Posted on 09/22/2012 4:42:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
On Tuesday, Egypt's chief prosecutor issued arrest warrants against eight US citizens.
Their purported crimes relate either to their reported involvement in the production of the Internet movie critical of Islam that has received so much attention over the past 10 days, or to other alleged anti-Islamic activities.
One of the US citizens indicted is a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity.
According to the Associated Press, Egypt's general prosecution issued a statement announcing that the eight US citizens have been indicted on charges of insulting and publicly attacking Islam, spreading false information, and harming Egyptian national unity.
The statement stipulated that they could face the death penalty if convicted.
The AP write-up of the story quoted Mamdouh Ismail, a Salafi attorney who praised the prosecution's move. He claimed it would deter others from exercising their right to free expression in regards to Islam. As he put it, the prosecutions will "set a deterrent for them and anyone else who may fall into this." That is, they will deter others from saying anything critical about Islam.
This desire to intimidate free people into silence on Islam is clearly the goal the heads of the Muslim Brotherhood seek to achieve through their protests of the anti-Islamic movie. This was the message of Muslim Brotherhood chief Yussuf Qaradawi. Three days after the anti-American assaults began on the anniversary of the September 11 jihadist attacks on America, Qaradawi gave a sermon on Qatar television, translated by MEMRI.
Qaradawi struck a moderate tone. He called on his followers to stop rioting against the US. Rather than attack the US, Qaradawi urged his Muslim audience to insist that the US place prohibitions on the free speech rights of American citizens by outlawing criticism of Islam - just as the Europeans have done in recent years in the face of Islamic terror and intimidation.
In his words, "We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?"
Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi's sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since September 11, 2001, to contend with Muslim hatred for the US have failed. The neoconservative policy of supporting the democratization of Muslim societies adopted by President Barack Obama's predecessor George W. Bush has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.
Bush's democratization policy claimed that the reason the Muslim world had become a hotbed for anti-Americanism and terror was that the Muslim world was not governed by democratic regimes. Once the peoples of the Muslim world were allowed to be free, and to freely elect their governments, the neoconservatives proclaimed, they would abandon their hatred of America.
As a consequence of this belief, when the anti-regime protests against the authoritarian Mubarak regime began in January 2011, the neoconservatives were outspoken supporters of the overthrow of then-president Hosni Mubarak, despite the fact that he had been the US's key ally in the Arab world for three decades. They supported the political process that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power. They supported the process despite the fact that Qaradawi is the most influential cleric in Egypt. They supported it despite the fact that just days after Mubarak was ousted from power, Qaradawi arrived at Cairo's Tahrir Square and before an audience of two million followers, he called for the invasion of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem.
In the event, the Egyptian people voted for Qaradawi's Muslim Brotherhood and for the Salafi party. The distinction between the two parties is that Qaradawi and the Muslim Brotherhood are willing to resort to both violent and nonviolent ways to dominate the world in the name of Islam. The Salafis abjure nonviolence. So while Qaradawi called for the riots to end in order to convince the Americans to criminalize criticism of Islam, his Salafi counterparts called for the murder of everyone involved in producing the anti-Islamic film.
For instance, Salafi cleric Ahmad Fouad Ashoush issued a fatwa on Islamic websites last weekend calling for American and European Muslims to murder those involved with the movie. His religious ruling was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group on Monday.
Ashoush wrote, "Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film.
"So, hurry, hurry, O Muslim youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success."
These are the voices of democratic Egypt. The government, which has indicted American citizens on capital charges for exercising their most fundamental right as Americans, is a loyal representative of the sentiments of the Egyptian people who freely elected it. The Salafi preacher is a loyal representative of the segment of the Egyptian people that made the Salafi party the second largest in the Egyptian parliament. Qaradawi's call for the abolition of freedom of speech in America - as has happened in Europe - and to ban all criticism of Islam is subscribed to by millions and millions of Muslims worldwide who consider him one of the leading Sunni clerics in the world.
Free elections in Egypt have empowered the Egyptian people to use the organs of governance to advance their hatred of America. Their hatred has been empowered, and legitimized, not diminished as the neoconservatives had hoped.
