CAIR Seeks Repudiation of NYPD Report Tying Terrorism to Salafism

Most of the allegedly "mainstream" Muslim organizations that the average person will have heard of are anything but mainstream. They are not representative of the typical Muslim in America. Instead, they are organizations that are largely, if not wholly, funded from the coffers of Saudi Arabian billionaires, the Muslim Brotherhood or other foreign radical organizations or individuals. Their mission is to further the political goals in the West of the radical ideologies they both represent and misrepresent. The latest effort comes from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and their target is the NYPD, who last year identified Wahhabi / Salafi Islam as the driving force behind radicalization and terrorism by Sunni Muslims.
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Some time ago, the intelligence division of the NYPD published a document called Radicalization in the West. If you have not read it, you should do so. You can find it here. The document was notable for being the first governmental publication to my knowledge to fully document the relationship between Wahhabi/Salafi Islam and terrorism. The NYPD authors merely looked to prior terrorist attacks in the West and found Wahhabi Salafi dogma - and indoctronation in that dogma - to be the common thread. This was merely stating the obvious to anyone familiar with Islam's history over the past century.

This finding, documented by the NYPD, is so clear as to be beyond any reasonable argument. Indeed, for but one other example, I would recommend that you read, in conjunction with the NYPD document, this autobiographical skectch from Tawfiq Hamid, a former terrorist in an al Qaeda type organization, who details how he was seduced by Salafi Islam into becoming a terrorist. If you have not read it, do so. His concluding paragraph is an appropriate warning on this issue of identifying the cause of terrorism:

The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

I have also posted repeatedly on the critical importance of shining a bright light on Wahhabi / Salafi Islam, such as here, as have various "moderate Muslims, including the head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Zhudi Jasser (see the video of his recent debate with a Salafi imam), terrorism expert Walid Phares (see his interview here), and Stepehn Suliman Schwartz, head of the Center for Islamic Pluralism - an organization whose site contains a dedicated "Wahhabi Watch." Their voices are clear - but nowhere near as loud as those many organizations funded by billions in petrodollars and tasked specifically to muddy the waters and further the political goals of the Salafists in the West. Zhudi Jasser explains the situation in his essay that I have blogged below:

“[P]olitical imams” (imams who use their pulpit to preach an Islamist domestic and foreign policy agenda) . . . are apparently a majority of imams in mosques around the U.S. Not only are political imams in the majority of mosques but the salafist orientation seems to predominate mosques also. This is augmented in the public place with their supporting and collaborating Islamist organizations which include ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), MAS (Muslim American Society), ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), MSA (Muslim Students Association), the North American Imams Federation, The Assembly of American Muslim Jurists, and the MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council) to name a few. . . .

The entirety of mosques and Islamist and anti-Islamist Muslim organizations do not represent all American Muslims. Most American Muslims are actually unaffiliated with any element of the organized Muslim community. Some, if not most, are unaffiliated simply because they separate religion and politics. In fact, statistics would show that only a small minority of American Muslims maintain membership in any “Muslim” organizations. . . .

Read the essay here.

The degree of infiltration of these Salafi organizations in the West is significant. Equally concerning is their effectiveness in misrepresenting Salafism in the West and their resort to claims of Islamaphobia or some other sort of improper act whenever a light is shown upon their bloody, violent and highly racist version of Islam. The latest is CAIR's attempt to squelch the NYPD's report, "Radicalization in the West." They must not be allowed to succeed.

This from Stephen Suliman Schwartz writing in the Daily Standard:

LAST YEAR THE New York Police Department (NYPD) issued a clear-sighted and path-breaking document titled Radicalization in the West: The Home-Grown Threat. Prepared by Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt of the NYPD Intelligence Division, the report was serious, well-researched, and articulate. It traced radical Sunni Muslim activities in non-Muslim countries to the "jihadi-Salafi" ideology, better known as Wahhabism, created in Saudi Arabia and supported by major extremist resources in Pakistan (the jihadist movement of Mawdudi) and Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood). It was posted on the internet by Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan . . .

