Hamas vs Fatah

October 14, 2004
U.S. Antisemitism Bill Passes, CAIR Opposed
by Joe Katzman at October 14, 2004 3:39 AM

The bill, known as the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (H.R. 4230), was introduced by Congressman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), the only Holocaust survivor serving in the Congress, in response to the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East. The bill was passed by both Congress and the Senate, and requires the State Department to compile an annual report on anti-Semitism around the world, and establishes an office within the department to focus on the issue.

Now comes the part worth paying special attention to.

The U.S. State Department tried to stall the bill until presure forced it to relent, and CAIR opposed the bill outright, providing a neat parallel to the Arab countries who are opposing a 2004 U.N. resolution condemning anti-semitism (a 2003 resolution was defeated through their efforts).

That pretty much tells you all you need to know about CAIR, and the ingrained nature of hatred in today's Muslim ummah. But if you want more about CAIR's record, here's more.

 

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/

* * * *
*U.S. Senator Richard Durbin: "[CAIR is] unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations
with groups that are suspect"

*U.S. Senator Charles Schumer: "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism"
"intimate links with Hamas"

Statements From Sept. 2003 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Technology and Homeland Security

* * * *
Since its founding in 1994, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired,
and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), the
Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (“HLF”), the Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”), and foreign
nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations,
to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. The Council on American-Islamic Relations,
and certain of its officers, directors, and employees, have acted in support of, and in furtherance of, this conspiracy.
(From "Response" To CAIR)

-- Points to Ponder --
CAIR Employees And Officials Support Terror

Senior CAIR employee Randall Todd Royer, a/k/a “Ismail” Royer, pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty years in prison
for participating in a network of militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia. He admitted to aiding and abetting three persons
who sought training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan for the purpose of waging jihad against American troops in Afghanistan.
Royer’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed with CAIR

CAIR's Director of Community Relations, Bassem Khafagi , was arrested by the United States due to his ties with a
terror-financing front group. Khafagi pled guilty to charges of visa and bank fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt.
Khafagi’s illegal actions occurred while he was employed by CAIR.

On December 18, 2002, Ghassan Elashi, founding board member of CAIR-Texas, a founder of the Holy Land Foundation,
and a brother-in-law of Musa Abu Marzook , was arrested by the United States and charged with, among other things,
making false statements on export declarations, dealing in the property of a designated terrorist organization, conspiracy
and money laundering. Ghassan Elashi committed his crimes while working at CAIR, and was found Guilty.

CAIR Board Member Imam Siraj Wahaj, an un-indicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing,
has called for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate, and warned that America will crumble
unless it accepts Islam.

Rabih Haddad served as a CAIR Fundraiser. Haddad was co-founder of the Global Relief Foundation (“GRF”).
GRF was designated by the US Treasury Department for financing the Al Qaida and other terrorist organizations
and its assets were frozen by the US Government on December 14, 2001.

Consistent with Hamas ideology, CAIR has served as a conduit for the distribution of materials and funds from foreign nationals
to groups and institutions within the United States for the purpose of promoting radical Islam and Hamas ideology,
and attacked Islamic clerics and scholars who reject radical Islam and the Hamas agenda.

* * * *
“Let there be no doubt that the Council on American-Islamic Relations
is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded
by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the
implementation of Sharia law in America.”
* * * *

 

Introducing:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)


Omar Ahmad (Click Photo)
Co-Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
President and CEO of Silicon Expert Technologies.
Former Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) Officer.

Captured on FBI surveillance tapes at Hamas meetings in the United States during 1993
explaining that the IAP could not, for political reasons, admit its support for Hamas,
and then discussing how the Hamas agenda could be cloaked and advanced.

"Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn't in America to
be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book
of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only
accepted religion on Earth."

"Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide," ...
"They kill themselves for Islam."
(Ahmad Praises Suicide Bombers)

Awad
Nihad Awad (Click Photo)
Executive Director
Former Public Relations Director for the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP).
A Palestinian born in Jordan and now a U.S. citizen.

"I am in support of the Hamas movement."

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,
just as it obliterated others before it" - Hamas Charter


Ibrahim Hooper (Click Photo)
CAIR Spokesperson
"CAIR does not support these groups publicly."
(Hooper comments on CAIR's record of supporting Hamas,
Hezbullah and other official terrorist groups)

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


Ahmed Bedier (Click Photo)
CAIR-Florida Communications Director
"We are to the American Muslim community what the NAACP is to blacks
in America. If you attack us, you are attacking the Muslim community
and the religion of Islam in this country."

