Koran 8:65 "The unbelievers are stupid, urge all Muslims to fight them"
Koran 9:5 "When the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them"
Koran 9:123 "Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood"
Koran 22:19 "Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water, melt their skin and bellies"
Koran 47:4 "Do not hanker for peace with the infidels, behead them when you catch them".
“The
tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The
Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt. The Muslim
Brotherhood also wages its deadly campaign through its dozens of
well-established and functioning branches all over the world.”
“The
Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys
are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush
Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
* We
will take advantage of their immigration policy to infiltrate them.
* We
will use their own welfare system to provide us with food, housing, schooling,
and health care, while we out breed them and plot against them. We will
Caliphate on their dime.
* We
will use political correctness as a weapon. Anyone who criticizes us, we will
take the opportunity to grandstand and curry favor from the media and Democrats
and loudly accuse our critics of being an Islamophobe.
* We
will use their own discrimination laws against them and slowly introduce
Sharia Law into their culture..
Duping Americans on Sharia
A detailed
look at how Islamic apologist extraordinaire John Esposito whitewashes Islamic
terror.
January 14, 2020
Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Does Islam
itself promote hostility for and violence against non-Muslims, or are all the
difficulties between the West and Islam based on secondary factors—from
“radical” interpretations of Islam, to economics and grievances?
This is the
fundamental question.
Obviously,
if “anti-infidel” hostility is inherent to Islam itself, then the conflict
becomes existential—a true clash of civilizations, with no easy fixes and lots
of ugly implications along the horizon.
Because of
this truism, those whose job it is to whitewash Islam’s image in the West
insist on the opposite—that all difficulties are temporal and not rooted to
innate Islamic teachings.
Enter Shariah: What Everyone Needs to Know,
co-authored by John Esposito and Natana J. Delong-Bas. The authors’ goal
is to exonerate Shariah, which they portray as enshrining “the common good (maslahah), human dignity,
social justice, and the centrality of the community” from Western criticism or
fear, which they say is based solely on “myth” and “sensationalism.”
In their
introductory chapters they define Shariah as being built upon the words of the
Koran and the Sunna (or example) of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as contained
in sahih (canonical)
hadiths. They add: “Shariah and Islamic law are not the same thing.
The distinction between divine law (Shariah) and its human interpretation,
application, and development (Islamic law) is important to keep in mind
throughout this book…. Whereas Shariah is immutable and infallible, Islamic law
(fiqh) is fallible
and changeable.”
Next the
authors highlight how important Shariah is to a majority of Muslims. They
cite a 2013 Pew Poll which found that 69% of Muslims in the Middle East
and North Africa, 73% in South Asia, and 55% in Central Asia believe that
“Shariah is God’s [Allah’s] divine revelation.”
Even larger
numbers “favored the establishment of Shariah as official law”: 99% in
Afghanistan, 84% in South Asia, 74% in the Middle East and North Africa, and
64% in sub-Saharan Africa.
So far so
good. The authors’ introductory claims (that Shariah is fundamental to
Islam) and statistics (that hundreds
of millions of Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented)
are correct.
But they
also beg the aforementioned question: is Shariah itself behind the
intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism committed in the name of Islam?
Here, the
hitherto objective authors shift gears and take on the mantle of apologists.
Their thesis is simple: Any and all negative activities Muslims engage in are
to be pinned on anything and everything—so long as it’s not Shariah.
In order to
support this otherwise unsupportable position, and as might be expected, the
remainder of the book consists of obfuscation, dissembling, and lots and lots
of contextual omissions and historical distortions.
A small
sampling follows:
Shariah on
Women
The authors
quote and discuss at length many Koran verses about women that seem positive
(Koran 30:21, 3:195, and 2:187), without alluding to counter verses that permit
husbands to beat their wives (4:34) and treat them as “fields” to be “plowed
however you wish” (2:223). Nor do they deal with Muhammad’s assertions
that women are “lacking in intelligence” and will form the bulk of hell’s
denizens, as recounted in a canonical hadith.
They
partially quote Koran 4:3: “…marry those that please you of other women, two or
three or four. But if you fear that you will not be just, then marry only
one.” This suits the authors’ purpose, which is to present the Koran as
implicitly recommending only one wife, since it acknowledges the near
impossibility for a man to treat all wives equally. Yet the authors deliberately cut off
the continuation of that verse—which permits Muslim men to copulate with an
unlimited amount of sex slaves (ma
malakat aymanukum) even if they are married.
They also
dissemble about child marriage, saying “classical Islamic law” permits it, but
only when “the child reaches a mature age.” Yet they make no
mention that, based on Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha—that is, based on his
Sunna, which is immutable and part of Shariah—nine is considered a “mature
age.”
