Islamists' White House gatekeeper

townhall ^ | 2/11/2003 | Frank J. Gaffney, Jr

[TLBSHOW]

Islamists' White House gatekeeper

One of the hardiest perennials in the Washington political scene is the spectacle of conservatives publicly disagreeing with one another. The vicious personal attacks launched against me last week by Grover Norquist, however, went way beyond the kind of dispute that so often enlivens policy discourse, usually to the delight -- and advantage -- of liberals who agree with neither camp.

So why would Mr. Norquist, a colleague well-known and widely admired for his work on tax reduction and conservative activism with whom I have often worked collaboratively over the years, publish a letter and take to the airwaves to accuse me of "racism," "bigotry" and "lying"?

The reason given in a letter Mr. Norquist circulated last Wednesday, that was subsequently quoted at length in articles in Friday's Washington Times and Washington Post, was comments I made at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on January 31st. During a panel discussion about the balance to be struck in time of war between preserving our civil liberties and safeguarding our country and lives, I mentioned several factors that are compelling the Bush Administration, properly in my view, to infringe in relatively minor ways on traditional American freedoms to save the country from terrorist destruction.

Preeminent among these is the threat posed by "Islamists" -- adherents to radical, violent Muslim sects like the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia -- not only in remote places like Indonesia, Pakistan and Bosnia but in the United States, itself. I made an express distinction between such Islamists and what is, I believe, the majority of Muslims in this country whom the former are determined to recruit, intimidate and dominate through a variety of techniques.

Wahhabi/Saudi funding appears to have been instrumental in creating and sustaining a large number of organizations involved in such troubling activities as: prison recruitment of American felons, indoctrination of U.S. military personnel, proselytizing on more than 500 college campuses across the United States, charitable fund-raising for terrorists and, of course, underwriting -- and, therefore, controlling -- as many as 70-80 percent of the Nation's mosques.

Given the politically attuned nature of the CPAC audience, I expressed particular concern about one of the most insidious of the Wahhabis' activities -- a concerted attempt to penetrate and otherwise influence political circles in Washington. I noted that among the several groups engaged in such activities, the American Muslim Council (AMC), had issued a press release gloating about a recent success: their invitation to participate in a January 16th White House "dialogue" with Muslim and Arab-American organizations opposed to the Bush Administration's registration of aliens from terrorist-sponsoring and -harboring nations.

The AMC press release made a point of commending Ali Tulbah, an Associate Director of the White House's Office of Cabinet Affairs, for including their representatives (notably, executive director Eric Erfan Vickers) in the meeting. Tulbah similarly admitted another highly controversial organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in this meeting. There appear to have been at least nine other meetings that these groups have attended with the White House and senior Administration officials since September 2001, some at the invitation of a predecessor of Mr. Tulbah in the role of gatekeeper for the Administration's Muslim "outreach efforts, Suhail khan.

The inclusion of such organizations is remarkable on its face. It is, after all, a matter of public record that they actively oppose President Bush on: the need forcibly to liberate Iraq; increasing surveillance of potentially dangerous aliens in this country and the places where they congregate (including mosques); and giving law enforcement tools to counter terror. They have also repeatedly expressed sympathy for, excused or otherwise supported groups identified by the Bush Administration as terrorists. For example, CAIR's executive director Nihad Awad has declared in the past "I am in support of the Hamas movement." And in a television debate last June with me, the AMC's Vickers declined repeatedly to denounce either Hamas, Hezbollah or even al Qaeda, finally describing the last as a "resistance movement."

At CPAC, I expressed grave concern that allowing these sorts of organizations to meet with the President and his senior subordinates is a very bad idea in two respects. First, it could enable radical opponents of the Administration a chance to exercise undesirable influence over policy (for example, watering down immigration, law enforcement and intelligence procedures they find objectionable.) And second, it confers (witness the AMC press release) a legitimacy and stature that can only help their bid to establish the Islamists' dominance over the rest of the Nation's Islamic community.

