Al-Qaeda & the Muslim Brotherhood: United by Strategy, Divided by Tactics #Egypt

"For al-Qaeda, Egypt features prominently in the vision for an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and beyond. This is evident in previous statements made by al-Zawahiri. In his July 9, 2005 letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Zawahiri outlines a broad strategy for al-Qaeda in the Middle East. According to al-Zawahiri's plans, Iraq is only a foothold for establishing a greater Islamic caliphate to include Syria and Egypt (DNI.gov, October 11, 2005). "

"On January 6 [2006], al-Zawahiri, former leader of Egypt's Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda's leading strategist, recorded a videotape released on al-Jazeera television. Referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, although not specifying the organization by name, and sarcastically alluding to the position of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak regime, al-Zawahiri states, "Today you are winning 80 seats and after five years you will win 100 seats. Hence, at whatever time your behavior improves, we will offer you more. Once you become secular and falsely affiliated with Islam…we will let you assume power provided that you forget about the rule of Sharia, welcome the Crusaders' bases in your countries, and acknowledge the existence of the Jews who are fully armed with nuclear weapons, which you are banned to possess."

Read more:   http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=714&tx_ttnews[backPid]=181&no_cache=1

Muslim Brotherhood Influence in the United Kingdom #Egypt #Tahrir #Jan25

The expansion of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) in the 1960s happened mainly due to Saudi funding, with King Faisal - an anti-Semite and pan-Islamist who ruled from 1964 to 1975 - donating funds to Ikhwan groups abroad. According to Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui of Britain's Muslim Parliament:

 

"In 1965 when there was conflict between Nasser and Faisal over the leadership of Muslim Brotherhood, a deal was struck between the Muslim Brothers and Saudi Arabia, that Saudis would give jobs and protection to the Muslim Brother leadership and in return the Muslim Brothers would mobilise Islamic movements in support of the Saudis. They got together for the glory and leadership of Saudi Arabia as the custodian of two holy places of Islam."

 

One of the first Muslim Brotherhood da'wah groups in the UK was FOSIS, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. According to its website, it was founded in 1962, while its Facebook page claims it was formed in 1963. FOSIS has made English language editions of works by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian MB. The last book they published on this matter was based on Banna's "Letter to a Muslim" which they produced in 1995.

 

One of the seven founders of FOSIS, Malaysian-born Dato Muhammad Iqbal is also involved with a group called Made in Europe, which claims to fight climate change and bring people together "to achieve social justice and peace in our increasingly troubled world." The chairman of Made in Europe is Khalid Sofi, who is a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, who was formerly a director of Muslim Aid. The Muslim Aid charity was founded by Yussuf Islam (Cat Stevens) in 1984 and in 2004 Muslim Aid became a member of the Union of Good (pdf) coalition of charities. The Union of Good ('I'tilaf al-Khayr) is headed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was designated as a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury on December 11, 2008.

 

Read more:  http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8659/pub_detail.asp

The Cartoon Jihad - The Muslim Brotherhood's project for dominating the West and #Egypt #Tahrir #Jan25

IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that the recent murderous protests over cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September were anything but spontaneous. The actions of Islamist agitators and financiers have deliberately drummed up rage among far-flung extremists otherwise ignorant of the Danish press. The usual suspects--the regimes in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran--have profited from the spread of the disorders, and even the likes of tiny Kuwait has reportedly offered funds to spur demonstrations throughout France. More important, however, and perhaps less widely understood, the cartoon jihad is tailor-made to advance the Muslim Brotherhood's long-term worldwide strategy for establishing Islamic supremacy in the West.

As first reported by the Italian terrorism expert Lorenzo Vidino on the Counterterrorism Blog, one of Denmark's leading Islamists, Imam Ahmed Abu-Laban, led a delegation late last year to visit influential figures in the Muslim world. He took with him a dossier of cartoons, both those that had been published and others, much more offensive, of dubious provenance. One place he took his road show was Qatar, where he briefed Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a star of Al Jazeera.

Even after the riots began, Abu-Laban continued his meddling. On February 4, he told Islamonline.net that Danish demonstrators were going to burn Korans in the streets of Copenhagen, a falsehood that nevertheless added fuel to the fire.

