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Arab, Islamic Leaders Say Rabbi’s ‘Quiet’ Prayer on Temple Mount Will Provoke the World’s Muslims
(CNSNews.com) – A local Israeli court finding in favor of a Jewish Israeli who quietly prayed on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has prompted a clamor among Arab and Islamic critics, who charge that the move will provoke the world’s Muslims.
Israeli police had barred Rabbi Aryeh Lipo from visiting the Temple Mount for 15 days for praying at the site – the most sacred location in Judaism – but the court lifted the ban early, on the grounds his quiet and private prayer was not sufficient to violate relevant police regulations.
“The appellant stood in the corner with a friend or two, there was no crowd around him, his prayer was quiet, whispered,” the Times of Israel quoted Judge Bilhah Yahalom as saying in her ruling, after she viewed a recording of the incident. “I have not found that the religious acts carried out by the appellant were externalized and visible.”
The Temple Mount, a 35-acre, open-air hilltop platform in Jerusalem’s Old City that was the location of the biblical Temples, is home to the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam.
Reaction from Arab and Islamic leaders was swift and angry, with claims that a Jew’s quiet, outdoor prayer amounted to desecration of the sacred Islamic site.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Secretary-General Yousef Al-Othaimeen described the court ruling as “allow[ing] Jewish extremists to pray in the blessed al-Aqsa mosque.”
“Such illegal decisions constitute an unprecedented assault on the inalienable religious rights of the Islamic ummah [global community] and its heritage, a provocation to the feelings of Muslims all over the world, and a violation of freedom of worship and the sanctity of holy places,” said Al-Othaimeen, a Saudi whose organization represents 57 Muslim-majority nations and territories.
He went on to talk about violations of international law and U.N. resolutions, and said the OIC holds Israel “fully accountable for the consequences of these decisions, which would destabilize the region and ignite a religious conflict there.”
Turkey’s foreign ministry called on the international community to “strongly oppose this wrong, illegal and dangerous decision and all provocations against the Al-Aqsa mosque.”
“It is an alarming possibility to be taken into account that this decision will further embolden fanatic circles that attempt to erode the status quo at the Al-Aqsa mosque and will lead to new tensions,” it said in a statement.
The Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministry both condemned the court ruling, with Egypt demanding that the Israeli government not implement the court ruling or change the status quo of the site, which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).
Hamas, the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization that controls Gaza, called the court decision “a blatant aggression against the blessed Al-Aqsa mosque, and a clear declaration of a war that goes beyond political rights to an aggression against religion and sanctities.”
The Temple Mount has been under Israeli sovereignty since the 1967 Six Day War (prior to which it was occupied by Jordan for 19 years), but Israeli governments since then have ceded its administration to an Islamic trust.
The nearest point observant Jews are generally able to pray publicly is the Western Wall, the remnant of a retaining wall on the platform’s western flank. Some rabbinical authorities also forbid Jews to go onto the site, lest they accidentally step on the place where the “holy of holies” was once located.
Moshe Polsky, an attorney with an Israeli legal aid group that represented Lipo, welcomed the decision.
“It is inconceivable that Jews in the Temple Mount area should not be allowed to mumble and pray even silently when Muslims on the mountain are allowed to do everything – pray, demand, play football, and riot while the police do not prevent this – and Jews should feel like strangers in the holy place,” the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying.
Also protesting the court decision, the Palestinian Authority’s chief shari’a judge, Mahmoud Habbash at a press conference in Ramallah called it “a dangerous decision, a new aggression against Al-Aqsa mosque, and a flagrant violation of international law.”
“This Israeli behavior could open the door wide to the outbreak of a dangerous and destructive religious war that will not stop at the borders of Palestine and the region,” the official P.A. news agency WAFA quoted Habbash as saying.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Hussein, speaking at the same event, said any decision by an Israeli court relating to al-Aqsa was “rejected by every Muslim in this world and every free person who believes in respecting the beliefs of others.”
Habbash declared that al-Aqsa is “a purely Islamic place.”
Arab and Islamic leaders routinely conflate “al-Aqsa” with the entire Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound. While it is the mosque itself that is deemed holy – based on the belief that Mohammed stopped there during his “night journey” from Mecca to heaven – they contend that the whole area is sacred and dispute any Jewish claim to heritage there.