It may be that the family ties both Messrs. Tulbah and Khan have to Wahhabi religious organizations colors their judgment about the inadvisability of favoring the likes of CAIR and the AMC. Observing that this connection exists and that, in any event, their judgment is flawed, is neither racist nor bigoted. Such judgements are, rather, the sort of things that those who care about this President and the national security must ensure are properly addressed.

Grover Norquist's intemperate and defamatory attack on me says much less about my behavior and character than it does about his own relationship to this Wahhabi political influence operation and the role of the Islamic Institute he formerly chaired in facilitating its access to the Bush team. Let us hope that his own conduct has not caused irreparable damage to either this President or the conservative movement.

[Sabertooth]

Grover Norquist is an Islamist sympathizer, an Amnesty appeaser, and a general dirtbag. I don't care if he's for low taxes or worked for the NRA, he is not to be trusted.

[TLBSHOW]

bump

[TLBSHOW]

Grover Norquist is an Islamist sympathizer

bump

[M. Thatcher]

Grover Norquist is an Islamist sympathizer, an Amnesty appeaser, and a general dirtbag. I don't care if he's for low taxes or worked for the NRA, he is not to be trusted.

A-FRICKIN-MEN.

[TLBSHOW]

There appear to have been at least nine other meetings that these groups have attended with the White House and senior Administration officials since September 2001, some at the invitation of a predecessor of Mr. Tulbah in the role of gatekeeper for the Administration's Muslim "outreach efforts, Suhail khan.

[Valin]

Grover Norquist is an Islamist sympathizer

LAMB: You also say that Grover Norquist, who -- who is he, by the way?

SCHWARTZ: Well, Grover Norquist is a very prominent fund-raiser, and what can I say, wheeler dealer and fixer in the Republican Party, Republican circles and in the conservative movement. And Mr. Norquist is someone who had -- prior to September 11, had cultivated the Muslim leadership in the United States, the Arab-American leadership in the United States, and had attempted to bring the American Muslim and Arab-American communities into the Republican camp, kind of as a parallel, I think, to the role of Jews in the Democratic Party. And he had formed an alliance which still he maintains with, essentially, the same group of people, the same Wahhabi, Saudi-backed radical Muslim figures who have had and had taken over and continue to exercise great influence in the leadership of the American Muslim community.

LAMB: Again, what`s wrong with this?



SCHWARTZ: Well, what`s wrong with this is, first of all -- there are several things wrong with it. There`s an abstract issue, and that is that the American republic cannot and should not take the official position or even a semi-official position that Wahhabi Islam, Saudi Islam, is the only form of Islam. This is what the Saudis and Wahhabis wanted and got, to a great extent. We cannot have a situation where the United States of America, whether as a community of believers or as an intellectual community or as a political factor, goes on the assumption that in dealing with Islam, we have to only deal with Wahhabis and Saudis. This is -- this is -- this is giving up the field to the extremists. This is giving up the field to the people who are -- were, in fact, the ideological preparers of September 11, the ideological backers and supporters of September 11.

For more
http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1713

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa’ud from Tradition to Terror
by Stephen Schwartz

[maranatha]

After watching that show of Gaffney and Norquist where Norquist was calling Gaffney names and trying to wreck his reputation, I ran a search on Norquist and Islam and found a very detailed article regarding WH taking advice from Norquist and the history of Norquist's Islam friends. The article was written by Franklin Foer, Nov 1 2001 at New Republic and the title is Grover Norquist's Strange Alliance with Radical Islam;a fevered Pitch. Wow, did I learn a lot.

[TLBSHOW]

Grover Norquist's Strange Alliance with Radical Islam

No wonder they slammed Pat Robertson like they did!

hmmmmmmmmmmm

[Nick Thimmesch]

m

[TLBSHOW]

here it is........

On the afternoon of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that "the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good." It was a critically important moment, a statement to the world that America's Muslim leaders unambiguously reject the terror committed in Islam's name.