The behavior of the Egyptian government, Qaradawi and the Salafis also makes clear that Obama's policy of appeasing the Muslim world has failed completely. Whereas Bush believed the source of Muslim hatred was their political oppression at the hands of their regimes, Obama has blamed their rage and hatred on America's supposed misdeeds.
By changing the way America treats the Muslim world, Obama believes he can end their hatred of America. To this end, he has reached out to the most anti-American forces and regimes in the region and spurned pro-American regimes and political forces.
When Obama's policies are recognized as driven by appeasement, the seeming inconsistency of his war against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi on the one hand, and his passivity in the face of the anti-regime uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime today makes sense. Gaddafi was not a threat to the US, so he was unworthy of protection. The mullahs in Iran and Assad are foes of the US. So they deserve protection. Obama has assiduously courted the Muslim Brotherhood from the outset of his presidency.
The official and unofficial Egyptian exploitation of the Internet film as a means to intimidate and attack the US into disavowing its core principles is proof that Obama's theory of the source of Muslim rage is wrong. They do not hate America because of what the US government does. They hate America because of what America is. And it is because of this that since September 11, the rationale for Obama's foreign policy has disintegrated.
Rather than accept this basic truth and defend the American way of life, Obama has doubled down in the only way now available to him. He, his administration, his campaign and his supporters in the media have responded to the collapse of the foundations of his foreign policy by resorting to the sort of actions they accused George W. Bush, his administration and supporters of taking. They have responded with a campaign of political oppression and nativist bigotry directed against their political opponents.
Late last Friday night, law enforcement officers descended on the California home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man who made the film that the Muslims of the newly free Arab lands find so offensive. Nakoula was questioned by federal authorities and later released. His arrest was photographed. The image of a dozen officers arresting an unarmed man for making a movie was broadcast worldwide within moments.
Beyond persecuting an independent filmmaker, the White House requested that YouTube block access to it. YouTube - owned by Google - has so far rejected the White House's request.
The Obama administration's abetment of bigoted nativism to silence criticism of its substantively indefensible foreign policy was on prominent display last Sunday. Obama's campaign endorsed an anti-Semitic screed published by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
In her column, titled, "Neocons slither back," Dowd wrote that Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are mere puppets controlled by "neocon puppet master, Dan Senor."
Neocon is a popular code for Jewish. It was so identified by Dowd's Times' colleague David Brooks several years ago.
Dowd said that "the neocons captured" Bush after the September 11 attacks and "Now, amid contagious Arab rage sparked on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, they have captured another would-be Republican president and vice president, both jejeune about the world."
One telling aspect of Dowd's assault on Senor as a neoconservative is that he and his boss in the Bush administration, Paul Bremer, were the nemeses of the neoconservatives at the Pentagon. The only thing Senor has in common with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith is that all three men are Jews.
Moreover, Dowd drew a distinction between supposed "neocons" like Senor, and non-Jewish US leaders Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney who merely "abetted" the neocons.
So Senor doesn't share the same ideological worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz but he's a neocon. And Cheney and Rumseld do share the same worldview as Feith and Wolfowitz. And they are not neocons.
The Times' public editor Andrew Rosenthal dismissed claims that Dowd's column was anti- Semitic, arguing it couldn't be since she never said a word about Jews.
The Obama campaign linked to Dowd's column on its Twitter account with the message, "Why Romney and Ryan's foreign policy sounds 'ominously familiar.'" Obama's campaign's willingness to direct the public to anti-Semitic screeds against his political opponents is consistent with the administration's general strategy for defending policies. That strategy involves responding to criticism not with substantive defense of his policies, but with ad hominem attacks against his critics.
His failed economic policies' critics are attacked as "Wall Street fat cats." His failed foreign policies' critics are demonized as ominous neocon puppet masters.
There is a difference between appeasing parties that have been harmed by your actions and appeasing parties that wish your destruction. In the 1970s the US appeased the Philippines by transferring sovereignty over the Clark Air Force Base to the Philippine government. America was still America and the US and the Philippines became friends.
To appease a party that hates your way of life, you must change your way of life. The only way America can appease the Muslim world is for America to cease to be America.
As a matter of fact it does. Now, if you care to sue these Americans for say...slander of your prophet/islam or say defamation...in US court...go for it.