As attested by historical, archeological, and biblical sources, the two ancient Jewish Temples stood at the site. The second of those Temples, which features prominently in the New Testament, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, some 500 years before the birth of Mohammed.
The future status of Jerusalem remains one of the most sensitive issues in decades-long attempts to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
FLEECED! How aid billions were squandered in Afghanistan: £4 million on Tuscan goats for the cashmere trade, £120 million on Dubai villas for corrupt politicians and £400 million on aircraft left to rot
Ingraham: Biden 'flooding America' as thousands of Afghans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGMrd8zV5_M
On Contact: The debacle in Afghanistan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ZQHssDTbc
10% of Biden’s Afghanistan Aid Will Go To Taliban
Why are American taxpayers funding the Taliban?
Thu Sep 23, 2021
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Deborah Lyons, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, a wanted terrorist with the Haqqani Network, a Taliban component with close ties to Al Qaeda.
Lyons had served as Canada's ambassador in Kabul when the Taliban carried out a suicide bombing against a Canadian embassy convoy. Lyons put up a monument to the security contractors who were wounded and killed, but they sued after being abandoned afterwards.
Sirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted terrorist with a $10 million FBI reward on his head.
“It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging with the de facto authorities,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned.
The de facto authorities being the Islamic terrorists of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The official word is that the Taliban won’t stop the UN humanitarian operations. Whether or not the Taliban will refrain from taxing the UN’s proposed $1.2 billion aid boom is another question.
Without waiting for that question to be settled, Biden has not only kicked in $64 million, but the Treasury Department issued a license for Afghanistan aid which states that it, "will continue to support the continuity of the U.S. government’s important humanitarian-related work in the region", while claiming that "we have not reduced sanctions pressure on Taliban leaders or the significant restrictions on their access to the international financial system."
The Taliban and most “humanitarian” groups in Afghanistan are using the Islamic Hawala system which enables international finance and massive terrorist fundraising at the same time.
And “humanitarian aid” is one of the best ways to fund Islamic terrorists. The Taliban impose an Islamic tithe which American taxpayers will end up paying once the millions in aid arrive.
The Taliban had set up its Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations at least over a decade ago. Much like the old Afghan government, it made few distinctions between for-profit companies and non-profit charities, and taxed them both.
When the United States was in control of Afghanistan, USAID and the UN were exempted from government taxes. That was only fair considering that the vast majority of Afghanistan’s money came from USAID and the UN. But the local Afghan “implementing partners” paid taxes to the government and if they did business in Taliban territory, they also paid off the Jihadists.
We don’t know exactly how much taxpayer money went to the Taliban, but one survey found that contractors priced in 20% to 30% from their contracts as payoffs. More formally, the Taliban tend to charge a 10% Islamic tax on income and a 2.5% Islamic wealth tax. While this is modest compared to taxes in some western socialist countries, the only service the Taliban provide is not killing you. That doesn’t require much infrastructure, but is really valuable on the ground.
Every charity and humanitarian group has denied paying taxes to the Taliban because it’s illegal. All of them, or almost all of them, are likely lying because otherwise they’d be dead.
The Taliban had an extensive and sophisticated tax collection network long before they took Kabul which included all the usual elements of bureaucracy, registration, certificates, and assessments. They even have “NGO coordinators” who work with non-profit groups.
As an Economist article noted, "Britain’s Foreign Office had to remind ngos not to pay taxes to the Taliban."
The Taliban at one point provided a list of non-profits that had registered with their Commission for the Arrangement and Control of Companies and Organisations. The group “included UN agencies, national and international NGOs and human rights organisations” including those that “rely on funding from a wide range of sources, including both the UN and the US government”.
That was back in 2013 when the Taliban had far less power and were less intimidating.
It’s a safe bet that nearly every non-profit still operating in Afghanistan is registered with the Commission, and was probably registered in previous years, and is paying off the Taliban.
Even if the UN succeeds in exempting its operations from taxes, the “implementing partners”, local Afghan groups, will still pay taxes to the Taliban. And their employees and those of the groups they fund will certainly be taxed. If the United States funds doctors and clinics, they will be taxed (as they were before the fall of Kabul), if we fund teachers, they will pay taxes to the Taliban, and so will every beneficiary of our “humanitarian aid”.
