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The Latest Applicant to be “The Muslim Voice” by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

Secularism may be accepted in a Christian society but it can never enjoy a general acceptance in an Islamic society.” — Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The acceptance of a legislation formulated by humans means a preference of the humans’ limited knowledge and experiences to the divine guidance: “Say! Do you know better than Allah?” (2:140)…. For this reason, the call for secularism among Muslims is atheism and a rejection of Islam. Its acceptance as a basis for rule in place of Shari’ah is downright riddah [apostasy]….” — Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

We Muslims believe that Allah is the sole Creator and Sustainer of the Worlds…. If they do not [observe His injunctions and to judge according to them], then they commit kufr [unbelief], aggression, and transgression.” — Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

There have never been any effective democracies in the Islamic world.

The idea that human beings can replace God as legislators is obnoxious to classical Islamic thought and to modern Islamist convictions. Men and women do not choose how to live: God has been there first.

Several of the ECFR’s own pronouncements indicate an unwillingness to compromise with European norms.

“The Shari’ah is for all times to come, equally valid under all circumstances. The Muslim insistence on the immutability of the Shari’ah is highly puzzling to many people, but any other view would be inconsistent with its basic concept.” — Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) plays an important role in the Fiqh al-‘Aqalliyyat (“Jurisprudence for Minorities”) world. It is now based in Dublin, having been founded in London in 1999 by the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. Apart from issuing fatwas (principally those of leading Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi), it aims to supervise the education in Europe of local imams, to bring together Muslim scholars living in Europe, to resolve issues that arise on the continent (and UK) while operating with strict respect for shari’a law (which implies there should be no compromise), and to establish itself as an approved authority wherever Muslims live as minorities. This latter aim would suggest that the ECFR might one day possess an authority that would override that of local and national shari’a councils, and its members would expect to be the first and perhaps only voice to which parliaments and parliamentary bodies would lend an ear in their deliberations on how to treat their Muslim minority communities.

Despite the claim of the ECFR and other bodies involved in guidance for Muslims living outside Islamic jurisdiction to work towards a modus vivendi with Western governments, laws and cultural norms, the members of the ECFR nevertheless tend to approach this challenge in a way that can make the rapprochement problematic. Two matters engage much of their attention, namely secularism and democracy. Al-Qaradawi has spoken and written clearly on these. In one of his books, he separates Christian and Muslim beliefs:

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Palestinians’ Fort of Torture by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

Because it is not Israelis who are perpetrating the abuse, the reports are ho-hum to these journalists.

Hamas is an extremist Islamist movement that does not consider itself obliged to abide by international laws and treaties concerning basic human rights. Indeed, the concept of human rights simply does not exist under Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where public freedoms, including freedom of speech and of the press, are non-existent.

In 2013, two Palestinian detainees reportedly died of torture in the Jericho Central Prison.

A London-based human rights organization reported 3,175 cases of human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, by the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank during 2016. Hundreds of those detained include university students and lecturers, as well as schoolteachers. During the same year, the PA security forces also detained 27 Palestinian journalists.

Unfortunately for them, they are not going on hunger strikes in an Israeli prison, where such actions garner the immediate interest of the mainstream media.

Many are willing to tell their stories. But who is willing to listen? Not Western governments, human rights organizations and journalists. Most of them seek evil in Israel, and Israel alone.

As Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies occupied themselves in the past two weeks issuing warnings to President Trump against moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, reports resurfaced concerning the brutal conditions and human rights violations in a Palestinian prison in the West Bank.

These reports, however, were buried, along with the abuse, in favor of attention to rhetoric directed against the Trump Administration. Anything uttered by Abbas and senior PA officials regarding the possible transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem made it to the headlines of major newspapers and TV networks around the world.

At one point, it actually appeared as if the mainstream media in the West was interested in highlighting and inflating these statements in a bid to pressure Trump into abandoning the idea of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Western journalists ran to provide platforms for any Palestinian official interested in threatening the Trump Administration.

The threats included warnings that the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem would “destroy the peace process,” “jeopardize regional and international security” and “plunge the entire region into anarchy and violence.” Some Palestinian officials went so far as to state that such a move would be considered an “assault on all Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims.” They also threatened to “revoke” Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

Regrettably, as Palestinian officials from across the political spectrum joined forces to broadcast sensational headlines in the mainstream media around the world, the reports about torture of Palestinian detainees in a PA prison failed to attract the interest of the many journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The torture that takes place in PA-controlled prisons and detention centers is not new.

Over the past few years, Palestinians have become accustomed to hearing horror stories about what is happening within the walls of these structures. Yet, because it is not Israelis who are perpetrating the abuse, the reports are ho-hum to these journalists.