Unfortunately, many of the leaders present hadn't unambiguously rejected it. To the president's left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have repeatedly called Hamas "freedom fighters." Also in attendance was Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who on the afternoon of September 11 told a Los Angeles public radio audience that "we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list." And sitting right next to President Bush was Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who last fall told a Washington crowd chanting pro-Hezbollah slogans, "America has to learn if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come." Days later, after a conservative activist
confronted Karl Rove with dossiers about some of Bush's new friends, Rove replied, according to the activist, "I wish I had known before the event took place."

If the administration was caught unaware, it may be because they placed their trust in one of the right's most influential activists: Grover Norquist. As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist is best known for his tireless crusades against big government. But one of Norquist's lesser-known projects over the last few years has been bringing American Muslims into the Republican Party. And, as he usually does, Norquist has succeeded. According to several sources, Norquist helped orchestrate various post-September 11 events that brought together Muslim leaders and administration officials. "He worked with Muslim leaders to engineer [Bush]'s prominent visit to the Mosque," says the Arab-American pollster John Zogby, referring to the president's September 17 trip to the Islamic Center of Washington. Says Zogby, who counts Norquist among his clients, "Absolutely, he's central to the White House outreach." Indeed, when Jewish activists and terrorism experts complained about the Muslim invitees to Adam Goldman, who works in the White House public liaison's office, Goldman replied that Norquist had vouched for them. (Goldman denies this, but two separate sources say they heard him say it.) "Just like [administration officials] ask my advice on inviting religious figures to the White House," says Paul Weyrich, another top conservative activist, "they rely on Grover's help [with Muslims]."

Norquist denies being involved in "micromanaging the specifics" of White House meetings, but admits "I have been a long time advocate of outreach to the Muslim community." In fact, the record suggests that he has spent quite a lot of time promoting people openly sympathetic to Islamist terrorists. And it's starting to cause him problems. Weyrich, echoing other movement conservatives, says he is "not pleased" with Norquist's activity. According to one intelligence official who recently left the government, a number of counterterrorism agents at the FBI and CIA are "pissed as hell about the situation [in the White House] and pissed as hell about Grover." They should
be. While nobody suggests that Norquist himself is soft on terrorism, his lobbying has helped provide radical Islamic groups--and their causes--a degree of legitimacy and access they assuredly do not deserve.

Norquist is one of the undisputed masters of Republican coalition building.And so it is no surprise that he has turned his attention to America's fast-growing Muslim population, which by some accounts now stands at seven million strong. (Although two other recent reports suggest it is less than three million.) "He's worked with [Rabbi Daniel] Lapin to bring Jews into the fold," says one Norquist associate. "That was an uphill effort. So he figured that he could turn Muslims into the obvious counterweight to the relationship between the Jews and Dems." In the last few years, Norquist has pursued a Republican-Muslim alliance with a two-track approach. With
conservatives, he has emphasized that Muslims are a good demographic fit for the GOP: well-off and socially conservative. "American Muslims look like members of the Christian Coalition," he wrote in The American Spectator this summer. To Muslims, he has promised a sympathetic hearing for their causes. He has pushed Republican leaders to support a prohibition on the government's use of "secret evidence" in the deportation of suspected terrorists--an issue that jibes with Norquist's own anti-government agenda. And he has intimated that Muslim support for Republicans could change U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Appearing on a panel at a 1999 meeting of the American Muslim Alliance, alongside activists who complained about the "Zionist lobby" and Jewish "monopolizing" of Jerusalem, Norquist announced that "[t]oo many American politicians have been able to take their shots at Muslims and at Muslims countries."

Norquist has not undertaken this crusade alone. In the mid-1990s, he enlisted a partner, Khaled Saffuri, then working as a lobbyist and deputy director for the American Muslim Council (AMC). After receiving a master's in management science, Saffuri came to Washington in 1987 and worked his way up through the city's Arab-Muslim political apparatus, starting with a stint at the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In 1998 he left the AMC to help Norquist found the Islamic Institute, an advocacy organization dedicated to promoting a conservative agenda that would appeal to Muslims. Saffuri served as executive director and Norquist as chairman of the board.