But your blasphemy laws do not apply in America and is supported by both our First Amendment and established case law.
I'm sure they'd take that result if they could get it, but I'm convinced that the real goal is to chase the U.S. out of the Middle East in order to facilitate the rise of the new Caliphate.
Those indictments against American citizens exercising their constitutional rights while in the United States is an official act of the Egyptian government. Obama and Clinton have themselves a constitutional duty to uphold and protect those rights. They took an oath to do so. So far they have done nothing. They sadly will probably do nothing. The Republican congress does have some power. They must not allow $2billion dollars in aid to be given to the Egyptian government. What sort of foreign policy do we have if we finance people who threaten our own citizens and persecute their own minorities?
They are arresting islamists that appear to have an extensive network and military getting ready for the caliphate. This is not a conspiracy article...it is from Reuters. Those 57 states or the revolution for those to be formed seems to be much closer than any of us realize.
Will it send the muslim world into a frenzy? You bet it will, but if they want to have ‘relations’ with America they need to learn what Free Speech in a real Free country means.
If 0bama and his State Department decide to turn over these Americans we must do our civic duty and stop it. Islamic Law holds absolutely no standing in America. And is blatantly unConstitutional if they even attempt to apply it. The idea that they are even looking for ‘probation violations’ for a reason to ‘deport’ a legal immigrant should send every American pouring into the streets in protest. The executive order giving interpol free rein to make arrests and whisk citizens away to face legal action in foreign countries needs to be revoked too.
We need to get our citizens out of the countries that are rioting and then...make our stand.
To appease a party that hates your way of life, you must change your way of life. The only way America can appease the Muslim world is for America to cease to be America.
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This to me is the description of Obama and his administration.
We are appeasing Obama and his Democrat party by ceasing to be American.
Obama hates America and is trying to change it,because he is not American. I don’t care where he was born, he is not American.
If he was born on the Capitol steps he is not American.
PS. they won’t uphold their oath.
Watch for the democrats to again bring forward ‘hate speech’ laws and control over the internet, because it is a risk to our National Security.
This is the end result of their Political Correctness campaign, this is exactly why being PC is nothing but a bullying tactic. It allows the unCivilized to act outrageous and with immunity.
If this country can't even stand up to a Third World sh!t-hole in a case like this, then let's just pack everything up in Washington, admit that America was great while it lasted, and call it a day.
I just reread my post and I can not even imagine the betrayal felt by people who fled this very kind of persecution.
Again, I don't know the details of the case ... but if the person in question has a criminal record here in the U.S. then all bets are off.
We can disagree, but unless there is the ‘penalty of deportation’ attached to the probation violation your stance is wrong for a legal immigrant.
Illegal immigrant...heck yeah...deport’em.
If that is the case, one must wonder why he allowed both Iraq and Afghanistan to make Sharia the controlling authority of their new Constitutions?
Was he really that naive or know that little about Islam?
More than likely as most Americans don't!
Big mistake Mr President.
Oh and PS...the crime(s) Egypt wants these immigrants on were not committed in Egypt. Their laws do not apply to them.
Don’t kid yourself. Today’s so-called ‘justice system’ assigns ‘probation’ or ‘community service’ at the drop of a hat, and it’s not about the seriousness of the offense, it’s all about MONEY, probation and community service are the diarrhea and dysentery of what passes for justice these days.
There may be cases where probation is called for, but it is more often than not just a case of the State seeing an opportunity to line it’s pockets with fees, fines and other assorted monetary charges for the ‘privilege’ of being on probation.
If a legal immigrant has played by the rules and acquired citizenship, there is absolutely no reason except for perhaps high treason for their citizenship to be stripped or their rights violated, especially if our federal masters are seeking to deport such citizens (ANY citizens) for a bunch of bullshit ‘crimes’ in some godforsaken Muzzie country.
I always enjoy reading Caroline Glick’s articles.
Hit nails on head...
Yup...you forgot anger management classes, mandatory drug testing, drug prevention classes are also the way they force people who commit minor offenses to pay for the system and keep you in the system...
There is no "Justice" in our justice system...it's ALL about money and control...
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