Radicalization in the West met with enthusiastic approval from anti-extremist, moderate Muslims, but with predictable condemnation from the "Wahhabi lobby" represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies. On November 23, 2007, as disclosed in documents made available to me, a statement was composed, in the name of the "Muslim community," protesting against the NYPD's release of the report. Employing the typically arrogant, peremptory, and militant idiom of the Islamist movements, the statement called on New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly:

* "To cease distribution of the report to other jurisdictions' law enforcement agencies while the NYPD carefully responds to and corrects the report's misconceptions and errors;

* "To clarify what policies have been adopted by the NYPD as a consequence of the report, and in particular respond to concerns expressed in [a] Community Statement submitted by diverse Muslim community representatives;

* "To issue a public statement to the effect that the NYPD is working with members of the Muslim community of New York on developing a sound, rights-respecting policy on 'radicalization' that will not lead to religious or racial profiling;

* "To commit NYPD to a regular schedule of ongoing dialogue to address the issues."

The Wahhabi lobby activists in New York then completed their "Community Statement." It consists of little more than nitpicking over the sources and conclusions of the NYPD report, notably rejecting any association of Wahhabi "Salafism" with jihadism. But more important, the defenders of Wahhabism arrogated to themselves the right to decide what the city's police should do in response to the challenge of radical Islam. The extremists would set the NYPD's overall agenda, forcing Commissioner Kelly and his personnel to work according to Wahhabi guidelines and at the Wahhabis' convenience.

The radical Muslim response to the NYPD report predictably employed the pretexts of alleged "profiling" and "inappropriate" criteria. But the report did not embody "profiling;" rather, it was an academic-style work based on open source documents and serious expertise, and utilized a case study approach drawing on terrorism incidents abroad. These included the March 2004 Madrid metro massacre, in which 191 people died and some 2,000 were injured, the November 2004 murder of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam, the July 2005 London transport attacks, with 52 commuters killed and 700 hurt, and thwarted conspiracies in Australia and Canada.

But for Islamists in America, charges of "profiling" and "inappropriate" methods are the preferred reply to critical discussion of almost all significant matters. Those who investigate Wahhabism are accused of "profiling" Saudis, even though numerous Saudi subjects hate and reject Wahhabism. Questioners about radicalism in Islam are alleged to "profile" all Muslims, notwithstanding the recognition and repudiation of extremism by millions of ordinary Muhammadan believers. According to the radicals, they themselves represent the Muslim mainstream, their practices and beliefs are harmless, and any questioning of them amounts to persecution. Unfortunately for the extremists, many Muslims disagree with them, considering them a deviant phenomenon, their habits and views distorted, and their worldwide quest for domination worthy of decided opposition.

This month, the Wahhabi lobby plans to drop its manifesto of grievances on Commissioner Kelly, on April 17. In minutes of a meeting held in New York on March 3, officials of CAIR present included Faiza Ali, Aliya Latif, and Omar Mohammadi, joined by Islamist agitator Syed Z. Sayeed, religious adviser to the Saudi-backed Muslim Students Association at Columbia University. They noted that the NYPD had asked for a detailed reply to the report. The participants at the March 3 get-together also observed that while they would prepare such a response, CAIR itself has financed and is working on a more thorough text designated its "long-term analysis/alternative model of radicalization." . . .

Here is a preferred outcome for this absurd contretemps:

* The New York Police Department should be congratulated, not assailed, for publishing a serious analysis of radical Islam in the West.

* The Islamist organizations should accept that if they disagree with the views in the NYPD document they should do so in a polite, respectful manner, without issuing self-righteous demands or irresponsible charges. Of course, they won't agree to such a thing. One might even argue that the NYPD and the anti-Islamists, not the Islamists, have been "profiled"--by the radicals. . . .

* And, finally, New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly should inform the aggrieved extremists, with maximum politeness, that he will spend a minimum of time listening to them. He should then file their laborious plea in favor of extremist ideology where it belongs.

Read the entire article. There are many people who are unable to differentiate between the vast majority of Muslims and those Muslims who are imbued by the Salafi ideology and its variants in Pakistan - and Iran, for that matter. But such differentiation is necessary if we are ever to win the war of ideas for the heart and soul of Islam. And the first step along that road is to educate the populace as to the nature of the beast. That is what the NYPD did with their report. And this is why CAIR and other Salafi Islamists want to see the report repudiated.

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What You Don't Know Could Kill You (Updated, Argued & Bumped)

Western governments are failing in their duty to define "radical Islam." Defining "radical Islam" is the key to designing a strategy to address the problem and to protecting those Muslims who would fight against "radicalization." Failure to do so is at least problematic if not existential.