"Catholic priests pose more of a terrorism threat by having sex
with young altar boys than those who flew planes
into the World Trade Center."


Dr. Parvez Ahmed (Click Photo)
CAIR Chairman
“People who make statements connecting CAIR to terrorism should understand
the legal consequences of their attempted slander and defamation.
The First Amendment does not protect defamation.”


Ahmad Al-Akhras (Click photo)
CAIR Vice-Chairman
"What has happened in Somalia, for the majority of Somalis inside
and those who are abroad, is a positive change."


Randall "Ismail" Royer
CAIR-National Civil Rights Coordinator
& Communications Specialist
*CONVICTED*
Committed Terrorist Crimes while working for CAIR


Ghassan Elashi
Founder Of CAIR-Texas
*CONVICTED*
Committed Terrorist Crimes while working for CAIR

 

No long multi post cut and past rant about these guys?

http://www.freemuslims.org/

certainly all muslims are evil, get to work and discredit them as well

I expect 15 pages of cut and paste by tommorow chosen one...

 

Backs Down From Anti-CAIR

In brief, Whitehead won a sweet victory, while CAIR suffered a humiliating defeat ...In anticipation of a court hearing regarding discovery, Rubinstein filed papers in the Virginia Circuit Court in October 2005 and December 2005 alleging extensive links between CAIR’s organizers and control group with Hamas and other foreign and domestic Islamists. Among other things, these papers alleged: CAIR’s lineage goes back to a key Hamas leader (Musa Abu Marzook), and that CAIR has long been connected with, and “exploited” the 9/11 attacks to raise money for the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas front group. CAIR is heavily supported, financially and otherwise, by suspect Saudi and UAE-based individuals and groups. CAIR states that the U.S. judicial system has been “kidnapped by Israeli interests,”... In March 2006, shortly before a scheduled court hearing to decide on several of Whitehead’s requests (compelling CAIR to disclose its financial data, to answer questions about its relationship with Hamas and other Islamists, and to provide information regarding its leaders’ activities and intentions), the case was settled and then dismissed with prejudice by stipulation (meaning, the plaintiff has agreed to forever drop all of the claims that were in, or could have been in, the complaint) ... According to CAIR’s own analysis of Whitehead’s initial statements, they “impute the commission of a criminal offense” by CAIR, in that these suggest CAIR “actively supports” terrorists, and advocates the “overthrow” of the U.S. Constitution in favor of Islamic law. It bears noting that none of these words were found to be false, they were not retracted, and they remain posted on Anti-CAIR’s website ...

 

I don't know about them, but I'm interested in learning about a moderate Islamic group. So I'll look. I just happen to actually know the facts on the other two I saw thus far.

You would have to agree though, that CAIR is a Hamas front organization

 

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/ImamFMAT.wmv

Here is one of your moderates, but not a organization does he make.

 

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/muslimimamhatespeech.rm

This, OTOH is not so moderate....

 

Democratic Muslims
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderate_Muslims

Naser Khader

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naser_Khader

Irshad Manji

Abdelwahab Meddeb of the Sorbonne wrote the evocatively titled Malady of Islam, in which he compares militant Islam to Nazism.

Akbar Ahmed wrote Islam Under Siege, calling for Muslims to respect non-Muslims.

Other outspoken academics include

Saadollah Ghaussy of Sophia University in Tokyo,

Husain Haqqani of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,

Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario

Khaleel Mohammad of San Diego State University.

Journalists such as Tashbih Sayyid of Pakistan Today

Khalid Durán.

Islamic Supreme Council of America

the Council for Democracy and Tolerance

the American Islamic Congress

the Society for Humanity and Islam in America

the Atatürk Society

the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a Saudi national who is general manager of Al-‘Arabiya news channel:

he writes:

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. …
We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.
We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.
We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges"

Anouar Boukhars writes:

Terrorism is a Muslim problem, and refusal to admit so is indeed troubling. As Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, rightly put it, "[T]his is not the time to stir up anti-American sentiments, or sermonize over U.S. foreign policy." It is time to ask "how, in the 21st century, the Muslim world could have produced a bin Laden."

Ahmed al-Baghdadi: outspoken reformer

 

For the little I can on their website, I'm impressed with the Free Muslims Society, and one key thing I read is their blanket recognition of Democratic priniciples and the importance of secularization in government, as well as forthright acknokledgement of Jewish rights to their home land. Upon this kind of thinking a peace in the Middle East can be rather quickly brought forward. However, this website is not respresentive of the Muslim world today. It does make my day brighter to readthat link. We can only hope to be not disappointed in the future by them.

Ruben

 

I don't know about the others.