Muslim Brotherhood text reveals scope of radical creed #Egypt #Tahrir #Jan25

One of the greatest beneficiaries of the unrest in Egypt has been the Muslim Brotherhood.

Banned but tolerated for decades by successive Egyptian regimes, the Islamist movement is now emerging as a central player in the country’s resurgent opposition.

 Read more:  http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=207415

Deepwater Spill Was Just an Excuse

Shutting down domestic oil production is something the Hard Left has sought for decades.  

"The problem the U.S. faces, of course, is not too much overseas competition per se from adversaries like Cuba or China. It is domestic restrictions and regulations that restrict the nation’s ability to drill for its own oil and natural gas. This has been a long time coming.
According to data collected by the Energy Information Agency (EIA), in 1970 the U.S. produced 9.6 million barrels of oil every day. Now only 5.5 million barrels are produced a day, a 42 percent decrease. So precipitous has this decline been that the U.S., which was once energy independent, now imports more than half of its energy.
Making matters worse, since the deepwater Gulf oil spill of 2010, government’s iron grip around drilling has only tightened.
“[N]ot a single deepwater permit has been issued in nine months,” said Offshore Marine Service Association President Jim Adams in a report by Bloomberg News. The association is calling it an informal moratorium, even though Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar supposedly lifted a second government moratorium on deepwater drilling.
In fact, so rampant has the Obama Administration’s obstruction of U.S. drilling been that federal Judge Martin Feldman blocked Salazar’s first moratorium from being implemented, and then found the government in contempt of court because it refused to follow the order."

Read more:  http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=3057

Cut the Department of Education and we save $80Billion

Union PACs will never let that happen.

The mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government. State and local governments, parents, and teachers are far better equipped to meet the needs of their students than this red-tape laden department, which benefits teachers’ unions more than pupils. However, Pell Grants will be preserved in this proposal.

The Department of Education has increasingly meddled with the more traditional idea of education being tailored to the needs and requirement of communities and states. The growth in education spending at the federal level has gone from nearly $53 billion in 2001 to an estimated $95 billion in FY2011 – an 80 percent increase. When the federal government spends money, those are resources that are drained from the state, diluted by way of large Washington bureaucracy, and sent back to the school districts with red tape and strings attached.

During the first half of the past century, America ranked among the most educated population in the world. Since that time, the role of the federal government in education has expanded significantly, at one point (FY2009) accounting for10 percent of all government spending. The expansion of the role of the federal government in education has been detrimental, as the U.S. now ranks far below other economically developed countries. In December 2010, the OECD reported that the U.S. ranked 14 th in reading skills, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics (considered below average) out of 35 developed nations.

Misconception or Betrayal? The U.S., Egypt, and Iran

The similarities between Iran and Egypt concerning U.S. policy are disconcerting.  Is Egypt repeating the 1979 Iranian revolution, led by religious preaching against authoritarian friend of the U.S., the shah, resulting in an Islamic theocracy?  Will the Islamic theocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood win, or will the military keep its political power?  

At the beginning, the U.S. supported the shah in Iran and Mubarak in Egypt overtly, but pressured them to democratize and liberalize the regimes covertly.  Both the shah and Mubarak declined, claiming of outside (the communists) and inside (the Muslim Brotherhood) threats, respectively.

The politics of Islamic disguise (Taqiyah)

Both branches of the Muslim Brotherhood brilliantly practiced Islamic Taqiyah to hide their real intentions and political ambitions amidst the mass uprisings.

...

What Mubarak and the shah both failed to understand is never to make concessions when one is weak, because it just increases the appetite for more concessions.  What the U.S. has not understood is that its pressures are disastrous, since they encourage the opposition to believe that the regime has lost its legitimacy and support on the international arena.  The most dangerous analogy between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011 is how the dangers of a new radical Islamic regime are deeply misunderstood.  Cairo 2011 is more likely to become Tehran 1979 than Berlin 1989, and the big question remains: would Obama even care if Egypt becomes another Iran?

Read more at:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/misconception_or_betrayal_the.html

Egypt is home to two-thirds of the Christian population in the Middle East.