"We can maintain a humanitarian commitment to... the Afghan people in ways that do not have any funding or assistance pass through the coffers of a central government," Ned Price, Biden’s State Department spokesman, falsely claimed.
Price knows that’s a lie.
Even if the humanitarian aid doesn’t initially pass through the Taliban’s coffers, it will inevitably end up there as it works its way through Afghanistan. Even if we just shipped food and medicines, the Taliban will take its ‘cut’ of the medicine and food as they used to before. They will then be able to dispense it to their supporters or resell it on the black market. Both are common practices for Islamic terrorist groups like the Houthis in Yemen or Hamas in Israel.
That’s why it’s common for there to be a “humanitarian crisis” in terrorist hellholes like Yemen or Gaza. No matter how much aid is sent in, the crisis never goes away because the terrorists not only steal the aid, they deliberately create the crises so that they have more aid to steal.
The only way to stop the crisis is to either kill the terrorists or at least stop sending them aid.
The 10% in the headline is a crude estimate. Any money or aid dispatched to Afghanistan will resonate back and forth through the economy with the Taliban taking a cut at every end. And the final amount will be a whole lot more than the formal Islamic tithe which the Taliban impose.
There is no way to provide humanitarian aid to a terrorist state without funding its regime.
And that will mean difficult moral choices.
When the Great Famine struck Russia as a result of Communist collectivism, the United States undertook a massive aid effort, sending $20 million (a quarter million in today’s dollars) in food aid. The noble effort saved millions, and bailed out the Bolshevik regime which showed no gratitude and went on to kill millions anyway. Then it built up a massive nuclear program while plotting to destroy the United States and murder hundred of millions of Americans.
No one wants to deny aid to suffering people, but when the cause of the suffering is a genocidal enemy regime, subsidizing it only makes things worse. Refusing to provide aid or normalize economic relations with the Soviet Union might have saved far more lives in the long run.
The Taliban won because many Afghans decided to support them or not to resist them. That is a choice that they will have to live with and learn to regret if anything is going to change.
Providing aid to Afghanistan will bail out the Taliban. The more aid we send to Afghanistan, the more powerful, the more secure, and the more aggressive the Taliban’s ambitions will grow. The harder the Taliban have to work to maintain control over Afghanistan, the less scope they will have for terrorism abroad. The more aid we send, the broader the Taliban’s horizons will grow.
Senator Cory Booker foolishly argued that aid is a “strategic leverage that we have over the Taliban.” No, it’s strategic leverage that the Taliban have over us as the Biden administration and the UN negotiate with the terrorists over the right to bail out their vicious regime.
Biden kept falsely claiming that he had to get out of Afghanistan because we couldn’t keep spending money on the failed state. Yet he began sending more money to Afghanistan before all of the Americans he abandoned behind enemy lines had even been evacuated.
After leaving massive caches of weapons and vehicles for the Taliban to enjoy, Biden is dispatching another $64 million, of which millions will likely end up in the hands of the Taliban.
The Taliban will impose their Islamic tithe on the aid that Biden sends to Afghanistan. And taxpayers will be the ones paying the tithe to support the Taliban’s Jihad against non-Muslims.
Americans aren’t just paying taxes to the government, they’re paying them to the Taliban.
How U.S. Failure in Afghanistan Validates the Koran’s Jihadist Teachings
Jihadist zeal is at an all-time high, for the Koran always “foretold” America’s failure.
Thu Sep 23, 2021
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
While it should be a no-brainer that the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan has emboldened like-minded (read: “radical”) Muslims to no end, few in the West appreciate how this episode—especially America’s disastrous retreat under Biden—is being used to validate the Koran itself, and thus reignite Muslim zeal and faith in Islam.
Since August 15, 2021, when the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, anytime I watched an Arabic language program or sheikh speak, they cited several Koran verses as “proof” that it was only inevitable—only a matter of time—that the U.S. would be humiliated and the Taliban exalted.
Consider, as one example, the words of popular sheikh, Wagdi Ghoneim (pictured above). An Egyptian scholar of Islam and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, he is notorious for issuing violent fatwas against Israel and inciting hatred against other “infidels” (including by threatening Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority, the Copts with genocide). With such “credentials,” it should come as no surprise that he once served as the imam of the Islamic Institute of Orange County, California, and was a fundraiser for the Toledo, Ohio charity, KindHearts (a Hamas front).