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It is a truism that the key to solving any problem - or defeating any threat - is knowledge. And one of the major threats we face is the specter of Islamic terrorism, or Islamofacism, Islamic radicalism, Jihadism - pick your favorite descriptive term. They have all been bandied about by our government. They are all only partially true. And if we are ever going to actually address "radical Islam," our political leaders need to define it. This has long been one of the critical themes I hammer upon in this blog. And now one of the world's preeminent experts in radical Islam and their terror tactics, author and Professor Walid Phares, has issued a public call for precisely that. This from Prof. Phares writing in the CounterTerrorism Blog, who called on the President to:

. . . define the enemy, clearly and strategically. For the changes in definitions over the past seven years have left the public in quest for a definitive knowledge about who are we fighting and why. The last year of the Presidency must help the next White House to engage in successful a war of ideas instead of a continuous search for the identity of the enemy.

See here.

The reason our government has been loathe to define "radical Islam" is that such definition would begin and almost end with our "ally," Saudi Arabia. It is Saudi Arabia's poisonous Wahhabi / Salafi Islam that defines "radical Islam." Whatever excuse there may have been in 2001 not to understand the nature of threat from Salafi Islam, none exists today. Unfortunately, our government to this date continues to speak of this problem in euphanisms.

Without identifying the source of "radical Islam" and shining a light on all of the relevant aspects of the source, we are incapable of developing a coheren national and international strategy to that will meet and defeat this cancer. Identifying the source of radical Islam and explaining about it to America is a fundamental duty of our government. And on this, our government has failed.

This failure has other significant ramifications. It leaves our populace without the knowledge to distinguish between a particularly dangerous ideology and a benign one - both of them being interspersed among us and throughout the world. This will lead to a a tendency to lump all Muslims under one banner. Most critically, it will marginalize and cut off from support those Muslims who would fight against the Salifization of their religion. And indeed, as this is in large measure an ideological struggle, it it the fight they will wage that will determine the future of Islam. We need to insure they win over Salafi Islam.

And there is yet another critical aspect to the the governments use of euphanisms to describe "radical Islam." It falsely implies that radical Islam is merely an anamoly. By doing that, our government provides cover for Wahhabi / Salafi Islamists to continue to spread their ideology free of criticism and publicity. This only allows the problems created by that Salafi Islam to fester and metasticize. It will only compounds the costs that we will eventually have to pay if and when things get to a point where some action must be taken against these purveyors of hatred, death and triumphalism.

I posted below a long article by Tawfiq Hamid, a former terrorist in an al Qaeda type organization, who details how he was seduced by Salafi Islam into becoming a terrorist. If you have not read it, do so. At any rate, his concluding paragraph is an appropriate warning on this issue of identifying the cause of terrorism:

The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

Tawfiq Hamid (emphasis mine)

Update: This exchange from an interview of Walid Phares by Hugh Hewitt:

HH: . . . [I]s it possible to turn the Salafist edge back on itself? Is it possible to win that war of ideas? Or just do we have to wait and watch it run its very destructive and horrible course?

WP: No, absolutely, we can begin the war or ideas. At this…we have not. And then we can, with time, turn the tide and win it. But we have not even began the real steps such as discussing it openly in Congress, have the right legislation for it, and have huge funding that is going in all directions, but not in the right directions, that is to fund the NGO’s, women’s movements, students movements, and all the intellectuals who in the Arab and Muslim world, including in the Diaspora, are completely anti-Salafist, pro-democracy. We have not begun to talk to them.

Update: Dr. Sanity posted the other day about "The Conclusions We Dare Not Face." It asks, what are the ramifications if we conclude that Islam is incompatible with freedom and democracy. And, clearly, the ramification is, at its logical conclusion, an existential war of genocide. As she says:

It may eventually be the case that the West becomes convinced that Islam is unable to change and is completely incompatible with freedom. We are well on our way to that eventuality, sadly. Time and again there have been opportunities for the moderates in the religion to pull it back from its suicidal historical course.

Personally, I am not convinced that Islam can change, but I hope it can, given time.

