RUTHFULLY YOURS

The father of embattled Hillary Clinton campaign honcho Huma Abedin once told a Saudi Arabian newspaper that Muslims have the right to “take up arms” in jihad and that “every self-respecting Muslim is an Islamic fundamentalist.”

Syed Zain Abedin, a Saudi-sponsored Islamist scholar, revealed in a lengthy interview with a Saudi correspondent that he agreed with jihadists that “Islam permits the use of forceful means,” and that carrying out martyrdom operations may be necessary in the cause of Allah.

“There are occasions when Islam calls for the ultimate sacrifice,” he said, as long as it is done in “the cause” of Allah and not for selfish reasons such as individual suicide.

Abedin also said Muslims have a “relentless obligation” to convert non-Muslims in the West to Islam, though he counseled Muslims living in non-Muslim majority countries to be patient in going about Islamizing their hosts. As the minority, they do not have the numbers for “conquest” and have to be aware of “certain strategic necessities, certain political imperatives.”

He pointed out that even after Western political systems are “subdued,” it may take hundreds of years before citizens formerly living under those secular systems fully accept Islam.

“The immediate goals and targets for Muslims to pursue when they are the majority in any society are distinct from the goals and targets they should pursue when they are living as a minority in any society,” Abedin explained in the 1991 interview with the Saudi Gazette, a leading daily newspaper published in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

He advised winning over the “kuffar, the deniers,” with “little acts of kindness.” Whatever the tactics, he added, “There can be no let-up” in converting them to the “Islamic way.”

“Muslims have to continue to formulate their attitudes and behavior on the assumption that kufr is not a fixed, but a volatile and transcient category. Today’s nay-sayers may well be tomorrow’s yes-sayers,” Abedin said. “This happened daily in Makkah (Mecca), the historical Makkah. Why would it be different in today’s Makkah, in today’s situation where Muslims are a persecuted and despised minority?”

If you are a convicted killer in the state of New York, you are entitled to take college courses both while in prison and when you are released. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University, offers full scholarships to those criminals who have served their time and wish to enroll. The student who is profiled in this Sunday’s Times is a 41 year old former drug dealer whose explanation for murdering another drug dealer when he was 23 is that his girlfriend had broken up with him, he had served some time at Rikers Island and he was feeling “hopeless and angry.” (Life Beyond Bars: One Man’s Journey From Prison to College, NYT 11/6/16) By contrast with this magnanimous govt largesse, if you are the law-abiding child of a living fireman or policeman, NY state has no educational stipend for you at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice – odd, considering that law enforcement is as heavily involved in that field as law – breakers. If you are the victim of a crime, NY State does have an Office of Victim Services (OVS) but they don’t provide any assistance for your higher education. Instead, you can get lots of information related to victims’ rights in judicial proceedings, victim impact statements and restitution for your injuries. The website doesn’t mention helping to educate you while you are feeling “hopeless and angry” after your traumatic attack.

Presumably, the experts have figured out that the way to lower the enormous cost of incarceration, is to lower the rate of recidivism so that investing in educating prisoners is a way to save the state money. Mr Echeverria, the profiled ex-con in the Times has taken five years to achieve the status of sophomore, not exactly a productive financial investment by the state, to say the least. One wonders why the opportunities for prisoners do not focus on shorter term goals that might be more realistic than an eventual degree from John Jay, assuming that were possible. Culinary arts, appliance repair, construction related trades, medical and geriatric assistants – these are some of the fields that come to mind. Considering the enormously inflated costs of college education, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to help the families of public servants whose credentials might insure greater success and whose parents’ ongoing service to the state is immeasurably more deserving of scholarship aid? Why take that portion of the population whose dispositions, drug use and probable ADD along with other learning disabilities, render them least likely to excel in college, even under optimum circumstances.

If our next president is the candidate inclined to follow in Obama’s footsteps, we can expect a continuation of his Second Chance Pell Pilot Program which will award grants to 12,000 inmates to take courses at 67 selected colleges. Judging from the abysmal statistics attendant to public school achievement in large cities, this will be yet another government program with seemingly good intentions killed by blind assumptions about its students – in other words, a program that will afford as little bang for the buck as the swollen budgets of Depts of Education throughout urban America. In New York City public schools, a scant 36% of the students are proficient in Math and 38% in English – the cost of achieving this failure is almost $20,000 per pupil. We can only hope that a new administration shows greater ability to do some simple math.