Exposé: How Saudis influence our children’s education

jta staff report

Students and teachers in public schools across America are using pro-Islamic materials that are anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish.

A yearlong JTA investigation reveals that programs funded in part by Saudi Arabia are making their way into elementary and secondary school classrooms.

And experts say some publications — one of which was created in Berkeley — are playing fast and loose with facts. Those materials bandy biased claims and promote Islam while criticizing Judaism and Christianity.

The experts also found many of the major history textbooks used in schools across the country are highly critical of democratic institutions and forgiving of repressive ones.

For example, in the “Arab World Studies Notebook,” students are led to believe that Jerusalem is an Arab city; Jews control American foreign policy when need be; and the Koran is superior to other religious texts.

Most taxpayers don’t know they’re often paying — at the federal, state and local levels — for public schools to advance those materials.

JTA found Saudi influence penetrates the classrooms in three different ways: teacher-training seminars, supplementary teaching materials and school textbooks.

And some of that is happening with the assistance of federal funds and with the imprimatur of prominent universities.

So, how did the Saudis, in effect, get their hands on American classrooms?

They are funding pro-Islamic educational organizations. And prominent universities, in turn, are welcoming those groups onto their campuses through Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which has become a backdoor to the front of the class.

Title VI, currently up for congressional renewal, was initially enacted during the Cold War in part to meet the nation’s security needs. Under the law, select universities receive federal funding and prestigious designation as National Resource Centers.

Eighteen of those centers are for Middle East studies; each receives an average of about $500,000 per year. The taxpayer-supported grants are worth at least 10 times that amount in their ability to attract outside funding, proponents of the law say. But opponents say the centers readily attract and accept Saudi-funded educators with political agendas.

As part of its federal mandate, each center assigns an outreach coordinator to extend its expertise to students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Outreach usually includes workshops, guest speakers, books, pamphlets and whole syllabi and curricula.

While some school district officials are completely unaware of the material reaching their teachers and classrooms, others welcome it. Believing they’re importing the wisdom of places like Harvard or Georgetown, they are inviting into their schools lessons developed with the support of Riyadh.

The “Arab World Studies Notebook” is one such example. Billed by its creators as an important tool to correct misperceptions about Islam and the Arab world, the manual has been blasted for distorting history and propagating misstatements. Critics say some of the misstatements are subtle, making them all the more harmful. For example, the manual:

• Denigrates the Jews’ historical connection to Jerusalem. One passage says “the Jerusalem that most people envisage, when they think of the ancient city, is Arab. Surrounding it are ubiquitous high-rises built for Israeli settlers to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city.”

• Suggests that Jews have undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. Referring to Harry Truman’s support of the 1947 United Nations resolution to partition Palestine, it says: “The questions of Jewish lobbying and its impact on Truman’s decision with regard to American recognition — and indeed, the whole question of defining American interests and concerns — is well worth exploring.”

• Suggests that the Koran “synthesizes and perfects earlier revelations” in Jewish and Christian texts.

• Leaves out any facts and figures about Israel in its country-by-country section, but refers instead only to Palestine.

First published in 1990 as the “Arab World Notebook,” the manual was updated to its current form in 1998. It was created as the joint project of Berkeley’s Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR) and the Middle East Policy Council of Washington. Both receive Saudi funding.

The editor of the manual is Audrey Shabbas, who founded AWAIR in 1990 and receives funding from Saudi Aramco, a Saudi government-owned oil company.

Shabbas said the goal of the manual is “to establish a basis for understanding the Middle East” by examining the largest of the groups that live there — the Arabs.

Responding to criticism specifically about the effect of Jewish lobbying, she said everything in the manual comes from the Arab and Muslim point of view: “The notebook is what it is. If you go out anywhere in the Arab world, you’re likely to hear that view.”

In contrast, “most textbooks merely tell people the U.N. voted for partition and the Arabs rejected it,” she added, noting that American students need to “delve into why people do what they do.”

Shabbas also said that the manual directs students to solicit other perspectives from various groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee.

Sandra Stotsky, a former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education, is one of a growing number of critics of the “Arab World Studies Notebook.” It is one of the examples she cites in a study, “The Stealth Curriculum: Manipulating America’s History Teachers,” in which she examines supplemental teaching materials.

The problem with many of the supplemental materials, which are most often distributed through workshops, “is the ideological mission of the organizations that create them,” she said in her study, published last year by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a Washington-based think tank on education.

“They embed their political agendas in the instructional materials they create so subtly that apolitical teachers are unlikely to spot them.”

The American Jewish Committee issued a scathing report on the manual earlier this year. That report said the material, while “attempting to redress a perceived deficit in sympathetic views of the Arabs and Muslim religion in the American classroom, veers in the opposite direction — toward historical distortion as well as uncritical praise, whitewashing and practically proselytizing.”

The result, the AJCommittee report added, “is a text that appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic views of the manual’s sponsors … to an audience of teachers who may not have the resources and knowledge to assess this text critically.”

The AJCommittee took the unusual step of issuing a public warning “urging school districts across the nation” not to use the manual.