The Institute operated out of the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform, from which it borrowed not just a fax machine and conference room, but an agenda. Soon the Institute was shilling for all of Norquist's pet issues--a moratorium on Internet taxation, fast-track trade negotiation authority, and personal savings accounts. It even published a paper on the Koran's compatibility with capitalism. "People should remember that Mohammed and his wife were businessmen," Norquist notes. With the help of Saffuri, who brought ties to a vast network of activists, the Islamic Institute became a nerve center for Muslim lobbying in Washington. As Norquist puts it, "They
gather at the Islamic Institute to plan and debrief, when they have meetings [with administration officials]."

Through the Islamic Institute, Norquist appears to have developed close relationships with a number of Muslim leaders. When I recently spoke to the Muslim Public Affairs Council's Salam Al-Marayati, the man who fingered Israel as a potential sponsor of the World Trade Center attacks, he recited Norquist's phone number from memory. When University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian e-mailed The Wall Street Journal in response to an op-ed that tied him to Islamic Jihad, he CC'd Norquist. Last year at its annual dinner, the AMC presented Norquist with an award for his service. As John Zogby told me, "[H]e's played the role of interlocutor. With all respect, many of the leaders are immigrants and don't have years and years of experience. Grover has filled that void."

And he has done so to their mutual political benefit. During the 2000 campaign, Norquist urged Karl Rove to focus on the Muslim vote--pointing to, among other things, the thousands of Muslims in the key state of Michigan.By all appearances, the Bush campaign heeded Norquist's advice. In an admirable departure from the usual Republican script, Bush frequently integrated mosques into his platitudes about churches and synagogues. In the second presidential debate, Bush vowed to repeal the use of secret evidence, just as Norquist had promised. Bush even named Saffuri as the campaign's National Advisor on Arab and Muslim Affairs.

When Bush won, Norquist credited the Muslim strategy. "Bush's talk about outreach and inclusion had extraordinary results--the Muslim community went 2-1 for Bill Clinton in 1996 and almost 8-1 for Bush in 2000," he told The Washington Times. (That statistic is almost certainly untrue, and Bush actually lost Michigan, the state where Muslims are most heavily concentrated.) Or, as Norquist put it in the Spectator, "George W. Bush was elected President of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote."

Norquist quickly set about turning that supposed electoral influence into legislative influence. One day after Bush's inauguration, he and Saffuri arranged for Muslim leaders to meet Newt Gingrich and Congressman Tom Davis, head of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Soon Saffuri began regularly appearing at the White House, accompanying imams and heads of Islamic organizations to discuss the faith-based initiative and concerns about law enforcement persecution of Muslims. Suhail Khan, an administration adviser who helps plan Muslim outreach, once served on the Islamic Institute's board. And at one of his regular Wednesday meetings, according
to two witnesses, Norquist announced that he had lobbied to get Khan his White House post. On the afternoon of September 11, a group of Muslim leaders happened to have plans to meet the president in the West Wing to discuss their grievances with racial profiling and secret evidence. When they couldn't enter the building, along with almost everyone else, they headed a few blocks uptown and reconvened--in the conference room of Norquist's office.

But the events of September 11 have cast some of Norquist's relationships in a less flattering light. Consider first the history and recent statements of the American Muslim Council, the organization that presented Norquist with an achievement award, and whose officials attend Norquist-arranged meetings with the Republican hierarchy. In the 1990s it co-sponsored two conferences with the United Association for Studies and Research, which, according to The New York Times, a convicted Hamas operative named Mohammed Abdel-Hamid Salah in 1993 called "the political command" of Hamas in the United States. At a Washington rally last year, Abdurahman Alamoudi, Saffuri's boss at the AMC, declared, "I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody support Hamas here?...Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are all supporters of Hamas. I wished they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah." In press releases and forums, the AMC has defended the terrorist-harboring Sudanese government against charges that it massively violates human rights and condones slavery. As late as June of this year, the AMC put out a press release entitled "SLAVERY IN SUDAN IS A SHAM.."