While those of us are mindful that there are Egyptians who legitmately protest for a democratic Egypt, the Christians of that nation fear that there may be a possible Islamic takeover of the government, since the Muslim Brotherhood have taken a huge part in the demonstrations in Egypt.
Issam Bishara, Vice President for Pontifical Mission activities in Egypt wrote about his concerns about Muslim Brotherhood:

“Though some of the primary opposition leaders in this revolt appear to be modern secular reformers, church leaders believe the main engine fueling and organizing the demonstrators is the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bishara wrote. “They fear that the brotherhood intends to seize power through future elections, compromising all patriotic and ideological parties participating in the protests…
“Coptic Christians — as well as Egypt’s Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Latin, Maronite and Melkite Greek Catholics — all fear a fate similar to that of Iraq’s Christians.” Bishara stated, recalling how a power vacuum in that country “left its minorities, especially the Christians, marginalized and exposed to the terror of Islamic extremists and criminals.”

Nina Shea, an international human rights lawyer who directs the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. pleaded for Westerners to stop regarding the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate group. Shea points to the group’s history and trend towards radicalization in Egypt.

“The Muslim Brotherhood started off in Egypt, during the 1920s, with violent tendencies and violent tactics,” Shea recounted. “It shifted those tactics, as it was repressed, to moderate ones. In other places where it flourished – like in Gaza, or Sudan – it’s been anything but moderate.”
“They’re very tactically-minded,” she acknowledged. “In the short term, for tactical reasons, I would expect them to be moderate. But in the medium-term, they would revert to their roots” – including their core principle of imposing Islamic law throughout Egypt.

Remember, Egypt is home to two-thirds of the Christian population in the Middle East.

Egyptian Christians worry over possible radical Islam takeover

While some in the media are trying to paint the Muslim Brotherhood as a “moderate” group, Egyptian Christians are warning Westerners to not be fooled.
Egyptian Christians are voicing their worries over the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in the demonstrations and their possible takeover of the Egyptian government.

How about the rights of Christians in military?

A former Navy chaplain has launched a petition drive aimed at defending military chaplains and Christian troops from persecution by proponents of homosexuality.

In December, Lt. Col. Stacy L. Maxey (USAF), who is stationed in Afghanistan, wrote a letter to the editor of Stars and Stripes arguing that the Department of Defense has now become the "Department of Double Standards," in telling service members who have a problem with the homosexual lifestyle to "learn to deal with it," while at the same time allowing homosexuals to "parade their lifestyle choices in front of all."

Maxey went on to write that he has a higher commitment to God than to the Department of Defense -- and that if officials there are upset with his comments, they can "learn to deal with it." Groups like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have criticized the Air Force officer for his comments, demanding Maxey be punished for insubordination.

Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain who was discharged from the service in 2007 after praying in Jesus' name while in uniform, now runs "The Pray In Jesus Name Project." He has launched an online fax petition campaign aimed at protecting the religious expression of chaplains and other religious troops.

"Now that homosexuals are coming out and being blatant and flaunting their homosexual lifestyle, do the Christian troops have a right to separate shower facilities? Separate sleeping quarters? To not be sexually harassed on the job by somebody who's hitting on them?" he wonders.

"We need protection for Christian troops," he continues, "and that's why we're asking Congressman Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) and Congressman Mike McIntyre (D-North Carolina) to strengthen the laws to at least give Christians the same right to be open about their religious faith as the homosexuals now have to be open about their aberrant lifestyle."

In addition, Klingenschmitt is convinced the Pentagon wants to purge evangelical, Bible-preaching chaplains from the service by giving them an ultimatum -- "reconcile" with homosexual sin, or quit.

Obama vs. Mubarak

"the Muslim Brotherhood has the most to lose if its old enemy, Mubarak, stays on, ensures stability and oversees the transition, while the democratic opposition forces have the most to gain. Inconceivably, though, with the stakes so high, it appears this is not what the White House wants."

Read more at: http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2011/02/obama-vs-mubarak.html

Judge uses Obama’s words against him

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, ‘If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of his 78-page ruling Monday.

Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.

The footnote was attached to the most critical part of Judge Vinson‘s ruling, in which he said the “principal dispute” in the case was not whether Congress has the power to tackle health care, but rather whether it has the power to compel individual citizens to purchase insurance.