Still, Shabbas and her publication are welcomed by outreach coordinators to some of the nation’s key National Resource Centers, including those at Georgetown, Harvard and Yale.

The Middle East Policy Council of Washington helps print and disseminate the 500-page manual of essays, lesson plans and primary sources. It lists the manual as the primary resource material for its teacher-training program.

According to the group’s Web site, more than 16,000 educators have attended its workshops in 175 cities in 43 states. The manual itself claims to have reached 25 million students in a five-year period.

The council, which is headed by Charles Freeman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, gets direct funding from the Saudis.

Jon Roth, the council’s acting director, declined to specify how much money his group gets from Riyadh, but made clear that he is seeking much more.

In September, Roth visited Saudi Arabia to meet with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud, a member of the royal family who owns Kingdom Holding Company, one of the world’s wealthiest companies. (Fortune magazine recently estimated that Prince Alwaleed, who requested the meeting with Roth, has a net worth of $20 billion, making him the richest businessman in the Muslim world.)

“Our hope and expectation is millions” from the Saudi prince, said Roth, noting that his group operates on an annual budget of $750,000.

The council’s board of directors includes executives from companies with huge financial stakes in Saudi Arabia, including Boeing, ExxonMobil Saudi Arabia, the Carlyle Group and the Saudi Binladin Group.

Roth said that funding to the organization “has no strings attached,” and that the council does not take a policy position concerning Israel.

Many of the principal players involved in disseminating pro-Islamic, anti-American and anti-Israeli materials to the public school system have links, direct or indirect, to a little-known 1,600-acre compound in the remote mountainous desert of northern New Mexico called Dar al Islam.

Dar al Islam, which means “abode of Islam” in Arabic, is an Islamic enclave registered as a nonprofit since 1979.

It was created with direct financing from the late Saudi monarch, King Khaled ibn Aziz, and from five princesses in the Royal House of Saud, according to Saudi Aramco World.

The enclave’s Web site indicates that the original intent was to establish a “Muslim village as a showcase for Islam in America.” When that became too difficult, the vision changed to an educational conference and retreat center.

In addition to the mosque, the enclave has a religious school, summer camp and teacher-training institute.

Dar al Islam spokesman Abdur Ra’uf Walter Declerck acknowledged some minor participation by a Saudi princess in helping to create Dar al Islam, but he disputes most of the group’s funding history as recounted in the Saudi Aramco World article.

“It was not purchased by the royal family,” he said. Funding then and now “comes from Muslims all over,” he said without elaboration.

Some watchdogs say Saudi Arabia’s goal is to export the most rigid brand of Islam: Wahhabi Islam.

It’s an agenda “more dangerous than communism” ever was because it targets all non-believers, including Christians, Jews and most Muslims, according to Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, a Washington-based pro-democracy think tank.

Such apostates have only three choices, he said: “Convert, be subjugated or die.”

The Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to several requests for comment.

Declerck of Dar al Islam said the kind of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia is “not what we transmit. Dar al Islam communicates much more of a mainstream Islam.”

But Al-Ahmed was adamant. In American public schools, he said, the Saudis are carrying out “a deliberate program to spread their version of Islam everywhere.

“Their job is to give money to certain groups of Islamic organizations, to fund certain people, and those people they fund are people who they believe will further their goal of spreading Wahabi Islam.”

Many individuals and groups involved in promoting education about Islam and the Arab world in American schools have ties to Dar al Islam. Some are educators such as Shabbas, whose work is promoted by outreach coordinators at the National Resource Centers, and some are outreach coordinators themselves.

Shabbas was director of Dar al Islam’s summer teacher-training program in 1994 and 1995, according to Declerck.

Others with connections to Dar al Islam include:

• Zeina Azzam Seikaly, outreach coordinator at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, a Title VI National Resource Center on the Middle East. For several years she was assistant director of Dar al Islam’s teacher-training institute, the Teachers Institute, according to Dar al Islam’s Declerck.

Seikaly promotes many associates of Dar al Islam, printing their writings and inviting them to lecture. Asked about Dar al Islam, she at first refused to discuss it, then admitted working there, but said it was only for two weeks.

• The Council on Islamic Education. The group until recently was listed as an associate of Dar al Islam, under the heading of secondary schools. Independent textbook review organizations describe the council as one of the most powerful groups in the country influencing the content of textbooks. Critics say that in its effort to promote a positive view of Islam, it distorts history.

The group’s director, Shabbir Mansuri, says his organization is a “non-advocacy research organization.”

Criticism that his group exerts undue influence on textbook publishers “comes from people who have no idea what we do,” he said.

“The Constitution allows us all a place at the table without leaving our heritage at the door,” he said. “I can lobby, I can demand and I can contribute.”

• Susan Douglass. An associate of Dar al Islam’s Teachers Institute, she also is the curriculum specialist for the Council on Islamic Education.

She is a former teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy of Virginia, a Saudi government-supported school, and she consults on textbooks and curriculum by major publishers. She has written a series of books on Islam for K-6 students at Islamic and public schools.