Freedom of
Religion and Non-Muslims
The authors
claim that “There are more than 100 Quranic verses that … affirm freedom of
religion and conscience.” They quote many at length and assert that “The
guiding Shariah principle … underscored by Quran 3:28, 29:46, and 60:89, is
that believers should treat unbelievers decently and equitably as long as the
unbelievers do not behave aggressively.”
Yet they
fail to mention or sideline the many contradictory verses that call for
relentless war on non-Muslims—who are further likened to dumb cattle in Koran
25:44 —until they surrender, one way or another, to Islam (e.g., 8:39, 9:5,
9:29).
They fail
to quote the verses that form the highly divisive doctrine of al-wala’
w’al bara’ (“Loyalty and Enmity”), including Koran 5:51, which forbids
Muslims from befriending Jews and Christians, and Koran 60:4, which commands
Muslims to harbor only “hate” for non-Muslims, until they “believe in Allah
alone.”
Needless to
say, they ignore Koran 3:28, which permits Muslims to feign
friendship for non-Muslims, whenever the former are under the latter’s
authority (such is the doctrine of taqiyya;
see here, here, here, here, and here for
examples).
It is,
incidentally, because of all these divisive Koran verses—because of Shariah—that the
Islamic State forthrightly explained, “We hate
you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers.”
The closest
the authors get to address these issues is in a section titled, “Can Muslims in
the West be Loyal Citizens.” They respond with a yes—but the evidence
they cite are polls (based on wishful interpretations), which of course tells
the reader little about the topic they purport to “de-mythologize”: Shariah.
Jihad
As might be
expected, when the authors reach the topic of jihad, their dissembling reaches
a new level. They repeatedly insist that jihad, as enshrined in Shariah,
is simply the Muslim counterpart of Western Just War theory, which teaches that
war and aggression are permissible, but only in defense or to recover one’s
territory from occupiers: “The lesser or outer jihad involves defending
Islam and the Muslim community.” As usual, they spend much time
quoting and elaborating on Koran verses that comport with this position, while
ignoring or sidelining the many contradictory verses. In reality,
mainstream Islam holds that the Koran’s “Sword Verses” (especially 9:5 and
9:29) have abrogated all
the peaceful ones, thereby making warfare on non-Muslims—for no less a reason
than that they are non-Muslims—obligatory.
Consider
Koran 9:29: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day,
nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the
religion of truth [Islam] from the People of the Book [Jews and Christians],
until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”
What,
exactly, is “defensive” about this verse?
Similarly,
they claim that dar
al-harb, or “abode of war”—Islam’s designation for all those
non-Muslim territories (such as Europe) that Muslims were historically in a
permanent state of war with—“applied to other parties with whom Muslims were in
conflict.” Again, they fail to mention that the primary reason Muslims were “in
conflict” with them was because they were non-Muslim,
and that all non-Muslim territories were by default part of the “abode of war,”
except when treaties advantageous to Islam were drawn.
Instead,
the authors say, “The territories classified as the abode of war were those
that refused to provide such protection to Muslims and their clients”—thereby
implying Muslims were hostile to, say, Europe, because Europe was first hostile
to Muslims. (Reality, as chronicled in Sword and
Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, was the
exact opposite.)
Miscellaneous
Subterfuge
One can go
on and on; the authors engage in other forms of subterfuge to exonerate
Shariah. They frequently project a Western veneer to Islamic terms and
concepts, saying for example that Shariah is ultimately about “promoting good
and preventing evil”—which sounds admirable—without pointing out that, based on
the Koran and Sunna (that is, Shariah),
conquering non-Muslim territories is about “promoting good” and keeping women
under wraps and indoors, beating them as required, is about “preventing vice.”
While
admitting that Christians and other non-Muslim minorities are currently being
persecuted, not only do the authors insist that this has nothing to do with
Shariah, but they invoke relativistic thinking: “Just as Muslims living in
non-Muslim countries are often concerned with their rights and civil liberties
as minorities,” they say, “so some consider the rights and status of non-Muslim
minorities living in Muslim countries to be a parallel issue.” In other words,
because some Americans view Muslims in their midst with suspicion, the ongoing
enslavement and slaughter of Christians—more than 6,000 in
Nigeria alone since January 2018—and ban on or destruction of churches is
a sort of tit for tat, a “parallel issue” that can only be solved when the West
becomes less critical about Islam.
Relativism
is also invoked during the authors’ brief treatment of apostasy in Islam:
“Historically, apostasy was sometimes punishable by death in Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam.” They claim that apostasy is still a major issue in Islam due
to “radical” interpretations or politics—bolstering their position by again
quoting the same Koran verses that seem to support freedom of religion—without
mentioning, say, the canonical hadith (meaning part of Shariah) where Muhammad
said, “Whoever leaves his religion [Islam], kill him.”