The record of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)--which, like the AMC, sends members to meetings organized by Norquist and Saffuri--is no more encouraging. When interviewed by Salon's Jake Tapper on September 26, CAIR Communication Director Ibrahim Hooper refused to condemn Osama bin Laden. CAIR founder Nihad Awad, who appeared with Bush at the Washington
Islamic Center, has argued that "[t]here is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the [1993 World Trade Center] explosion." And Siraj Wahaj, who has served as a CAIR board member, has been described by federal prosecutor Mary Jo White as a possible conspirator in the '93 bombing. As Harvard professor of Islamic studies Ali Asani has complained, "There is general concern among Muslim intellectuals about how not only CAIR but some of these other organizations
are claiming to speak in the name of the Muslim community, and how they're coming to be recognized by the government as spokespeople for the Muslim community in the U.S."

And Norquist hasn't only developed close ties to American groups that apologize for terror. He has also flacked for at least one Middle Eastern autocracy: Qatar. Eager to improve relations with the United States, Qatar worked with Norquist and Saffuri to help portray itself as a liberal outpost in the Islamic world. In April, Saffuri sponsored the "First Annual Conference on Free Trade and Democracy" in the Qatari capital of Doha, for which the Islamic Institute received over $150,000 in payments from the Qatar Embassy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Account. (Saffuri says these were reimbursements for the travel expenses of congressional delegates.) A lobbyist at Norquist's firm, Janus-Merritt, has solicited pro-Qatari op-eds from at least one conservative pundit. When the emir of Qatar came to
Washington, Saffuri hosted a Capitol Hill luncheon in his honor. And just three weeks after September 11, Norquist wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times in which he claimed that "Qatar has taken great strides to enshrine values of universal suffrage, a free press, and human rights." He continued, "[S]he really means it on being a reliable ally."

Qatar may not be Iraq, but Norquist's arguments are still laughable. Freedom House, which monitors religious liberty, rates Qatar "not free." Among countries in the Middle East--a region hardly known for its liberalism--Qatar finished in the bottom half of a Heritage Foundation "Index of Economic Freedom." Two days after Norquist's op-ed, The Washington Post reported on Qatar's refusal to support a widening of the war on terrorism to include Islamic Jihad, Hamas, or Hezbollah. And, just two weeks later, the foreign minister of Qatar--our "reliable ally"--announced that "[t]he attacks against Afghanistan are unacceptable and we have condemned them. It is our clear position."

Norquist's new associations--particularly his links to groups like CAIR and the AMC--have not gone unnoticed in conservative ranks. Paul Weyrich says, "I have on at least one occasion [confronted him] and he assured me that he knew what he was doing and that I shouldn't have any concerns." Another conservative says he told Norquist about the two organizations' statements on terrorism, but it didn't make an impression. "We can't knock it off; we want them on our own team," Norquist replied.

Norquist's relationships have even pitted him against the GOP leadership. After the Republican convention last year, he set up a lunch at the Capitol Hill Club for Republican Party chairman Jim Nicholson to plot strategy with Muslim leaders. But in the week before the event, angry Jewish groups provided the RNC with a set of damning quotes from representatives of CAIR, the AMC, and some of the other invited guests. When I asked Cliff May, who was the Republican National Committee's communications director at the time, he confirmed the story. "I was approached and apprised of their backgrounds and told the chairman there's reason to be concerned." The event took place--Nicholson didn't feel he could cancel it--but not as originally planned. As one RNC source explains it, Nicholson gave a "generic five-minute talk about lower taxes and less government and said thank you for your support and got the hell out."