Saudi influence

Related Stories:

California on the frontlines of textbook battles

Education law on the block?

Quotations

Quotations

What Muslims Have Said:

Thus the jihad may be regarded as Islam’s instrument for carrying out its ultimate objective by turning all people into believers, if not in the prophethood of Muhammad (as in the case of the dhimmis), at least in the belief of God. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have declared “some of my people will continue to fight victoriously for the sake of the truth until the last one of them will combat the anti-Christ.” Until that moment is reached the jihad, in one form or another will remain as a permanent obligation upon the entire Muslim community. It follows that the existence of a dar al-harb is ultimately outlawed under the Islamic jural order; that the dar al-Islam permanently under jihad obligation until the dar al-harb is reduced to non-existence; and that any community accepting certain disabilities- must submit to Islamic rule and reside in the dar al-Islam or be bound as clients to the Muslim community. The universality of Islam, in its all embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political if not strictly military.
-Majid Khadurri, Muslim scholar, in War and Peace in the Law of Islam, 1955

Acquiring nuclear weapons for the defense of Moslems is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank Allah for enabling me to do so.
-Osama bin Laden, in an 1998 interview with Time magazine

We have the right to kill 4 million Americans, two million of them children.
-Abu Gheith, Al-Qaeda spokesman

If a bomb was dropped on them that would annihilate 10 million and burn their lands…this is permissible.
-Sheikh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd, prominent Saudi cleric close to Al-Qaeda

The real matter is the extinction of America. And, Allah willing, it will fall to the ground…keep in mind this prediction.
-Mullah Omar, Taliban leader and ally of Osama bin Laden

Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam--begging to have their blood shed for Islam.
-Ayatollah Khomeini

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.
-Omar Ahmad, Co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education.
-Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR Spokesperson

We must reject democracy in favor of Islam, which is the unique perfect system worked out by Allah. . .Our march has just begun and Islam will end up conquering Europe and America. . . And let no one think that we are Utopian dreamers.
-Sheikh Saeed Shaaban, quoted in L'Orient le jour, Beirut, 19 October 1983

The Koran pushes us in the exact opposite direction to the forces at work in the American political spectrum.
-Imam Zaid Shakir, former Muslim chaplain and political science professor, Yale University

Islam is not Christianity...Islam is the religion of agitation, revolution, blood, liberation and martyrdom.
-Sheikh Morteza Motahari, quoted in "Islamic Movements in the Last One Hundred Years," Tehran, 1979

You shall begin to live once you have killed yourself. The "you" in you is none other than Satan in disguise. Kill him and you will be saved. Muslims are lucky because they can accomplish this self annihilation in accordance with divine rules. For Islam has an answer to every imagnable question. All an individual needs to do is to obey the rules without posing questions, without seeking variations.
-Sheikh Ragheb Harb, "Islam is the Strongest Religion," 1983, p.22

A believer...who takes up a gun, a dagger, a kitchen knife or even a pebble with which to harm and kill the enemies of the Faith has his place assured in Heaven. An Islamic state is the sum total of such individual believers. An Islamic state is a state of war until the whole world sees and accepts the light of the True Faith.
-Ayatollah Fazl-Allah Mahalati, "On the Path of Justice," Tehran, 1980, pp. 70-71

If we...allow our rulers to be chosen by the ordinary people from among ordinary politicans, we will not have to wait long before we see the end of Islam.
-Ayatollah Komeini

People say, "Don't lie!" But the principle is different when we serve the will of Allah. He taught Man to lie so that we can save ourselves at moments of difficulty and confuse our enemies... People say, "Don't kill!" But the Almighty Himself taught us how to kill...So shall we not kill when it is necessary for the triumph of the Faith? ... Deceit, trickery, conspiracy, cheating, stealing and killing are nothing but means.
-Muhammad Navab-Safavi, key figure in the fundamentalist movement, "Islamic Society and Government," Tehran, 1946; second edition, 1985.

"We are not fighting to chase out the occupiers or save national unity and keep the borders defined by the infidels intact, we are fighting because it is a religious duty to do it, just as it is a religious duty to take sharia to the government and create an Islamic state." -spokesman for al-Qaeda, Baghdad, October 18, 2005

"One must beware of the Jews, for they are treacherous and disloyal."
-Islamic Education for Ninth Grade p. 79

"I learn from this lesson: I believe that the Jews are the enemies of the Prophets and the believers."
-Islamic Education, Part Two, for Fourth Grade p. 67

"Remember: The final and inevitable result will be the victory of the Muslims over the Jews."
-Our Arabic Language for Fifth Grade p. 67

(The quotes above are from Palestinian school texts published under the symbol of their Ministry of Education, but authored in Jordon. All the books cited here were written during the most optimistic periods of the peace process, before the violence of September 2000 had begun.)