This goes to the heart of what I have attempted to articulate in my post above. There are certain sects of Islam that are, as they exist today, completely incompatible. Salafism and Khomeinist Shia'ism. At any rate, I wrote a response to her post and responded to additional comments which I reproduce here, as they are a detailed explanation of why it is an absolute necessity that our government identify the source of radical Islam immediately.

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Response to Dr. Sanity's Post:

I think this misses the point in a critical way. All of the things by which we name terrorism - radical Islam, political Islam, Islamofacism, - they all come back to Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi / Salafi Islam. That is the heart and soul of terrorism. If you have not read it, I would recommend Tawfiq Hamid's story [posted here] of how he became a Salafi terrorist and his own thoughts of Saudi Arabia's Salafism as the root and branch of "radical Islam"

Unfortunately, while we have ignored it over the past century, Salafism has slipped the hinterlands of Saudi Arabia and is ever increasing its influenced over most other sects. Salafism now defines the majority of Pakistani's Deobandis and its interpretations even crossed over into Khomeini's brand of triumphalist Shia Islam and the politics of velyat-e faqh. Salafism is what defines Hamas and every other Sunni terrorist organization you will find. And it defines the Muslim Brotherhood.

You can be a devout Muslim and, if you have not been infected with Salafism, there is a very strong chance that you will not be a "radical" unable to live peacefully and gainfully in a democracy and with respect for the rights of others.

The tremendous disservice we do to all of Islam is to hide the source of terrorism behind euphanisms. Most Muslims look in horror at what is happening in their ranks - all of which can be traced to Salafi / Wahhabi Islam. Trace the money from Saudi Arabia and every cent you will see spent is either going to export Salafi Islam or to buy freedom from criticism. It has been incredibly effective at both. Every foreign country in which a madrassa is built by Saudi Arabia, they are preparing to turn out a generation of Salafitsts - often completely counter to the much more peaceful brand of Islam historically extant in that country.

Visit the Center For Islamic Pluralism [here] and you will see that they are far more vocirerous about the Wahhabi / Salafis than any Western politician.

At any rate, unless and until we acknowledge this fact, the problem will just get worse and Salafism, funded by Saudi Arabia's petrodollars, will continue to displace the other sects of Islam and ever more threaten the West. This problem can be solved - messily - now. It can be solved - bloodily - later. One of the two will happen. The first step is for our government to start telling the nation precisely who it is that wants to kill us and enforce their will by the sword. It will piss off the Saudi's to no end. But to not do so is going to lead to much greater problems down the road.

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In response, one individual wrote that he accepted my analysis of the problem, but not my proposed actions. He posited that the onus was not on non-Muslims in the West to define radical Islam and fight the ideological battle for the soul of Islam, but rather it was the responsibility of Muslims themselve. The following was my response to that argument:

For Muslims to stand up to Salafi Islam is to risk threat of death. That is actually a part of Salafi dogma - death for apostacy, a crime which includes questioning Salafi interpretations of the Koran. There are a few people doing it - Tawfiq Hamid, Zhudi Jasser, David Suleyman Schwartz, and Mansoor Moghal being the most prominent. They are shouting it to the mountaintops. It will make no difference until our government does its job of defining the threat for we, the people. We have every bit as much stake in defeating the scourge of Salafi Islam as do non-Salafi Muslims.

Right now, our government is treating the symptoms with billions of dollars spent in added security and the costs of war, plus, far more importantly, the blood of our soldiers. We have to do that. I support that and more, in fact.

But beyond the symptoms, the disease itself grows ever stronger world wide and will continue to do so until our government defines it and starts shining a light on it.

All that said, the Islamic reformists stand no chance whatsoever of succeeding if they do not have the backing of the West. And they cannot get that backing if the West is collectively clueless as to what these men - and we - face in Salafi Islam.

Even then, it has to be noted that Salafism has so infested so many of the other sects on the backs of Saudi petrodollars that is far from identifiable only with Saudi Arabia now. To get a feel for the scope of what is involved:

"According to official Saudi information, Saudi funds have been used to build and maintain over 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges, 210 Islamic Centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia."
[See here]

The North American Islamic Trust - a Wahhabi Salafi organization owns between 50% and 80% of all mosques in North America. [See here]

And Salafists are, in many cases, taking over existing Mosques throughout the world. Some very informative expamples include:

Belgium [See here]

Somalia [See here]

Indonesia [See here]

Further, I would invite you to read this post [see here] on the incredible degree to which our education system - university and even K-12, has been infiltrated with Salafi Islam

My question to you, what would happen if 300 million Americans demanded that this Salafi infiltration stop - that universities give back the Salafi funds, and that the poeple who support Salafi Islam be challenged at every turn. That is, as I see it, step one to ending the scourge of Salafi Islam and all the evil it has brought to the world.