Liberal Seek Ban on Metaphors In Wake of Arizona Shooting

by Ann Coulter

Needless to say, no conservative has called for violence against anyone. Nor has any conservative engaged in any "rhetoric" that was likely to lead to violence. Every putative example of "violent rhetoric" these squeamish liberals produce keeps being matched by an identical example from the Democrats.

Sarah Palin, for example, had a chart of congressional districts being targeted by Republicans. So did the Democratic Leadership Committee. Indeed, Democratic consultant Bob Beckel went on Fox News and said he invented the bull's-eye maps.

Similarly, every time liberals produce an example of military lingo from a Republican -- "we're going to target this district" -- Republicans produce five more from the Democrats.

Read more at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41150

Only the Educated Should Be Allowed to Vote

Stupid people should not vote. How can one argue otherwise? In a nation where everyone has an equal chance to make something of their life provided they are determined to do so, I say it is fundamentally wrong to award

 the lazy or ignorant with the same rights as the hard worker and intellectual. That in of itself is a crime against democracy and a crime against intellect.

Read more:  http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/44051/only_the_educated_should_be_allowed_pg2.html?cat=9

Is WikiLeaks a Terrorist Organization?

Would Restrict First Amendment Freedoms  Think Progress's Matthew Yglesias points out, "the rule is that it’s illegal to be the guy with legal access to classified information who passes it on to outsiders, but once you receive the leak you’re free to do what you want with it." Considering Assange a terrorist "would, it seems to me, necessarily entail challenging our current understanding of the First Amendment. ... King’s suggestion that we designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization is in part grandstanding and in part an effort to devise a way to begin restricting freedom of the press."

Read more:  http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Is-WikiLeaks-a-Terrorist-Organization-5978

"The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is." - Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

Asked what his "moral calculus" was to justify publishing the leaks and whether he considered what he was doing to be "civil disobedience," Assange said, "Not at all. This organization practices civil obedience, that is, we are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction." As for whether WikiLeaks was breaking the law, he said, "We have now in our four-year history, and over 100 legal attacks of various kinds, been victorious in all of those matters." He added, "It's very important to remember the law is not what, not simply what, powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is." - Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2033771,00.html#ixzz16s9spU3I

VID: SNL Skit on TSA Enhanced Security Procedures #tsa #tyner #grope #wontfly

Since the TSA molested my family, why doesn’t Obama volunteer to subject his family to the same security procedures?

Two weeks ago, my wife flew alone out to Colorado with our two young children. Unaware that the TSA had instituted new and incredibly invasive new security procedures, my wife called me distressed after getting frisked by the TSA. Or as my wife put it, “in some cultures I would be married to my screener by now.” She was joking, but make no mistake — my wife was incredibly disturbed by how intimate a security pat down she received.
So here’s my not-so-modest proposal: If the President’s Homeland Security department is so adamant that this is the absolute best way to prevent terrorism, I think the President and his family should voluntarily submit to one of the new invasive pat down procedures. I know the Obamas don’t fly commercial at all these days, so they should probably get a pretty good idea what the rest of us are putting up with.


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/since-the-tsa-molested-my-family-why-doesnt-obama-volunteer-to-subject-his-family-to-the-same-security-procedures-108480699.html#ixzz15lR7CJO1

Does the TSA Ever Catch Terrorists? If they do, for some reason they won't admit it.

Writing in Slate on Thursday, political reporter David Weigel identified a "full-blown revolt against the TSA." On Saturday, would-be passenger John Tyner refused an airport security pat-down with the now-famous phrase "if you touch my junk I'm going to have you arrested"; Texas congressman Ron Paul introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act to establish "that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law"; and several groups have designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 (the day before Thanksgiving), National Opt-Out Day against invasive body scanners. According to the TSA's Web site, new security measures like full-body scanners are just part of its mission "to prevent any terrorist or criminal activity"—but have TSA screeners ever actually prevented a terrorist attack?

Read more at Slate

VID: Raw Foods Raid - The Fight For the Right To Eat What You Want

This summer armed government agents raided Rawesome Foods, a Venice, California health food co-op. What were the agents after? Unpasteurized milk, it turns out.