"Shake the earth, raise the stones.
You will not be saved, Oh Zionist, from the volcano of my country's stones,
You will not be saved, Oh Zionist, from the volcano of my country's stones,
You are the target of my eyes, I will even willingly fall as a shahid (martyr for Allah).
You are the target of my eyes, I will even willingly fall as a shahid.
Allah akbar, Oh the young ones."
-The words above are from a music video which had not been broadcast on Palestinian TV after being shown in a U.S. Senate hearing in 2003. However, by October 2004, it had reappeared, and was played at least ten times between October 4 and October 17 of that year. The words are sung by a woman wearing an army uniform, with scenes of children dancing alternating with scenes of children participating in violent acts in combat zones. For the full article, go here.

Any land, any piece of land, over which flies the banner of 'There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger,' and which at a certain point belonged to the Muslims – as far as we are concerned, plundering and occupying such land is forbidden, and it is the duty of all Muslims to do what they can to liberate this land, wherever it may be. True, many precious Muslim lands are under occupation today. They have been forgotten, and Andalusia is one example. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the Muslims to liberate them....
-Sheikh Muhammad Ali, Palestinian Clerics Association Deputy Director, on August 19, 2005. Link here.

The 21st century will be the century of Islam. -Ayatollah Janati, cleric in Iranian government, quoted many times.

"The rayah is like the grass; Mow it as much as you will, still it springs up anew. Once you'd broken Bosnia's horns, you mowed down what would not be pruned, leaving only the riffraff behind so there'd be someone left to serve us and grieve before the cross."

--Muslim proverb from the time of the Ottoman Empire; "rayah" means "herd," and was a term used to describe the Christians.

What Infidels Have Said:

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprize, every expanded prospect.
- James Madison in an April 1, 1774 letter to William Bradford

[Muhammad] declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind…The precept of the Koran is, perpetual war against all who deny, that Mahomet is the prophet of God....

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the perpetual energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it the audacious falsehood that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain by degrading the condition of the female sex and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared and undistinguishing and exterminating war, as part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust: to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature... between these two religions, thus contrasted their characters, a war of 1200 years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant... while the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will toward men.
-John Q. Adams

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
-Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899), commenting on what he witnessed as a correspondent in the Sudan.

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.
-Theodore Roosevelt, from a letter he wrote to the president of the American Defense Society on January 3, 1919, three days before Roosevelt died

"Islam is a religion of peace". This is what our politically correct politicians keep telling us. But what is politically correct is not necessarily correct. The truth is that Islam is not a religion of peace. It is a religion of hate, of terror and of war.
-Ali Sina (more from Ali Sina here)

The reason I am against Islam is not because it is a religion but because it is a political ideology of imperialism and domination in the guise of religion.
Because Islam does not follow the Golden Rule, it attracts violent people.
-Ali Sina

At some point our collective heads will come up out of the sand, probably by the force of an explosion; and we'll stand, mouths agape like so many fish out of water, trying to comprehend a situation we've done our best to ignore.
-Anonymous, 2005

Check out what other Muslim apostates have said here.

Scroll down or check the right sidebar to learn what you can do to counter the whitewash of Islam.

What You Can Do

1. Print business cards which contain a web link or two. Leave those cards in public places, such as bus stops, restaurants, malls, grocery stores, etc. (Scroll down or check the right sidebar for "Sample Business Card.")

2. Contact your public library system. Donate books which tell the unvarnished truth about Islam. Donations are tax deductible!

3. Contact your alma mater to see if you can place books in the institution's library. If you are a member of an alumni association, you might already have an "in" to place materials.

4. Contact private schools in your area to see about the feasability of placing materials.

5. Review the social studies textbooks used in your school district. If you find errors about Islam in those books, contact the curriculum specialist in your school district, and, using reference materials which tell the truth, specify the errors.

6. Check with your school district to see if textbook changes are in the works. If so, as a resident of that district, you have the right to review the textbooks. Contact the curriculum specialist if you find the books are whitewashing Islam.

7. If you are affiliated with a church, be on the alert for whitewash of Islam. Speak up if your spiritual leader is uneducated as to the truth about Islam.

8. Contact your political representatives and disabuse them of the politically-correct whitewash of Islam. Keep contacting your political representatives.

Above all, don't keep quiet about what you've learned!

http://thetruthproject.blogspot.com/

Saudi Arabia Is After Our Children

Stanley Kurtz has an excellent article on the very disturbing infiltration of Saudi ideology into America’s educational system: Saudi in the Classroom.

Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we’re going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I’m talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America’s K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East. While we’ve had only limited success paring back education for Islamist fundamentalism abroad, the Saudis have taken a surprising degree of control over America’s Middle-East studies curriculum at home.

How did they do it? Very carefully...and very cleverly. It turns out that the system of federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) has been serving as a kind of Trojan horse for Saudi influence over American K-12 education. Federally subsidized Middle East Studies centers are required to pursue public outreach. That entails designing lesson plans and seminars on the Middle East for America’s K-12 teachers. These university-distributed teaching aids slip into the K-12 curriculum without being subject to the normal public vetting processes. Meanwhile, the federal government, which both subsidizes and lends its stamp of approval to these special K-12 course materials on the Middle East, has effectively abandoned oversight of the program that purveys them (Title VI).