Such is how
Islam’s skilled apologists dupe the West: they admit to some of the more
controversial aspects that many other apologists shy away from—namely that
Shariah is indeed foundational to Islam and that hundreds of millions of
Muslims revere and wish to see it implemented—but then, having established
trust with the reader, they slip back into the “game,” portraying all the
intolerance, misogyny, violence, and terrorism daily committed in the name of
Islam as products of anything and everything—fallible Muslim interpretations,
self-serving clerics and terrorists, socio-economic pressures, Western
criticism or encroachments—never Shariah itself.
Contrary to
its subtitle, then, John Esposito’s and Natana J. Delong-Bas’s Shariah is not “what everyone
needs to know”; rather, it is what non-Muslims need to believe in order to
give Shariah—which is fundamentally hostile to all persons and things
un-Islamic—a free pass.
The
Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) 2019
convention held in Chicago last month reveals the Illinois Islamists’ ties with
the autocratic Turkish regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and how Erdogan
uses U.S. Islamists organizations as an arm of his foreign policy.
Illinois's Islamist
Turkish Connection
The Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America
(MAS-ICNA) 2019 convention held in Chicago last month reveals the Illinois
Islamists’ ties with the autocratic Turkish regime of President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, and how Erdogan uses U.S. Islamists organizations as an arm of his
foreign policy.
One of the main convention sponsors was the Zakat Foundation (ZF), a
nonprofit organization, that was founded by the Turkish-American Halil Demir in
1981, in Bridgeview, Illinois, near Chicago. Demir previously worked as the public relations offices for
the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), an organization which would
be designated for supporting terrorism for allegedly funding Al Qaeda.
According to its mission
statement, the Zakat
foundation is a “trusted zakat (alms-giving) and donations resource center for
Muslim donors.” Zakat is the third pillar of Islam.
In his report “Erdogan’s Long Arm in the US: Turkish Influence
Operations Among American Muslims” Ahmet S. Yayla identifies the Zakat Foundation as the main
sponsor of the 13th MAS-ICNA conference in December 2014. In addition, ZF
participated at the 2015 MAS-ICNA conference with a large booth, raising funds
for its programs. Also, the Zakat Foundation was the platinum sponsor for the 2014 and 2015 American Muslims for Palestine
(AMP), a group closely linked to the Hamas support network which held its annual convention in Chicago in November.
Turkish officials have been directly involved at the MAS-ICNA
convention in Chicago for years. In 2016, Sumeyye
Erdogan Bayraktar, daughter of President Erdogan and vice-chairperson of the
Istanbul-based Women and Democracy Association (KADEM), spoke at the MAS-ICNA
convention and stated that “Turkey serves as an inspiration for other Muslim nations.”
In 2017, Turkey was represented at MAS-ICNA convention by Mehdi
Eker, the deputy chair of AKP.
Another speaker at the recent MAS-ICNA convention associated with
Erdogan is the Chicago-based Oussama Jammal, who is MAS’s director of Public
Affairs and Civic Engagement as well as president of the Mosque Foundation (MF) board of directors, and
secretary general of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO).
Jammal founded the USCMO in 2014 with
a mission to “open
effective communication and coordination spectrums between all American Muslim
organizations… help solidify mutually crucial relationships… create and sustain
an urgent, collective sense of direction.”
Since its inception, USCMO has acted as an umbrella group for Islamist organizations such as the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim-American Society (MAS), American
Muslims for Palestine (AMP), and the International Institute of Islamic Thought
(IIIT), all groups with identifiable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Indeed, Jammal and his ilk have issued press releases, organized
demonstrations, mobilized and indoctrinated Muslims in Illinois and other states, and
appeared on the scene whenever Erdogan needed support.
In April, 2015, USCMO released a statement to support Turkey regarding the “1915
Turkish-Armenian Events,” a Turkish euphemism for the Armenian genocide.
In July, 2016, Jammal, with a group of Turkish and American Muslims,
including Zakat Foundations’ Demir, protested the coup attempt in Turkey in front of Turkey’s Chicago
Consulate General building. Jammal is a major figure in Erdogan’s “domestic political meddling,” and USCMO acts as a support and
lobbying group for Erdogan’s anti-American policies among U.S. Muslims.
Turkish operations in Illinois are just a small part of Turkey’s
bid to create a global network of Islamists culminating in a virtual “Ottoman
Empire” that answers to Istanbul. In 2015 former AKP prime minister Ahmet
Davutoğlu said Turkey “will re-found the Ottoman state.”
This effort to place Turkey at the head of an Islamist coalition
explains Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) providing various forms of support to the international Muslim
Brotherhood, as well as U.S. Islamist organizations that support Hamas.
By meddling in U.S. politics, Turkish and Islamist nonprofit
organizations have violated their mission statements as nonprofit entities, and
in addition raise serious questions about their status as possibly unregistered
foreign agents, particularly if the Turkish government has funded their efforts
and rewarded them for their support. American Muslims need to stand up and make
clear that groups like MAS-ICNA and the USCMO do not speak for them
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