 

CAIRO -- The condemnation of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by the Islamic Commission of Spain on the first anniversary of the train bombings in Madrid that took 200 lives is making waves throughout the Muslim world.

The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics.

In a recent interview with the Qatari daily newspaper Al-Raya, for example, Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, the former dean of Shariah and law at the University of Qatar, urged his fellow Muslims to purge their heritage of fanaticism and adopt "new civilized humane thought."

Such humane thought, he said, "must be translated [into deeds] in educational ways, via the media, tolerant religious discourse, nondiscriminatory policy and just legislation."

"We must purge the school curricula of all sectarian implications and elements according to which others deviate from the righteous path and the truth is in our hands alone. We must enrich the curricula with the values of tolerance and acceptance of the other who is different [in school of faith, ethnic group, religion, nationality or sex].

"The political regime must refrain from sectarian or ethnic preference; it must respect the rights and liberties of the minorities and must guarantee them through legislative action, practical policy and equal opportunity in the areas of education, media and civil positions."


Nevertheless, the reaction to the Spanish fatwa astonished its authors, who were swamped with e-mail messages of congratulations.

"I couldn't even read them all -- there's at least a thousand, maybe more," said Mansur Escudero, secretary-general of the Islamic Commission of Spain. "The tone was nearly all the same: 'It's about time someone did it. Bravo!' "

Says Khaled Abou El Fadl, an authority on Islamic law at the University of California at Los Angeles: "The long and painful silence of moderate theologians and experts in Islam jurisprudence -- who had been bought off or intimidated into silence -- is finally starting to break apart. We are seeing signs of a counter-jihad."

 

Most acceptable to the Jewish community is Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, based in Detroit and Washington, D.C., an exemplar of tolerance who has spoken out forcefully against all forms of terrorism and in favor of a negotiated settlement in the Middle East.

 

spain



Islamic groups in the North African autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla manifested extreme antisemitic behavior during the year 2001, especially after the September 11 events, including attacks on Jewish targets. Some neo-fascist groups in Spain celebrated the September 11 attacks and joined Islamic and pro-Palestinian groups in demonstrations against the US and Israel.


the jewish community

The Jewish population of Spain numbers 14,000 out of a total population of 39.1 million. The main Jewish centers are Madrid (3,500) and Barcelona (3,500). Smaller communities are located in other cities and towns, notably Málaga, as well as Ceuta and Melilla in Spanish North Africa.

The Federación de Comunidades Israelitas de España (Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain) represents Jewish interests to the government. There are Jewish day schools in Barcelona, Madrid and Málaga. A cultural journal, Raíces (Roots) appears regularly. The Segovia-Israel Association of Cultural Relations studies the influence of Jewish culture in Spain.


political parties and extra-parliamentary groups
Political Parties

The leading radical right-wing party is Democracia Nacional (National Democracy –DN), which emulates Jean-Marie Le Pen’s French Front National. It emerged in 1995 after the dissolution of CEDADE and the Juntas Españolas of Juan Peligro. In addition to activists from those defunct groups, its leaders include members of Accion Radical, Nacion Joven, Vanguardia Nacional Revolucionaria and Bases Autonomas. The DN’s ideology is openly xenophobic, rejecting separatism from Spain, as well as the existing party system and the European Union.

DN leader Francisco Perez Corrales is the visible head of España 2000, which DN formed with three other far right parties – Partido Nacional de los Trabajadores (National Workers Party – PNT), Movimiento Social Republicano and Vertice Social Español – to run in the March 2000 elections. The alliance won only 0.04 percent of the vote (see also ASW 2000/1).

Small traditionalist fascist parties such as Falange Española de las Jons, Falange Española Independiente (FEI) and Falange Española Autentica are concerned mainly with their own survival, with each polling well under 0.1 percent of the vote in the 2000 elections. Falange Española de las Jons experienced some growth due to the absorption of groups such as Nacion Joven, Resistencia Nacional de la Juventud and Patria Libre. Confederacion de ex combatientes is an umbrella organization linking associations of veterans who yearn for Spain’s fascist past.

Extra-parliamentary Groups

The neo-fascist Alternativa Europea, Resistencia and Red Vértice constitute the Movimiento Social Republicano (Social Republican Movement – MSR), founded in mid- 2000. Led by Juan Antonio Llopart and Juan Antonio Aguilar, the MSR has been actively pro-Palestinian, participating in demonstrations together with non-governmental organizations and Islamic groups after the September 11 attacks and the military operation in Afghanistan. At these events, supporters bore placards saying, “Palestine will overcome” and “Against the [US] Terrorist War: Neither war nor NATO. No to intervention.”