A Palestinian who points a finger at Israel is guaranteed a sympathetic ear among journalists. When a Palestinian complains of torture at the hands of Palestinian interrogators or security officers, it is seen as just more of the same. Worse: It is seen as “Oh those Arabs, what can anyone expect from them?”

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Remember the crowds protesting when Obama banned immigrants? By Ethel C. Fenig

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

Crowds, crowds, crowds! Or, in some cases, are they a mob of useful idiots? As Ed Lasky noted, the hysterical reaction of the anti-Trump crowd, erroneously called civil and human rights defenders, to President Trump (R)’s executive order temporarily banning visitors and immigrants from a few Muslim-majority terrorist countries (not a ban on Muslims) is hypocritical. (The Women’s March and the airport mobbers all look alike – all sound and fury, signifying nothing but moral narcissism.)

Below is a photo from the massive crowds in Chicago protesting former (thank goodness!) President Barack Hussein Obama (D)’s 2011 order banning Iraqi refugees for six months.

Or maybe this is the large, angry crowd reacting to Obama’s decision in the final weeks of his administration banning desperate Cubans fleeing failing Communist Cuba from entering the U.S. without a visa.

President Barack Obama is ending the longstanding “wet foot, dry foot” policy that allows Cubans who arrive in the United States without a visa to become permanent residents, the administration announced Thursday.

The move, which wasn’t previously outlined and is likely one of the final foreign policy decisions of Obama’s term, terminates a decades-long policy that many argued amounted to preferential treatment for a single group of migrants.

Perhaps if a large crowd greeted Syed Rizwan Farook as he brought his mail-order bride, Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani national raised in Saudi Arabia, into America breezing through Chicago’s O’Hare airport over two years ago, they could have convinced them to love the USA instead of plotting to slaughter innocent Americans.

This twisted, evil Muslim (yes, a coincidence I know) couple bonded over their hatred of America, its people and their freedoms, and their religions, going on to gun down many in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.

If Malik had already radicalized years ago, how did she get the go-ahead to immigrate to the United States in 2014?

A senior State Department official told CNN on Wednesday that Malik was not asked about jihadist leanings when a U.S. consular official interviewed her in Pakistan for her fiancée visa application last year. That’s because no red flags were found in the Department of Homeland Security application that was submitted and checked before the interview, the official said.

The consular officer who did the interview reported that Malik was able to answer enough questions about Farook to prove that she knew him well and that they had a personal relationship, a main focus of the consular interview process, according to two senior State Department officials.

After the interview, Malik passed two other security database checks before her visa was adjudicated. Records show that the visa was decided on the day after the interview: May 23, 2014. Malik came to the United States on July 27 of that year. According to California marriage records, she married Farook just one month later.

As we were taught in kindergarten, safety first! Oh, how their victims, not to mention those of September 11, the Boston Marathon, the Orlando nightclub, and other innocents slaughtered in this country by those who entered into America’s welcoming doors, wish America had followed this basic rule.

And most Americans agree with President Trump’s order.

Most voters approve of President Trump’s temporary halt to refugees and visitors from several Middle Eastern and African countries until the government can do a better job of keeping out individuals who are terrorist threats.

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What Ben Carson Should Do at HUD By Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., writes frequently about real estate development, public/private partnerships, constitutional law, social policy, higher education, and the Middle East and is past President fo Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME)

Now that Dr. Ben Carson has moved closer to being confirmed as President-Elect Trump’s candidate for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the new administration can begin planning to fulfill promises outlined in a 10-point “plan for urban renewal,” which promised “tax holidays for inner-city investment and new tax incentives to get foreign companies to relocate in blighted American neighborhoods.” It also pledges to “empower cities and states to seek a federal disaster designation for blighted communities in order to initiate the rebuilding of vital infrastructure, the demolition of abandoned properties, and the increased presence of law enforcement.”

This language sounds like a resurrection of Jack Kemp’s “enterprise zone” model, an idea that reappeared in the Clinton years as “empowerment zones” and with George W. Bush as “Go-Zones,” and can now provide a model for President Trump’s campaign promise to jump-start the rebuilding of inner cities and enlist the private sector in helping to complete this task.

The key to the empowerment zone concept is that it attempts to solve the problems of inner-city unemployment and poverty without direct, substantial government expenditure. It also uses a number of incentives – investment and employment tax credits, regulatory relief, capital gains exclusions, employee training, business incubators, low-interest loans, and other tools – to draw investment into areas that, absent the incentives, would be unlikely to have materialized.