On August 15, 2021, this Ghoneim offered a “victory” speech that—at least as of publication of this article—still appears on YouTube, titled (in translation), “Allahu Akbar: The Taliban’s Victory Represents the Power of Jihad in Allah’s Way.” He began his talk by quoting the Koran on the virtues of jihad, for example:
O believers! Be mindful of Allah and seek what brings you closer to him and perform jihad in his way, so you may be successful (5:35).
O believers! March forth [into battle] whether it is easy or difficult for you, and perform jihad with your wealth and your lives in the cause of Allah. That is best for you, if only you knew (9:41).
Having laid the doctrinal framework for jihad, Ghoneim moved on to its most important aspect—perseverance: “The Taliban persevered in its jihad for 20 years,” he stressed. “This isn’t a problem—what’s 20 years in the context of history? Who said [the outcome of] jihad is instantaneous? No! It requires patience and time!”
In fact, patience and perseverance in the jihad was his grand point—not to mention the grand takeaway lesson of Afghanistan for all Muslims. It is for Allah to decree when the jihad succeeds; for every day Muslims, there duty is simply and always to wage it. If they do so, Allah, according to his word, shall eventually bless them with victory.
Supporting Koran verses Ghoneim cited include,
We will certainly test you until we learn who among you are the true mujahidin [jihadists] who remain steadfast and how you conduct yourselves (47:31).
Do you think you will enter Paradise without Allah proving which of you truly performed jihad for his cause and patiently endured? (3:142).
O believers! Patiently endure, persevere, stand on guard, and be mindful of Allah, that you may be successful (3:200).
Interestingly, the phrase “stand on guard” in Koran 3:200 literally means “perform ribat,” that is, man the frontier zone, whence the infidels should be harried, including through guerilla tactics—precisely what the Taliban did.
Finally, Ghoneim moved onto Allah’s words concerning infidels, especially those who try to prevent Muslims from performing jihad and enforcing sharia; he quoted Koran 8:36: “Surely the infidels spend their wealth to prevent others from the Way of Allah [sabil allah, i.e., jihad]. They will continue to spend to the point of regret. Then they will be defeated and the infidels will be driven into hell.”
As countless other Muslim clerics and leaders have done, are doing, and will do for years to come, Ghoneim proceeded to expound how that particular Koran verse foretold America’s defeat—that is, so long as there were always Muslims willing to persevere in the jihad, namely the Taliban. At one point he descended into wild gloating: “See how much they lost by way of dead and wounded—and trillions, all lost!... So you see, trillions they have lost!”
Because Ghoneim made this video on August 15, when it was still unknown that billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. weapons had fallen into the hands of the Taliban, he did not mention it—though countless other clerics have since, citing it as proof of how Allah blesses his jihadist servants, while humiliating their infidel enemies.
At any rate, the take away lesson from Afghanistan for millions of Muslims the world over is that perseverance in jihad and patience pays off—just as the Koran says it will. Put differently, the roles of both the Taliban and the U.S. have now confirmed for Muslims the truths of the Koran, specifically, that perseverance in the jihad always leads to victory over and leaves infidels broken—even if it takes years and decades.
“Therefore, thanks be to Allah,” concluded Ghoneim, “that they [Taliban] were patient and steadfast, and Allah rewarded them with victory over the infidel nations.” He closed by supplicating Allah to let the umma, the entire Muslim world, learn from the Taliban—from “those heroes who raised all of our heads up high and cast the infidels’ heads down in shame.”
As such, expect a renewed and unwavering commitment to the jihad—in all its manifestations, violent and nonviolent—in the foreseeable future.
Is Biden Bringing Terrorists From Afghanistan to America?
By Terence P. Jeffrey | September 22, 2021 | 4:11am EDT
Afghan evacuees are escorted to a waiting bus after arriving at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia on August 23, 2021. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Is President Joe Biden bringing terrorists from Afghanistan to the United States?
The answer: Even Biden himself cannot know for sure.
The administration is bringing two distinct types of evacuees into the United States from Afghanistan. Some hold special immigrant visas. Others are so-called parolees.