Enter the Saudis. By lavishly funding several organizations that design Saudi-friendly English-language K-12 curricula, all that remains is to convince the “outreach coordinators” at prestigious, federally subsidized universities to purvey these materials to America’s teachers. And wouldn’t you know it, outreach coordinators or teacher-trainers at a number of university Middle East Studies centers have themselves been trained by the very same Saudi-funded foundations that design K-12 course materials. These Saudi-friendly folks happily build their outreach efforts around Saudi-financed K-12 curricula.

So let’s review. The United States government gives money — and a federal seal of approval — to a university Middle East Studies center. That center offers a government-approved K-12 Middle East studies curriculum to America’s teachers. But in fact, that curriculum has been bought and paid for by the Saudis, who may even have trained the personnel who operate the university’s outreach program. Meanwhile, the American government is asleep at the wheel — paying scant attention to how its federally mandated public outreach programs actually work. So without ever realizing it, America’s taxpayers end up subsidizing — and providing official federal approval for — K-12 educational materials on the Middle East that have been created under Saudi auspices. Game, set, match: Saudis.

This article explains and illuminates a story we covered last June, when a school in New Hampshire held an “open tent” night for 7th graders, complete with male-female segregation and repressive clothes for the girls, inspired by a free trip to Saudi Arabia for their teacher: New Hampshire Dhimmitude Update: Aramco Sponsoring Teacher Trips to Saudi Arabia.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The Islamic Jihad in Darfur and why the World won't stop it

All those Hollywood schmucks that jumped on the Darfur train, never got it. Never asked the question. Photo op.

Darfur and Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism
Fitzgerald Jihadwatch hat tip eretz

In the case of the complicity of the Arabs outside Sudan -- who have cleverly disguised their support for that regime, their efforts to hinder and delay (very successfully) actions that might have been taken by the U.N. against Sudan during its twenty-year campaign of mass-murder in the southern Sudan, or its several-year-long campaign in Darfur -- the explanation is simple: Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism. Islam is the national religion of the Arabs, evolving initially out of pagan Arab lore, and a mishmash of appropriated, and much distorted, figures and stories taken from Judaism and Christianity. The final result was a "faith" that could be used to both justify and promote the conquest, by comparatively primitive Arabs, of much larger numbers of non-Arabs, chiefly Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians. A non-Arab Muslim, until recently and still ideally, reads the Qur'an only in Arabic. Non-Arab Muslim children memorize as much of it as possible -- in Arabic. Non-Arab Muslims take as their model a group of seventh-century Arabs and above all, Muhammad, the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil. The Sunna itself consists essentially of the ways, the customs and manners, of seventh-century Arabs. Muslims turn Meccatropically five times a day for the canonical prayers; they perform hajj to Mecca; Arabia is the center of their being. It is as if all those who were part of the British Empire, five times a day, turned and prostrated themselves toward London. It is as if every Indian, every black African in a British colony, took an English name, and took some Englishman (possibly someone a bit more modern than a woad-painted Pict from 700 A.D.) as a putative ancestor.
Islam is the source of, the promoter and vehicle of, this Arab supremacism. Arab supremacism can be of the linguistic and cultural kind, that attempts to ban the Berber language, or to convince Maronites and Copts, not always unsuccessfully, that because they are "users of Arabic" that makes them "Arabs." Or it can be of the murdering kind that simply wishes to eliminate non-Arabs if they happen to possess something -- oil, as in the Kurdish lands and in the southern Sudan, and possibly now water: that vast underground lake discovered by American researchers. Those researchers naively have said that if the waters were to be used for irrigation, this "might solve" the Darfur crisis. Yet if anything, it will only make Darfur that much more desirable to the Arabs, and their insensate desire to remove all the black Africans -- through murder -- that much greater.

Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism

Posted by Pamela Geller on Tuesday, July 24, 2007 at

Atlas Shrugs

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Peace?: Religion of Sudden Jihad Syndrome Strikes Again

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By Debbie Schlussel

Time for another edition of "Guess the Religion." I post the story, and you guess the religion. As in most cases, it's very difficult to figure out the theology involved. Per usual, they are blaming it on the person of a certain religion's "mental illness":

Atlanta Shooting Leaves 4 Dead, Including Gunman, 2 Injured

A man neighbors described as a retired factory worker shot three people to death and wounded two others before killing himself in a southwest Atlanta home Monday, authorities said.

All of the victims were believed to be related, Atlanta police spokesman Eric Schwartz said.

Police identified the gunman as Abdulaziz Ibrahim, 52. Officers also found the bodies of Hana Yusuf, 26, and Luna Tesfaye, 24, Schwartz said. Another victim, Mohammad Ibrahim, 28, died at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Three-year-old Amir Abdulhakim was in critical condition at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, and Yusef Ibrahim, 27, was in stable condition at Grady, police said.

Police said they were interviewing both a teenage girl who was in the house during the shooting but was unharmed, and Abdulaziz Ibrahim's wife, who had left home shortly before the 7 a.m. shootings.