One of two things is going to happen. We either fight Salafism on two fronts now - i.e., on middle eastern battlefields to stop their advances now AND on the larger battlefield of ideas, or we go to war with Islam as a whole eventually. I have also written a fairly long post on this issue here if you are interested: [See here]

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I also received another response, this one asking: "If it's just about salafi/wahabism, then someone please explain the shia brutality in Iran and Basra area of Iraq?"

My response was:

I stated this in my earlier post but did not elaborate.

If you look at Khomeinist Shia'ism, what your going to find is a lot of Salafi dogma creeped in. The Shia religion has, since its inception, been called the "quietist" school becasue it stayed out of day to day politics. Khomeini relied on what previously had been only Salafi interpretations to justify his new "political" and triumphal Shia'ism.

This is a quote from Fukiyama, though I am having trouble finding the original column on WSJ:

"Though developed among Sunnis, this virulent ideological mix reached the Shiite world as well, most notably through its influence on Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Indeed, the Iranian revolution of 1979 conferred on Islamism a degree of religious respectability that it had never before possessed."

That is where you get the increasing radicalization of the Shia. As I said earlier, Salafi Islam has poisoned everthing its touched, and it has touched a lot.

Two things are going on in Southern Iraq. One is simply a power struggle between armed gangs with religion as its cover. The second is Iranian meddling in the South. Have no doubts, Iran would like to see another Hezbollah under its control in Iraq just as it has in Lebanon. There is a reason 300,000 Shiites in Southern Iraq signed a petition a month ago condemning Iran for its deadly meddling in their region.

"The Iranians, in fact, have taken over all of south Iraq," said a senior tribal leader from the south who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life. "Their influence is everywhere." [See here]

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Interesting News From Around The Web

Walid Phares assesses the state of terrorism around the world. "In short, there are several "wars" on terror worldwide. . . . America is leading the widest campaign, but efforts around the globe are still dispersed, uncoordinated, and in many cases, contradictive."

At NRO, a symposium on Pakistan with a wide variety of views on Bhutto’s assassination and how we should interact with Pakistan, including this assessment from Victor David Hanson: "Pakistan is a nuclear dictatorship, with a thin Westernized elite sitting atop a vast medieval Islamist badlands that it cannot control."

Bhutto’s 19 y.o. son is expected to be named the successor as head of her political party. If he actually wins in the Pakistani election, this seems like it will lead to the sort of "palace intrigue" not seen since the days of Cardinal Richelieu.

More reflections on fallout from the Bhutto assassination here. And the Telegraph has an incisive article on the Frankenstein’s monster of terrorism nurtured by successive Pakistani governments, including Bhutto’s, that now threatens to overtake all of Pakistan. Former PM Sharif, an Islamist with Saudi support, is not what we want to see in charge of Pakistan. For some good background, see this Stephen Cohen article on the jihadi threat in Pakistan. And this from Tariq Ali on the Saudi connection to the madrassahs and terrorists in Pakistan.

Michael Ledeen examines more State Department pro-Iranian spin.

2007 was "a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history." Read David Barry’s hilarious year in review.

A politically incorrect Aussie’s wish list for 2008.

Classical Values has some thoughts on our rather insane primary system that gives special weight to Iowa and New Hampshire.

A New Years Resolution for Congressional Republicans that all conservatives can get behind. End the earmarks.

And some late blogging of things I did not have time to get to earlier . . .

Hillary Clinton almost takes the cake for sublime idiocy. The last thing Pakistan needs at this point is further destabilization, but we have Hillary calling the current government illegitimate and demanding an international tribunal to investigate Bhutto’s assassination. While Obama does take the cake – finding that Bhutto’s assassination was caused by our prosecution of the Iraq war. If only we had surrendered earlier to al Qaeda, perhaps this would not have happened. Even the incredibly cynical John Edwards called that one a bit of idiocy.