In June, the Congressional Research Service published a report explaining SIVs.
"Congress has enacted a series of legislative provisions since 2006 to enable certain Iraqi and Afghan nationals to become U.S. lawful permanent residents (LPRs)," said CRS. "These provisions make certain Iraqis and Afghans who worked as translators or interpreters, or who were employed by, or on behalf of, the U.S. government in Iraq or Afghanistan, eligible for special immigrant visas (SIVs)."
Allowing Afghan SIV holders to come to the United States is not only understandable; it is laudable. These are people who aided our country in its war against al-Qaida and the Taliban.
But who is a parolee?
"The parole provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)," CRS has reported, "gives the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) discretionary authority to 'parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States."
"Parole does not grant, nor entitle beneficiaries to later obtain, a lawful permanent resident (LPR) status," said CRS.
So, the Afghan parolees who have been coming into the United States since the fall of Kabul are people who are not entitled to lawful permanent resident status here, but whom Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has decided to grant entry into our country.
Do any of these parolees belong to, or sympathize with, al-Qaida, ISIS or any other terrorist group?
In a hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 13, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the vetting of Afghan evacuees brought to this country.
"Were there any gaps or weaknesses in the vetting process of Afghan evacuees, especially in light of the fact that reliable information on some, perhaps many, who got parole wasn't available to conduct a meaningful background check?" asked Smith. "Are you concerned that the Taliban may have embedded its members as evacuees?"
Blinken did not address the fundamental question of where and how the United States would get reliable background information on Afghan nationals, who, unlike SIV holders, had not worked for or on behalf of our government.
"With regard to the background checks, and this is very important, and you're right to focus on it," said Blinken, "as you know, before Afghans evacuated from Afghanistan reach the United States, they go to a transit country, and that's where the initial checks are done."
So, our government removed parolees from Afghanistan before it did background checks on them.
"We've surged Customs and Border Patrol. We've surged our intelligence and law enforcement capacity to do those initial checks," Blinken continued. "And then when they get to the United States, first, at a military base, those checks are continued using all of the law enforcement, intelligence, security agencies to do that so that we can make sure that we are not letting anyone into the country who could pose a threat or risk."
Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey is one of the locations the U.S. government has been bringing Afghan evacuees.
In an interview with CNS News on Sept. 20, Rep. Smith described a visit he made to that base on Sept. 2, when he discovered that "more than 70%" of the Afghan evacuees there then were parolees — not SIV holders.
"Well, they had about 3,000 Afghan evacuees there then. Now, it's about 9,400," said Smith. "I saw the military doing a magnificent job to make people feel at home, to make sure they had accommodations. But I was extraordinarily worried and continue to be about the vetting process before they get there."
"I asked very serious questions about: How do you do a background check on someone, particularly somebody in the age where they might be more prone to be an al-Qaida enthusiast," said Smith. "How do you do a background check back in Afghanistan to determine who they are and what their affiliations might have been? From date forward, yeah, you can get fingerprints and all the rest, biometrics, but you can't really look back all that well. So, I didn't get good answers."
Following up on his visit to JB-MDL, Smith sent a letter to Mayorkas on Sept. 13 asking some fundamental questions about the Afghans being brought there.
The most fundamental sought to discover how our government actually determines the identity of an Afghan evacuee. "Is there a biometric and historical database to vet and confirm the identity of any Afghan evacuee who has arrived at a military base, including information about one's history before leaving Afghanistan?" Smith asked the DHS secretary.
Assistant DHS Secretary Alice Lugo sent Smith a letter two days later stating that DHS would answer his questions — sometime in the future.
"Your correspondence is very important to us," Lugo said. "The appropriate Department of Homeland Security Components are preparing information so we can respond with the accuracy and completeness that your letter deserves. Please know that the Department's leadership has accorded your letter a high priority, and we are endeavoring to respond to you as soon as possible."
As of the afternoon of Sept. 21, DHS had still not responded to Smith.
In the meantime, according to Smith, Afghan evacuees have been leaving JB-MDL and venturing into the United States.
Smith was asked by CNS News on Sept. 20: "Have some of the parolees actually left the base there?"
"Yes," said Smith. "I just got the number today. 115 have departed."
(Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of CNSNews.com.)
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