Atlanta Murder-Suicide Neighbor Charlene Weiters said the family moved into the house about 12 years ago from overseas. She said Abdulaziz Ibrahim was a retired manufacturing worker who occasionally gave the neighborhood children small toys and school supplies.

"We think he was sick, he must have been," she said between sobs. "He was so sweet, he was so sweet he wouldn't hurt anybody."

Weiters said she often saw him playing with his grandson in the yard. She said she believed Ibrahim lived in the home with his wife, three children, two nieces and two grandchildren.

July 24, 2007

Hiding Genocide in Kosovo

Old habits die hard: A yellow cross fixed by German NATO to the door of a Serbian house to show that Christians live there

NEW -- available now from The American Council for Kosovo: Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity by Iseult Henry. The Council says this about the book:

At a time when the Western powers -- foremost among them the United States -- prepare what they hope will be an endgame for their predetermined solution to the Serbian question, now comes a searing ray of truth that cuts through the fog of lies in which Kosovo has been shrouded. The work of “Iseult Henry,” the pen name of a current member of the international mission in Kosovo, Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity is not a typical book of the current events or international affairs genre. Nor is it a journalistic exposé. It is simply a book of stories, true stories of what has taken place in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 war: shooting, beheading, burning, bomb attack, maiming, rape, abduction, torture, desecration, theft, mutilation, and harassment. While Western policymakers (the U.S., EU, UN, NATO, OSCE, etc.) delude themselves that they are buying the goodwill of the Muslim world by the sacrifice of a small Christian community in Kosovo, the perpetrators know this is yet another step toward Islamic dominance of all Europe. This is a struggle for the soul and future not just for Kosovo, not just for Serbia, but for an entire continent.

"Our so-called adversary press, like the U.S. Government, has ignored the plight of Christians in Kosovo. Incredibly, the U.S. and the U.N. are destroying the sovereignty of Serbia in order to create a Muslim state in Europe. This book tells the story suppressed by our media that all Americans need to know." -- CLIFF KINCAID, editor, Accuracy in Media

"Finally, the truth is coming out about the Kosovo jihad and how it has been aided and abetted by NATO, the UN, and the EU. Thanks to Iseult Henry, maybe the shameful and ultimately suicidal support of the Kosovo jihadists by Western powers will finally be ended. -- ROBERT SPENCER, director, Jihad Watch; author of the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad

More information and ordering details in this pdf. http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017503.php

http://wwwislamreview.com/articles/loudspeaker.shtml

Loudspeaker call to Islamize America

By Nonie Darwish

The Islamist movement in the United States has no intention of expressing sensitivity to the majority Judeo-Christian culture of America. Even 9/11 has not slowed them down, but might even have given more fuel to their cherished dream of seeing America and its government Moslem.

The City Council of Hamtramck, Michigan, gave its preliminary approval to the Bangladeshi al-Islah mosque to carry the Arabic call to prayer five times a day through a loudspeaker. The Moslem call for prayer, in Arabic, says: “Allah is great. I confess that there is no God but Allah. I confess that Mohamed is his messenger. Call for prayer, call for prayer.” This is repeated for two minutes.

Devout Moslems already know when it is time to pray and in this day and age there are certainly other ways to call people for prayers that conforms to noise regulation and respects the wish of the general public not to hear loudspeakers 5 times a day praising a God that is different from theirs and in whose name the terrorists of 9/11 committed their atrocity. How far are we Arab/Moslem Americans going to keep pushing the envelope to test America’s patience? To whose benefit these loudspeakers are being installed? Could the loudspeakers be another sign of an audacious, in-your-face conquest of America to please those who finance these mosques?

Americans are the most tolerant people in the world and it seems that the more tolerant they become, the more they are taken advantage of. How far will our tolerant Judeo-Christian culture be pushed around? And how many times will Christians give the other cheek to prove they love those who despise them?

Arab/Moslem Americans should reciprocate the tolerance and sensitivity to the rest of America. They should not demand from America to tolerate unwelcome loudspeakers even if the politicians in the city council want to please the Arab population for their vote. Mosques in the US should know better because in most Moslem countries, Jewish synagogues and Christian churches are not even permitted to be built, much less promoted via public-address loudspeakers.

At a time when American youth are dying to stabilize Iraq and bring democracy to a Moslem country, the last thing I want to see as an Arab American is my fellow Americans upset at us for forcing Koran read to them through amplifiers.

Mosques all over the Middle East have used and abused loudspeakers to spread not only the call for prayers, but also Friday sermons. In many Arab capitals you can often hear a prayer to destroy the infidels (non-Moslems) and the Jews, the enemies of God, over loudspeakers that are often used as tools of incitement and indoctrination. People in congested and noisy Arab cities such as Cairo often hear 3 or 4 mosque loudspeakers simultaneously since there could be 4 or more mosques in one square mile. The dawn prayer can come as early as 5 am and many Moslems in the Middle East hate it, but are too afraid to say anything about it.