Dr. Carson himself articulated an interesting twist on finding tax revenue to fund the administration’s ambitious plans. He has said that Trump will “be working on empowering people in empowerment zones throughout cities, using a lot of the money from overseas that is stuck over there because of our tax situation,” meaning they hope to convince U.S. companies, many of whose profits are currently offshore, to bring the corporate taxes due on those monies back to America, necessarily with the incentive of a reduced tax rate.

The beauty of deriving a new stream of revenue from repatriated corporate profits, of course, is that it does not cannibalize existing tax revenues and instead provides a new source of taxes which, absent the incentives, would otherwise not be realized. Given that an estimated $2.4 trillion of profits from Fortune 500 companies has been “permanently reinvested” offshore to avoid onerous U.S. federal income taxes, even a reduced, irresistible corporate tax rate of, say, 10% (less than one third current rates) could theoretically yield $200 billion, some or all of which could be earmarked for investing in the rehabilitation and improvement of distressed urban centers. In fact, corporations could be further incentivized by slashing the tax rates even more if companies agree to either relocate some of the business units into the new zones or, if they cannot relocate, pay into a managed fund that would be used specifically in the zones.

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ON TERROR IN MELBOURNE AND THE MEDIA : ROGER FRANKLIN

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

Ten days ago, a lunatic drove a stolen car through Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, killing five people and grievously injuring many more. You might have read about the incident or perhaps saw footage on the telly, and no doubt found the carnage quite distressing. Well, rest easy, fret no more. The experts say such concern is misplaced, that you are prey to an irrational emotionalism and, really, all things considered, you would do well to set aside any interest in seeing reform of the court system, which days earlier granted the alleged killer’s bail request and turned him loose to do his worst.

They aren’t actually saying that, of course, not in as many words and not about that particular episode. The blood in Melbourne’s CBD is still too fresh, bystanders’ phone-camera pictures of shattered prams and a dying infant too vivid in memory for the rationalisations to begin in earnest. But that’s their logic all the same, applied in the interim to terrorism of the more conventional kind. Terrorists, as the New York Times informs us in regard to Donald Trump’s latest executive order (emphasis added), needs to be regarded with a nuanced eye

… 123 people have been killed in the United States by Muslim terrorists since the 2001 attacks — out of a total of more than 230,000 killings, by gang members, drug dealers, angry spouses, white supremacists, psychopaths, drunks and people of every description. So the order addresses, at most, 1/1,870th of the problem of lethal violence in the United States. If the toll of 9/11 is included, jihadis still account for just more than 1 percent of killings.

See, nothing to worry about whatsoever, not from the more ardent sons of Allah nor, by extension of the above logic, from ice-addled madmen racing down footpaths at 100kph. Some 300-odd Victorians died on the state’s roads in 2016, so those recent five deaths must be viewed, as the NYT might put it, as an insignificant dollop — “just more than 0ne percent” — of snuffed-out lives.

One percent? It’s no more than shrinkage, really, just a few random and statistically irrelevant souls denied the opportunity to fulfill actuarial expectations. So why worry about it? Why get upset when the courts indulge perils to public safety and allow them to slide back into the driver’s seat? And by the same token, why bother to note Islam’s affinity for bloody mayhem when it is so much more fun to perform a little mathematical sleight of hand and denounce Donald Trump for restricting the access to his homeland of those hailing from hotbeds of Islamist sentiment? If you start counting the jihadis’ victims only from September 12, 2001, as does the NYT, it gets even better. Why, they haven’t killed hardly anyone at all!

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Tony Thomas: Reporting Islam in the Approved Way

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

When I get ‘mindful’ about Islam, as urged by a think-tank at Griffith University, I recall the fire in a Mecca girls’ school that saw religious police force children back into the flames because they were deemed insufficiently modest to warrant rescue.
With help from lslamic community leaders, the Reporting Islam think-tank at Queensland’s Griffith University re-educates journalists nationally to report Islamic issues “more mindfully” (whatever that means). It’s not as though the ABC, SBS and Fairfax need any encouragement.

The unit, billed as a world-first flagship in terms of educating journos about Islam, got at least $445,000 grants for 2014-16 from the Attorney-General’s department in the Abbott government era. The AG’s top-level contractor for service delivery is the Queensland Police Force. Predictably, the unit won a Multicultural Award from the Queensland Government and SBS last year.