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Interesting News From Around the Web - 12-16-07

"American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out." That statement could come from any utterly misguided Democrat . . . or Mike Huckabee. There is apparently no substantive difference. It is the perils of Huckaplomacy. Evidently Huckabee has decided to challenge for the Ron Paul vote. Or as Rich Lowrey describes it, this is a Case of Bad Huck.

The EU province formerly known as the UK has now turned over control of Basra to the Iraqis. The U.S. military is concerned about growing Iranian influence in the region.

Bolivia is edging towards civil war as little Chavistas attempt to permanently ensconce their hold on power.

A major review of our efforts in Afghanistan is being underway from the U.S. and NATO. That is good news, but at least two things are incredibly obvious. NATO needs to step up and we will never succeed in Afghanistan until we solve the problem of Pakistan’s safe havens.

Col. David Hunt on waterboarding and taping. I disagree but he’s always entertaining.

Randel Hoven, who describes himself as a small government conservative, now is calling for universal health coverage in the US. I feel guilty admitting that I agree with him. My problem is that I do not yet see how it can be tailored to still maintain quality and keep it from being an economy buster.

Russia, which has spent the last six years morphing politically into the Soviet Union, is trying to reclaim its lost glory on the interantional stage.

Two members of a prison-based Islamic terrorist cell that authorities say was poised to attack military sites, synagogues and other targets across Southern California pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to conspiring to wage war against the United States. Walid Phares, in his book Future Jihad, identified the prison system as a prime ground for Salafi brain washing and indoctrination, and that Salafists consider native Muslim converts as their best bet for encouraging terrorism in the US. And here we see it occurring. There is no place in our prison system for the teaching of Salafi Islam. (H/T Instapundit)

Some historic views of Islam collected at the The Gathering Storm. And in that regards, don’t miss this from Fred Thompson, nor this from Winston Churchill.

Hate crimes at Princeton – associated with the right of free speech. Not a surprise, just not very newsworthy, apparently. If only there were a fake noose involved . . .

And the bombing in Pakistan aimed at killing former PM Bhutto apparently involved explosives wired around an infant. Is it possible to be more barbaric?

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Of Islamist Foxes and British Chickens

One could analogize the utter insanity in Britain this week to putting the foxes in charge of the hen house, but that comparison falls far short of reality. The only danger of that fact pattern is that the farmer is out a few chickens. One needs instead to analogize to a fact pattern where the foxes radicalize the chickens and establish a heniphate on the entire farm.

The background to this story is that Britain has the most radicalized Muslim population west of the Danube. The reasons for that are fourfold. The UK is being innundated with Wahhabi Salafi Islam via countless sources; Britain's multicultural ethic forestalls any reasoned criticism of Islam; Britain has made criticism of Islam potentially criminal by passage of the Hate Speech laws; and, Britain's permissive immigration laws have allowed "radical" Islamists into the country. Polls taken last year show that “nearly 25% of British Muslims said the July 7, 2005, terror bombings in London, which killed 52 innocent commuters, were justified. Another 30% said they would prefer to live under strict Islamic Sharia law rather than England's democratic system.”

In a country that has a Muslim population of almost two million and growing, that is a real problem. There needs to be reform. But things break down right there for Labour. What will they reform? The multicultural ethos will not allow the chattering classes to analyze the problems presented by Islam and make critical judgments. Labour assumes that the problem cannot be systemic to Islam – because by default the culture itself must be equal to Western culture - and therefore must be the result of some anamoly. Thus unable to identify why their population is becoming increasingly radicalized, Labour has acted out of sheer, suicidal ignorance.

What I am refering to is yesterday's launch in Britain of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB). This highly influential group created by the government is supposed to help Labour get a handle on its Mosques. Specifically, MINAB is tasked with advising the government on the “suitability of Imams and scholars coming from abroad for employment in the UK” and producing the Islamic religious educational “standards.”

So who does Labour appoint to lead MINAB?

Two of the four organizations appointed to the MINAB are the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). They are the Islamic foxes just set down amongst the British chickens.