Why is America importing fear, oppression and insensitivity to the American general public? There is a fine line between tolerance and self destruction.

'I Was Kicking and Stamping on Her Neck to Get the Soul Out'

The practice of “honor killing” is sickening enough, but this horrifying story sets a new benchmark in depravity: Woman raped before honor killing: court.

LONDON (Reuters) - A Kurdish woman was brutally raped, stamped on and strangled by members of her family and their friends in an “honor killing” carried out at her London home because she had fallen in love with the wrong man.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, was subjected to the 2-1/2 hour ordeal before she was garroted with a bootlace. Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and taken about 100 miles to Birmingham where it was buried in the back garden of a house. Her badly decomposed body was found in April 2006, three months after the killing.

Last month a jury found her father Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother Ari Mahmod, 51, guilty of murder after a three-month trial. Their associate Mohamad Hama, 30, had earlier admitted killing her. On Thursday at a pre-sentence hearing for Hama, the Old Bailey heard details about Banaz’s last moments.

Prosecutors said the three convicted men, along with two other suspects who are still at large, had carried out the killing fearing that the authorities were closing in on them. They believed Banaz had brought shame on the family by leaving her husband, an Iraqi Kurd she had been forced to marry at 17, and falling in love with Rahmat Suleimani, an Iranian Kurd.

Her former unnamed partner had raped her as well as repeatedly beating her, the court heard.

Hama, who prosecutors said had been a ringleader in the murder, was caught by listening devices talking to a friend in prison about the murder.

In the recordings, transcripts of which were relayed to the court, Hama and his friend are hearing laughing as he described how she was killed with Banaz’s uncle “supervising”.

“I was kicking and stamping on her neck to get the soul out. I saw her stark naked, only wearing pants or underwear,” Hama is recorded as saying.

Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 5:54:01 pm PST

LGF

It's unconscionable that The Times has given editorial credibility to terrorists.

By Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper
July 22, 2007

Memo to Al Qaeda's Ayman Zawahiri: Forget the mule pack; give your video cam a rest. Our nation's leading media outlets are making an offer you can't refuse: If you can keep it to 1,250 words, the next time you want to communicate directly to the American people, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times want your byline.

Inconceivable? Consider Hamas' summer hot streak. Not only has it driven Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas out of Gaza, threatened Israeli civilians and bombarded fellow Palestinians, but it has scored the ultimate media trifecta. First, the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously ran Op-Ed articles by Ahmed Yousef, a senior leader of Hamas who defended his group's bloody putsch in Gaza. Now, the Los Angeles Times has opened its Op-Ed page to Hamas political bureau deputy Mousa Abu Marzook for his insidious take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Why should any Palestinian 'recognize' the monstrous crime carried out by Israel's founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state, while he or she lives 10 to a room in a cinder-block, tin-roof United Nations hut?" Marzook asked in his article in The Times earlier this month.

Of course, he knows very well why Palestinians are in the position they're in. It's because of the refusal of the Arabs to accept the 1947 U.N. resolution for a two-state solution in the Holy Land. The architects who laid the foundation for the U.N. refugee huts are the Arabs themselves. And why is that misery still continuing in the Palestinian territories today? Because of the delusional aspirations of their Islamic fundamentalist leaders who will not accept the rights of the Jewish people to any homeland in the Middle East. Had the Arab states then, or Hamas today, chosen peace, no Palestinian would be living in refugee camps and there would be no suicide belts.

In reaction to a firestorm of protest, the New York Times' public editor defended his newspaper's publication of Yousef's piece by stating that "the point of the Op-Ed page is advocacy" and that "if you get only one side, that's not debate," a view we're sure some editors at the Los Angeles Times share.

But how to explain the radical makeover from terrorist pariah to sought-after guest commentators in our national newspapers of record? Perhaps the editors at The Times and their colleagues back East think they are performing a service by accepting Op-Ed articles that allow people like Abu Marzook to speak unencumbered to the American people. What better way to prove to these radicals that the pen is mightier than the sword?

But this is a dangerously flawed and naive approach. Hamas, an offshoot and affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, is as committed to its vision of an Islamic state governed by Sharia law as Hitler was to his "1,000-year Reich." And the editors turn a blind eye to Hamas' founding charter, which invokes the infamous forgery "The Protocols of the Elders Of Zion." Also ignored is the reality that Israel is in a struggle with a group of religious fanatics who embrace a culture of death, preferring the next world to this one; whose ideology abhors compromise; and who surely view their newfound status in the U.S. media as a complete capitulation by a crucial segment of America's elite.

This is the issue before us -- should the nation's Op-Ed pages be thrown open to everyone? Are there no constraints or red lines? Whatever happened to the basic standards that civilized people are expected to live by? Like a belief in the reverence and sanctity of all human life; an abhorrence of violence toward others, especially innocents; the desire and ability to be reasonable and avoid extremes. Has Hamas suddenly embraced any of these values? Of course not. So why is The Times conferring a journalistic honoris causa degree on terrorists whose modus operandi is to deliberately target innocent civilians of all faiths on buses, in theaters and in shopping malls?