Since September, not surprisingly, conservatives once willing to overlook Norquist's alliances have more aggressively aired their grievances. Consider William Murray, head of the Religious Freedom Coalition. He had considered Norquist a comrade, but now makes no secret of his displeasure. "Grover has a very liberated view of Islamic nations," says Murray, somewhat hyperbolically. "So they behead people in the public square. He thinks that's their business. Hey, it's no big deal to have people beheaded for religious crimes." Weyrich, too, has made his unhappiness a matter of public record: "I'm afraid Grover's woefully naive." Even Norquist's weekly confab has become the scene of internecine fighting. At a session earlier this month, Frank Gaffney questioned the presence of terrorist sympathizers at the White House. Norquist exploded, accusing Gaffney of smearing Muslims. Later he choked up as he addressed the meeting and asked Gaffney to stand up and join him in condemning anti-Muslim bigotry. One conservative who witnessed Norquist's tirade says, "His response is powered in part by a sense that this whole edifice he's created is in danger of coming unraveled because of [these groups'] stated and abiding positions."

When I visited Norquist, he was in a similarly embattled frame of mind. He asked me to turn off my tape recorder. Any quote I wanted to use, he told me, would require his approval. There were none of his usual passionate ideological perorations. He just sat in his chair, seething. "There are some people who spit on Muslims and wouldn't like to see them have any role in American politics," he told me in a near scream. Grover Norquist's pursuit of the fabled Republican-Muslim alliance, it seems, will continue for a long time.

[TLBSHOW]

votes from islam!

[TLBSHOW]

ISLAM -Four telltale themes: Anti-Muslim bigotry `spreading like wildfire'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/795183/posts

ISLAM / TERRORIST:More Americans killed by Islamics than any other enemy since Vietnam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/747045/posts

ISLAM IS TH ENEMY--Web posting attributed to al-Qaida kill all the Jews and Christians
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/803002/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/824377/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY-- Chemical war suits in London mosque
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/829612/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--A Religion of Peace?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798289/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Anger with U.S., Alienation Sour Muslims' Eid
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/801053/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Anti-Terror Police Raid London Mosque (Finsbury park)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/825687/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--ATTENTION, MUSLIMS: HOW TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS IN 12 EASY STEPS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/802541/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Bush Marks End of Ramadan, Visits Mosque (Islam brings hope and comfort)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/801595/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Do Moslems, Christians & Jews Believe in the Same God?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/797686/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Falwell Skewers Media for Downplaying Islamic Atrocities Against Christians
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/815553/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Farrakhan tells his followers in Britain to rise against 'Satanic'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/811001/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Hell breaks loose over peace hall(Australian residents dont want mosque)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/797793/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Imams of Inanity (US Christian Fundamentalists=Islamic radicals BARF ALERT!!!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/799761/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Islam In Action
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/803427/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Islam Unveiled
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/803184/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Islamists are Courting Extermination
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/799826/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Joe Farah: Bush, Powell wrong on Islam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/802213/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Missionaries Warn on Islam Criticism
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/824641/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Moderate Muslims need to step up
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/799550/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Muslims: 'War on terror' means war against Islam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/811626/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--ONCE AGAIN. . .ISLAM NOT A RELIGION OF PEACE
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/823252/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--President Bush: "God Bless the Iranian students"--Muslims must defuse holy bomb
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/797707/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--President tiptoes around militant Islam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/804809/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Santa banned for fear of offending Muslims
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/797373/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Speech Down the Pipes: Daniel Pipes gets blackballed.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/818297/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Stop calling Islam the enemy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/801069/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Thank you Mr. President
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/805115/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--US Conservatives dispute Bush’s portrayal of Islam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/803405/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY--Web posting attributed to al-Qaida kill all the Jews and Christians
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/803002/posts

ISLAM IS THE ENEMY-Nazis, Communists, and radical Islamists
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/797816/posts

Islamic Insanity: Will They Avoid War?
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/news/668961/posts

[TLBSHOW]

THE PRESIDENT IS WRONG!

......

President Bush "means it when he says from the heart that the Islamic religion is a religion of peace," White House Press Secretary Fleischer said in response to a reporter's question.