The MAB was founded by Dr Kamal Helbawy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood – itself a “Salafi jihadist organization” and the precursor to al Qaeda. The differences between the Brotherhood and al Qaeda are not in philosophy, goals, or objectives, but rather just methods (Walid Phares, Future Jihad, p. 64-65). Dr. Helbway is one of many Islamists Britain has welcomed with open arms whom the U.S. will not allow to enter the country. As to the leader of the MAB today, it is Dr Azzam Tamini. He is an equally qualified person to preside over all of Islam in Britain. He is a proponent of Hamas who has praised suicide bombings.

The MCB is no better. It is run by Dr. Mohammed Bari, a man about whom I have blogged recently for his outrageous remarks in an interview published in the Telegraph. His organization actively seeks to keep Muslims from integrating into British society and he is a proponent of implementing Sharia law in Britain, to include outlawing the public sale of alcohol and the stoning of adulterers. Moreover Dr. Bari and the leadership of the Muslim Council are linked to conservative Islamist movements in the Muslim world and in particular Pakistan's Jamaat-i-Islami, a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law. Jamaat-I-Islami is itself an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood (Phares, Future Jihad, p. 65).

And these are the people that Labour has just put in charge of the nation’s Muslims in an attempt to stop the process of radicalization? The sheer insanity of this is mind boggling. The only way to make the MINAB more of a radicaling force would be to add bin Laden to the board.

What the Labour government is missing is that there is no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim. The issues that are "radicalizing" a substantial minority of the British Muslim population are systemic to the dominant forms of Islam. They are not anamolies. Ayaan Hirsi Ali talked about this recently, and it is perhaps the most critical point our leadership on both sides of the pond needs to understand. When asked about “moderate” Muslims in a recent interview, she said:

‘I find the word “moderate” very misleading.’ There’s a touch of steel in Hirsi Ali’s voice. ‘I don’t believe there is such a thing as “moderate Islam”. I think it’s better to talk about degrees of belief and degrees of practice. The Koran is quite clear that it should control every area of life. If a Muslim chooses to obey only some of the Prophet’s commandments, he is only a partial Muslim. If he is a good Muslim, he will wish to establish Sharia law.’

Read the interview. I believe that is true, at least in as much as her observations pertain to Salafi Islam and Khomeinist Shia'ism. If you talk to "moderate" Muslims - the people you want as your friends and neighbors - they invariably talk about the "essence" of Islam as being both good and positive. I believe them completely. But it is clear that they are looking to the generalities and ignoring many of the orthodox interpretations. The black letter of the Koran and methods of interpretation of Salafi Islam go beyond this "essence" and lead directly back to 7th century Arabia. As I have written extensively here, if the systemic issues are ever to be addressesd, Islam must evolve and go through its period of Enlightenment.

Assuming the polls are accurate, the good news for Britain at the moment is that a majority of her Muslims fall into that category of “partial Muslims.” But putting the MAB and MCB in a position to influence Britain’s Muslim population is a sure guarantee that there will be no evolution of Islam in Britain, but there will be an ever growing population of “good Muslims.”

There are Muslims in the world today like Tawfiq Hamid and Zuhdi Jasser, voices in the wilderness at the moment, who are trying to evolve their faith. They need our full support. And they need to be the people who are appointed to MINAB. What Labour has just done is compound its problems with Islam exponentially. A few more decisions like that and, well, it may be time to get sized for that burkah.

Update: Robert Spencer makes a point similar to Ayaan Hirsi Ali in this article.

Update: And Ed Husain, a former member of Jamaat-i-Islami and friend of terrorist spiritual leader Omar Bakri, makes a similar point in an essay written in the Guardian stating:

. . . in Muslim scripture there are some unpalatable references. But these are to be seen in the context of their time. What remain valid are the eternal truths that Shatibi, Locke and others enunciated. Our humanity must transcend adherence to scriptural literalism, especially if it leads to mayhem and loss of innocent lives. . .

Read the article here. I do not know if Husain's suggetion of just ignoring parts of the Koran is workable, altough that is precisely what the "partial" or "moderate" Muslims do today. Those who seek a true evolution of their religion seek to do it through a formal process of ijtihad.

Update: And here is yet another article speaking to the problem of Koranic interpretation. This from the Washington Post about a young cleric in Egypt who is challenging the traditional interpretation of the Koran:

Masoud advocates adherence to prayer five times a day, peace toward all and abstinence from alcohol, sex outside of marriage and violence. Beyond those principles, he said, Islam is suffering from a "crisis of interpretation."

Read the article.

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