Like most of our universities, Griffith swarms with Islam-friendly academics (except, maybe, in the LBGTI etc safe spaces). Griffith University’s funding has also included $100,000 direct from Saudi Arabia, that bastion of academic freedom and respect for women, gays and Christians. This $100,000 a decade ago went to Griffith’s Islamic Research Unit (GIRU). Graham Perrett, Labor MHR for Moreton and a Griffith U fan, told Parliament, not altogether re-assuringly, that “Griffith University is just one of many institutions throughout the world to receive funding from the Saudi government.”

When I get “mindful” about Islam, as urged by Reporting Islam, I recall the episode in 2002 when a girls’ school in Mecca caught fire. The religious police, instead of helping the young girls to escape, locked them in or forced them back into the blaze. Why? Because the girls weren’t in proper Islamic dress; were not necessarily escorted by male guardians; and might create sexual frissons with the firemen. Fifteen girls burned to death.[1] Saudi’s public beheadings and all that? Watch if you dare. GRAPHIC material

However, nothing the Saudis get up to is as horrific as the deeds of the self-described Islamic State, which are nothing to do with Islam. There was an (STRONG CAUTION: GRAPHIC MATERIAL) ISIS video published a month ago showing a prisoner hog-tied to playground equipment. A boy of about six years is given a large knife and saws the live prisoner’s head half off.[2]

Close to home, nothing-to-do-with-Islam incidents have included

In 2006 Shaykh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, Mufti (or Grand Mufti) of Australia, gave a sermon in Arabic to a 500-strong crowd in the Lakemba Mosque describing immodestly-dressed women as ‘cat’s meat’ inciting rapists. [3] Hilaly also quoted approvingly an Islamic scholar who said women who were raped should be arrested and jailed for life for provoking males. Hilaly, who was appointed Mufti by the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils in 1988, had a subsequent history of anti-Semitic and pro-terrorist statements.
Melbourne Muslim cleric and terror cell leader Abdul Benbrika was convicted in 2008 of leading a terrorist network which wanted to blow up the 2005 MCG Grand Final crowd and blow up Crown casino on Grand Prix weekend.
The late Farhad Jabar, 15, in 2015 was allegedly handed the gun which he used to kill Parramatta police worker Curtis Cheng, in the female section of the Parramatta mosque. Jabar shortly before had listened to a sermon in the mosque from extremist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Four men are under arrest in Melbourne for allegedly planning a Christmas Day attack on St Paul’s Cathedral, Flinders Street Station, and Federation Square.

These sorts of things make it hard for earnest reporters to keep up the positive spin on Islam. But Griffith’s Reporting Islam unit will be their coach, with the backing of the journos’ union, the MEAA. Key people on the team include leader Associate Professor Jacqui Ewart, and Professor Mark Pearson, a one-time reporter for The Australian.[4] They are supported by manager Dr Abdi Hersi, and other Muslim researchers and trainers.

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U.K.’s Theresa May Says Invitation to Trump Still Stands Prime minister faces pressure over efforts to strengthen U.S. ties By Nicholas Winning

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

LONDON—Prime Minister Theresa May, whose office heralded a meeting last week with President Donald Trump as a diplomatic success, is facing pressure at home over her efforts to strengthen ties with the new U.S. administration.

On Monday, Mrs. May said an offer to Mr. Trump for a state visit still stands, despite a petition signed by 1.3 million people calling for its cancellation in the wake of his restrictions on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Hundreds of people later protested Mr. Trump’s clampdown outside Mrs. May’s official Downing Street residence.

“The United States is a close ally of the United Kingdom,” Mrs. May said during a visit to Ireland where she stood by the invitation. “We work together across many areas of mutual interest and we have that special relationship between us.”

The British leader has stood out as the most prominent in Europe to reach out to the U.S. leader, as she seeks new trade opportunities in advance of the U.K.’s exit from the European Union. She has been cheered by supporters who say she is doing what is best for Britain, but opponents have criticized her as cozying up to a leader they see as unsavory.

Mrs. May initially declined to condemn Mr. Trump’s executive order, which was announced Friday just hours after she became the first foreign leader to hold talks with the president in the White House. Her office later said it disagreed with the ban. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Iran Missile Launch Detected, a Possible Violation of U.N. Resolution Israel, U.S. senators quickly demanded new U.N. sanctions in response By Jay Solomon

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

WASHINGTON—Iran staged a missile test launch, U.S. officials said Monday, posing a possible violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and an early challenge to the Trump administration’s campaign pledge to confront Tehran.

U.S. defense officials, who confirmed the test, declined to identify its specific date, location or range. But Israel’s government and U.S. senators demanded Monday that the U.N. impose new financial sanctions on Iran in response.