"And just because certain individuals have twisted and distorted that religion for their own barbaric purposes, should not and will not in this president's mind indict a good religion. And that's how you have to look at this, as these individual terrorists are individual terrorists; they are not a reflection on a faith," said Fleischer. http://usembassy.state.gov/tokyo/wwwhsec20021209a4.html

[TLBSHOW]

Rev. Franklin Graham "At Odds"
With White House Over Islam

Exodus 20:3 - "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."


------

NOTE: Please use the ACTION ITEM at the end of this article to express concern to President George Bush and appreciation to Rev. Franklin Graham.


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Evangelist Graham in Presidential Hot Water Over Comments
White House Hosts Ramadan Gathering

November 20, 2001

(AgapePress) - In what is believed to be a first in American history, there were prayers to Allah Monday night at the White House where President Bush hosted a formal Ramadan celebration with dozens of Muslim leaders.

The Ramadan event was another effort by the Bush Administration to prove its war on terrorism is not a war against Islam. However, conservative voices like Gary Bauer have been sharply critical of that effort. He says he has heard from a number of people within the U.S. intelligence community who are shocked and demoralized that some of the Muslim leaders who have been spending time with the President have been known to speak out in favor of terrorism.

Bauer notes that while these people are getting the red carpet treatment at the White House, reports indicate the President is distancing himself from one of the country's best-known evangelicals. According to reports, Franklin Graham upset the Bush Administration when he recently referred to Islam as being "wicked, violent, and not of the same God."

Shortly after the attacks of September 11, Graham had commented, "I don't believe [Islam] is a wonderful, peaceful religion." Asked by NBC News on Friday to clarify his statement, he repeated his charge that Islam, as a whole, was evil.

"It wasn't Methodists flying into those buildings, it wasn't Lutherans," he told NBC News. "It was an attack on this country by people of the Islamic faith."

In a follow-up statement Monday, Graham said he is deeply concerned with "the teachings of Islam regarding the treatment of women, and the killing of non-Muslims or infidels."

The son of Rev. Billy Graham and the designated successor of his father's extensive evangelical ministry, Graham delivered the benediction at Bush's inauguration in January. As NBC News observed, "A presidential friend and supporter now finds himself at odds with both the Muslim world and the message from the White House." But conservative columnist Chuck Baldwin calls Graham "a breath of fresh air" for standing firm and not apologizing for his statements.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports a Muslim advocacy organization has sent a letter to Graham inviting him to meet with them to discuss his remarks. In the letter, Nihad Awad of the Council on America-Islamic Relations says, "Negative impressions of Islam are most often based on a lack of accurate and objective information."

AgapePress writers Fred Jackson, Jim Duke, and Jody Brown contributed to this report.
© 2001 AgapePress - All rights reserved.

---

ACTION ITEM:

Contact President Bush and politely express your opposition to Islamic prayer services at the White House. Also, be sure to thank Franklin Graham for his faithfulness to Christ in the face of criticism.

Contact President Bush:
1-202-456-1414 or 1-202-456-1111
Email the President at:
mailto:president@whitehouse.gov

Contact Franklin Graham:
1-612-338-0500 (after hours use extension 8)

[TLBSHOW]

November 25, 2002

White House Doesn't Condemn Muslim Leader's Remarks
By David Brody, Washington, D.C., correspondent


A Muslim leader has compared two Christian leaders to Osama bin Laden, but the White House has been silent.

The spokesman for a leading American Muslim group says he will not apologize for remarks he made comparing two prominent conservative Christian leaders to Osama bin Laden.

It all started after CBN President Pat Robertson and Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell expressed their view that the religion of Islam — at the core level — is not one of peace. President Bush came out with public comments distancing the White House from those remarks. Then, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, said Falwell and Robertson would kill Muslims given the chance. This time, though, the White House has not condemned those remarks.

Joe Glover, from the Family Policy Network, is disappointed with the president for putting Christianity on the back burner.

"His remarks are consistent with his behavior," Glover said. "He's holding and hosting Ramadan Iftar services in the White House to celebrate Islam, and yet the best we can get having to do with Christianity is a tree on the White House lawn."

