RUTHFULLY YOURS

President’s Obama’s recent trip to Asia was intended to advance U.S. influence in the region, promote American exports, and create jobs at home.

But the U.S. President, and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have also been working to advance his un-American agenda – promoting a religion, the religion of Islam.

In June 2009, Americans were surprised to hear Obama’s declaration in Cairo, that the U.S. and the Muslim world, where Shari’a law (Islamic law) dictates gender, racial and religious discrimination, “share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

On his visit to India, where sectarian violence between radical Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists groups, and attacks on Christians continue, Obama chose Mumbai’s Jesuit St. Xavier’s College, to praise Islam again, as “The religion [that] teaches peace, justice, fairness and tolerance.” Merely two years after terrorists from the radical Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba murdered 166 people, including six Americans in Mumbai, Obama stated: “All of us recognize that this great religion cannot justify violence.”

In Indonesia, speaking about American –Indonesian cooperation, Obama proudly declared: “many of the partnerships I’ve mentioned (trade, security and cultural exchange agreements) are a direct result of my call in Cairo for a new beginning between the United States and Muslim communities around the world.” However, such agreements were in place before he became president.

A few days earlier, in Kuala Lumpur, Hillary Clinton, emulated her boss, highlighting the “common values like respect for cultural diversity, pluralism, [and] religious tolerance,” that the U.S. shares with Malaysia, an Islamic state. She went on to praise Malaysia, as an example of religious tolerance, ignoring the fact that forty percent of the non-Muslim population suffers from governmental institutionalized discrimination. Indeed, the U.S. Department of State’s 2009 Human Rights Report noted that: “Longstanding government policies gave preferences to ethnic Malays in many area.”

At the same time as Clinton was suggesting that Malaysia’s Islamic governance should be “looked to as both a thought leader and a model globally in a number of significant areas,” a scandal was brewing in Kuching, the forth largest city in Malaysia with a large Chinese population, where a ten-year-old student at the St Thomas Primary School (not a Muslim school), received ten “whacks on his palm” for bringing non-halal food to school.

While Clinton was lauding the role of Islam in Malaysia, the Human Rights Report detailed how “The civil courts continued to allow the Shari’a (Islamic law) courts to exercise jurisdiction in cases involving families that included non-Muslims. Additionally, the criminal and Shari’a courts utilized caning as a form of punishment.” The report also documented how “freedom of press, association, assembly, speech, and religion,” were restricted by the government.

Yet, Mrs. Clinton continued extolling Malaysia’s creativity and leadership “in Islamic financing, which will provide a different approach to financing which can be very economically important.”

Indeed, Malaysia has become a major sponsor and promoter of Islamic banking. It is home to the “de facto Islamic Central Bank,” the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), which was established in 2002 in Kuala Lumpur “to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance.”

IFSB members include the central banks of Iran, Sudan, and Syria – all designated state sponsors of terrorism – and the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA), which is widely documented since its inception to be a terror funder.

Moreover, chairing the 2002 meeting, Malaysian Prime Minister at the time, Mohamed Mahatir, stated: “A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad (emphasis added) worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West].”

Mahatir was merely reaffirming the ideology behind the invention of Islamic banking created by Muslim Brotherhood founder, Egyptian Hassan al-Banna. Banna concocted Islamic banking in the 1920s as a tool for the financial jihad (holly war) against the West.  He understood that “to penetrate the Western finance system, corrupting it from within,” would help to create “a parallel system to re-establish a global Islamic empire governed by Islamic law (Shari’a).”

The real push for the global expansion of Islamic banking began in earnest with the establishment of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), in 1969. The OIC’s charter calls to “liberate Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa [mosque] from Zionist occupation”(This statement has been removed from the OIC’s English website). To achieve that, the Saudi led OIC established new regulatory, accounting and auditing organizations to govern Islamic banks compliant with Shari’a Law.

In addition to the IBSB, Malaysia is the home for other important Islamic banking organizations, such as the Islamic Banking and finance Institute Malaysia (IBFIM). All are “dedicated to promote the Islamic banking industry as per Quran and Sunnah.”

Was our Secretary of State aware of the true nature of Islamic banking when she praised it? Most likely not. Instead, she probably adheres to the same PC interpretation of “jihad,” as the President, who announced in Mumbai: “the phrase jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations.”

While the reform of the American financial system is urgent, Islamic banking governed by Shari’a and by Muslim clerics—not U.S. laws and regulators—should not be endorsed, for these serve an un-American agenda

Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the NY based American Center for Democracy, and author of Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed – and How to Stop It.