Iran’s government is believed to have conducted nearly a dozen ballistic-missile tests since a landmark nuclear agreement between world powers and Tehran was implemented a year ago. Although the estimated timing was indefinite, U.S. officials suggested the latest test happened over the weekend.

“Iran again defied #UNSC resolutions with missiles tests,” Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., Danny Danon, said in a Twitter message on Monday. “The international community again [must not] bury its head in the sand in the face of Iranian aggression.”

The White House and State Department said they were investigating the alleged Iranian launch and gauging whether it violated international law.

The U.N.’s language prohibiting Tehran from developing ballistic missiles was softened under the nuclear deal, which was completed in mid-2015. The U.N. resolution now says the Security Council is against Iran developing missiles, but no longer explicitly bans it.

“We’re aware of reports that Iran conducted a medium-range ballistic missile test in recent days,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. “We are, however, well aware of and deeply troubled by Iran’s longstanding provocative and irresponsible activities and we call on Iran to cease such provocations.”

A diplomat at Iran’s mission to the U.N. declined to comment on Monday.

President Donald Trump was a sharp critic of the Iran nuclear deal during last year’s campaign and has suggested he may seek to renegotiate its terms. Many of his top national-security aides, including Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, have said they would seek to aggressively constrain Iran’s military operations in the Persian Gulf and in such countries as Syria and Iraq.

Trump administration officials have played down the possibility of unilaterally scrapping the nuclear deal. But Republicans in Congress have been drafting new sanctions against Iran, particularly targeting its elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Obama’s Refugee Legacy It took all of 10 days for the great moralist to criticize his successor.

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

If you had 11 days and the “over,” you lost. We’re referring to the bet on how long it would take Barack Obama to criticize his presidential successor. For the record our wager was 30 days, but then we always expected more from the former President than he delivered.

Mr. Obama couldn’t even wait until he finished his post-inaugural vacation before he had a spokesman issue a statement Monday afternoon reporting that the former President “is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country” against President Trump’s refugee order.

“Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,” added spokesman Kevin Lewis. “With regard to comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, as we’ve heard before, the President fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion.”

No one doubts that, but then Syrian refugees became a global crisis in large part because Mr. Obama did almost nothing for five years as President to stop the civil war, much less help refugees. Here are the number of Syrians his Administration admitted: fiscal year 2011, 29; 2012, 31; 2013: 36; 2014, 105; 2015, 1,682. Only in 2016 did he increase the target to 13,000, though actual admissions haven’t been disclosed. Mr. Obama also barely lifted a hand to help resettle translators who worked with GIs in Iraq or Afghanistan.

We oppose Mr. Trump’s refugee order, but it takes a special kind of gall for Mr. Obama and his advisers like Susan Rice to lecture anyone about “American values” and refugees from chaos in the Middle East.

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Trump Dams the Regulatory Flood His executive order should change the bureaucratic incentives. *****

Posted By on January 31st, 2017

The Trump Administration is already a jumble of economic contradictions, but the “great” side of the ledger got an important new entry on Monday. President Trump signed an executive order adopting a “two-for-one” regulatory budget that will help accelerate growth and innovation.

The Obama years were a boom era for rule-making, but the truth is that obsolete and onerous rules have been accumulating for decades. In a working paper for George Mason’s Mercatus Center, Bentley Coffey,Patrick McLaughlin and Pietro Peretto estimate that the economy would be about 25% larger if the level of U.S. regulation had stayed constant since 1980. That’s now more than $4 trillion a year, or $13,000 per person.

The Trump order aims to prevent such waste by requiring the agencies to repeal two old rules for every new one they publish. This is in some sense a gimmick, since some regulations are far more significant, costly or distorting of investment choices than others. But the text of the order suggests that for every dollar of new cost imposed on the private economy, each agency will have to find two dollars of burden to relieve.

Democrats are freaking out about poisonous milk and killer toys, though many civilized countries use such budgets to manage the regulatory state and stay competitive. Canada requires every rule that creates another hour of paperwork for business compliance to be offset one for one. The United Kingdom and Australia have harder versions that require the costs of new rules to be offset by deregulation of comparable net value.

The permanent bureaucracy lives to justify its own existence, regardless of which party holds the White House, and rules inevitably beget more rules. Mr. Trump’s order starts to change the institutional incentives.

Under a two-for-one policy, each individual department will need to scrutinize its own books in search of offsets and rules needing modernization, which will make deregulation as high a priority as rule-making. The Environmental Protection Agency can’t poach savings uncovered at, say, the Fish and Wildlife Service. This could lead to more realistic cost-benefit tests, focus the bureaucracy on trade-offs and strengthen regulatory accountability.