It may be a situation where Bush is trying to straddle the political fence, making sure not to alienate Muslim Americans. But Robert Spencer, an expert on the Islamic religion, questions that strategy.

"It's good not to offend people, but it's useless to avoid defending people by refusing to tell them the truth, and that's what the Bush administration is running the risk of doing," Spencer said.

Glover, however, thinks Bush is running the risk of alienating the Evangelical community.

"I think a lot of people I've spoken to are scratching their heads and wondering what the born-again Evangelical nature of Bush's life is really — when is that going to come out?" Glover said.

Some Evangelical leaders are probably wondering the same thing.
http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/a0023414.html

[TLBSHOW]

In a fascinating book written by two Arab Muslims who converted to Christianity, Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner give an eye-opening account of Islam's prophet in "Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs."

Citing passages from the Hadith, the collected sayings of Muhammad, the Caners note that, by his own account, the founder of Islam was often possessed by Satan. The phrase "Satanic Verses" refers to words that Muhammad first claimed had come from God, but which he later concluded were spoken by Satan.

Muhammad married 11 women, kept two others as concubines and recommended wife-beating (but only as a last resort!). His third wife was 6 years old when he married her and 9 when he consummated the marriage.

To say that Muhammad was a demon-possessed pedophile is not an attack. It's a fact. (And for the record, Timothy McVeigh is not the founder of Christianity. He wasn't even a Christian. He was an atheist who happened to be a gentile.)

Muslims argue against the Caners' book the way liberals argue against all incontrovertible facts. They deny the meaning of words, posit irrelevant counterpoints, and attack the Caners' motives.

Ibrahim Hooper, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says that by "6 years old" the Hadith really means "16 years old" and "9" means "19" -- numbers as similar in Arabic as they are in English. Hooper also makes the compelling argument that the Caner brothers -- who say they wrote their book out of love for Muslims whom they want to see in heaven -- are full of "hate."

Other Islamic scholars concede the facts but argue that Muhammad's marriage to a 6-year-old girl was an anomaly. Oh, OK, never mind. Still others explain that Muhammad's marriage to a 6-year-old girl was of great benefit to her education and served to reinforce political allegiances.

So was she really 16, or was it terrific that he had sex with a 9-year-old to improve her education? This is like listening to some Muslims' earlier argument-in-the-alternative that the Zionists attacked the World Trade Center, but America brought the attack on itself anyway.

Muhammad makes L. Ron Hubbard look like Jesus Christ. Most people think nothing of assuming every Scientologist is a crackpot. Why should Islam be subject to presumption of respect because it's a religion? Liberals bar the most benign expressions of religion by little America. Only a religion that is highly correlated with fascistic attacks on the U.S. demands their respect and protection.

ANN COULTER
http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2002/090402.htm

[TLBSHOW]

Yes, This Is About Islam
By SALMAN RUSHDIE


ONDON -- "This isn't about Islam." The world's leaders have been repeating this mantra for weeks, partly in the virtuous hope of deterring reprisal attacks on innocent Muslims living in the West, partly because if the United States is to maintain its coalition against terror it can't afford to suggest that Islam and terrorism are in any way related.

The trouble with this necessary disclaimer is that it isn't true. If this isn't about Islam, why the worldwide Muslim demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? Why did those 10,000 men armed with swords and axes mass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, answering some mullah's call to jihad? Why are the war's first British casualties three Muslim men who died fighting on the Taliban side?
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/02/opinion/02RUSH.html?ex=1005990007&ei=1&en=1145e2dba353a885

[eclectic]

Yes, This Is About Islam

No, it is not! Islam is just one of the backward world religions and does not pose a real danger to America per se. The real danger is the exploitation of this particular religion by the leftists to undermine America from within!

[Katya]

"At CPAC, I expressed grave concern that allowing these sorts of organizations to meet with the President and his senior subordinates is a very bad idea in two respects."

Wow....so what he's saying is Bush is easily influenced...just by meeting with a group...NOT!