So what will the editors' answer be? That simply because Abu Marzook can turn a good phrase, mass murderers will from now on be entitled to their point of view?

Let's be clear: This issue is not about giving ink to Hamas' views. Their statements and actions deserve real-time coverage, just the way the statements and actions of Hitler and Stalin received coverage by the most prestigious newspapers in the world's most important democracy. But such people do not deserve the status of a sagely byline, because that destroys the distinction between honorable men and women bound by basic principles of humanity and the despots and terrorists eager to destroy those values.

If the criteria is simply because "it is an important story," then would the editors have welcomed articles by Auschwitz's Dr. Josef Mengele justifying his gruesome medical experiments, or by the Virginia Tech killer explaining why he committed mass murder? Of course, newspapers have the right and responsibility to inform their readers about dictators and purveyors of terror. But they don't have the right to bestow editorial credibility on those bent on genocide.

It is true that, just like Hitler, Hamas was democratically elected. But it is equally true that once it took power, like Hitler, it made it brutally clear that its god is the bullet, not the ballot.

So if terrorism doesn't do it for the editors, when will their moral outrage kick in? When the KKK or Nazi party submit their rants for consideration? On Sept. 12, 2001, it would have been an inconceivable question to ask, but not today. When will Osama bin Laden's guest column appear? What price "relevance"?

Rabbi Marvin Hier is dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center.

KNOW THY ENEMY

Islam "resistance is futile?"

This is what circulates among the Muslim community...just so you know
the rules of engagement....

How to Debate and Frustrate Infidels
by Ayesha Ahmed
Debate and Frustrate Infidels

12 Mar, 2007

Dear brothers and sisters in islam:

We live in kuffar country and daily we have to face the infidels who
criticize islam and our prophet, and who want to debate us. In an
Islamic country if some one did that all we have to do is to announce
loudly what he said and the rest is taken care of by an angry mob.
The critic is lynched in no time. End of the story. However here we
don't have that luxury as yet. Inshallah in forseeble future after we
grow by conversions of morons and criminals in prisons, legal and
illegal immigration and procreation we will, inshallah, become a
majority and will not have to face this problem on daily basis.

However, for the time being following is an approach all muslim
brothers and sisters can use when faced with such a pest. Jazakallah
Khair. Inshallah the vermin will steer clear of you in future.

1. A popular question is "why islam calls for death of Islamic
critics and apostates". Insist that their info is false. Quote
aya "to you your religion and to me my religion".

2. To answer "Islam spread with sword", say that it is a big lie
spread by the jews and hindus and that quran clearly says " there is
no compulsion in religion".

3. If some one quotes violent ayas from Koran, accuse him of quoting
ayas in bits and pieces and cherry picking .

4. If he then quotes full ayas and ayas before and after, than insist
that the translation is wrong.

5. If he brings ten different translations than say correct meanings
can be understood only by reading Quran in Arabic.

6. If he happens to be well versed in Arabic language than insist
that those ayas don't mean what they appear to mean as they have
allegorical meanings.

7. If he is adamant, than say you cannot understand those ayas and
it's context without reading hadith and sira.

8.. If he shows up with the hadiths and siras in hand and quotes the
context of the violent ayas by referring to hadiths of prophet's
rapes, robberies , assassinations and genocides then insist that "all
hadiths and siras are heresay and are false, and only truth is in
quran.

9. If he says Quran is a man made document and wants proof of it's
divinity then refer to the sciences in Quran and the book written by
Dr. Bucaile confirming the sciences in our holy book. You can also
quote that Mahatama Gandhi read Quran daily and also spoke highly of
it.

10. If he says that Bucaile was on Saudi payroll and that nor he nor
Gandhi ever changed their religions and that Bucaile was challenged
and proven wrong by many experts then challenge him to ask his
experts to debate islamists like Zakir Naik..

11. If the pests still hangs around then change the topic and find
faults in other religions and their books.

12. If he continues on then use personal attacks and insult him by
calling him a jewish a- hole , a Chinese pig or a hindu dog .

13. If that does not frustrate him, then ask him how much he is being
paid by jews to throw dirt on Al Islam.

14. If he still does not stop then run for his mother and sister and
use very filthy language.

15. If he is very stubborn and wants to continue, then curse him
like "Burn in hell, you will repent on last day, Allah will get you
in your grave" etc

16. When all of the above has failed, threaten him with bodily harm
and end the debate by drum beating and announcing that you won the
debate hands down because Koran is the word of allah.

17. If possible anounce about this debate in an islamist website and
that you had won it handily. Such announcements do wonders for the
iman of muslim website readers and for dawah operations in prisons to
convince low IQ prisoners of the truth of Al Islam.

Blogger Note:
I have experienced 15 of the 17 suggestions first hand and know full well that
"dawah operations in prisons" is going on at light speed. Imagine a full out war
with these squalid sub humans. Imagine they open all the prisons to let their
"brothers" out. Imagine them using the above tactics (which they do well) with
your friends, family, co-workers. It will happen to people you know. Guaranteed.