In addition, the MSR joined the xenophobic protests of residents of Almeria against the establishment of a Moroccan consulate there and attended rallies organized by racist groups such as Blood & Honour. Within the MSR, Resistencia is the most outspokenly pro-Palestinian group and it clearly demonstrated support for the September 11 attacks.

Rex is a cultural association created to rehabilitate the Belgian Waffen-SS general Leon Degrelle, the spiritual mentor of the Spanish neo-Nazi movement who died in Spain in 1994. The association publishes a magazine edited by the lawyer and academic José Luis Jerez Riesco, who was a close collaborator of Degrelle.

Jerez Riesco, a well-known right wing activist, was formerly connected to the neo-Nazi Fuerza Nueva and CEDADE (see ASW 1994 and subsequent reports). An article published in November 2001 by the magazine Interviu, entitled “The ‘Conversion’ to Islam of Spanish Far Rightists,” claimed that Jerez Riesco worked as the judicial consultant of the Spanish Union of Islamic Communities (UCIDE), one of the two major associations of Muslims in Spain. In June 2001 he spoke at a colloquium in a Parisian mosque on Islam in Europe. On the program he was listed as Jose Luis-Manzur Jerez Riesco, the “Manzur” indicating he had converted to Islam. His relationship to French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy was revealed when he wrote the foreword to the Spanish version of The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics.

It should be noted in connection with far right support of Islamic/Arab actions that an Internet report of September 2001 of the Solidarity Committee with the Arab Cause denounced Nazi/fascist infiltration of the Palestinian support movement. The committee reiterated that not everything was acceptable in the struggle and that it was intolerable that just demands of the Palestinians were being manipulated to revive and justify Nazi/fascist and anti-Jewish positions.


Islamist Groups

The Islamic association Badr engages in religious instruction of Muslim children in Melilla, an autonomous city in North Africa, and is considered close to Islamic fundamentalism. The association was formed in the early 1990s by Mustafa Aberchan, leader of the Coalition for Melilla (CpM) and former president of the autonomous city (1999–2000). Allegations of its involvement in attacks in 2001 against a Christian church, a synagogue and the Jewish cemetery (see below) were denied by Abdelkader Mohamed Ali, spokesman of Badr and former representative of the Spanish party Izquierda Unida in the European Parliament. Ali labeled the attack on the Jewish cemetery “repugnant” and “a barbarian act inappropriate for a Muslim.”

In June 2001 police arrested an Algerian national, Mohamed Bensakhria, allegedly a close collaborator of Usama bin Ladin. Another Algerian arrested in Spain, Mohamed Belazziz, had been selected to take part in a suicide bombing in Paris against the US embassy and cultural center.

Following the September 11 attacks, Spanish police dissolved several cells of the Grupo Salafista para la Predicación y el Combate (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), a splinter group of the Algerian terrorist GIA (see ASW 1997/8).

In November, police in Madrid and Granada arrested eleven Muslims, mostly of Spanish nationality. The operation was aimed at dismantling a terrorist infrastructure presumably linked to al-Qa‘ida. A Spaniard of Syrian origin, Imaz Edin Barakat Yarbas (Abu Dada), head of the group, appeared to be the representative of bin Ladin’s organization in Spain. According to the Interior Ministry, they engaged in recruiting young Islamic radicals and sending them to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia. They also collected money to finance the mujahedin movements, often with stolen credit cards, and provided forged identity cards, support and infrastructure to fellow members.

The police increased their surveillance over certain radical Islamic groups after they received evidence that one of the suicide pilots was in Spain a few days before the 11 September attack. Until then, the Spanish police and intelligence services had been convinced that Islamic terrorists used Spain only as a safe resting place or as a bridge to the rest of Europe, but investigations have revealed that Spain has been a “logistical center for Europe,” where Islamic extremists obtain sophisticated equipment, organize clandestine meetings and plan attacks.


ANTISEMITIC AND RACIST ACTIVITIES
The Aftermath of 11 September

The governmental crisis committee formed in Spain in the wake of the September 11 attacks, ordered increased surveillance over “sensitive” places (embassies, military bases and airports) and declared a state of maximum alert in the country and in the autonomous North African cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

In Ceuta Muslim youths celebrated the attacks by burning the US flag, displaying the Palestinian one and shouting anti-Jewish slogans. On 14 September, Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Catholic church and the window of a Jewish shop was smashed. Antisemitic slogans were scrawled on a Jewish shop on 15–16 September and children threw stones and eggs at a synagogue during the Jewish New Year (18 Sept.). The Spanish government sent reinforcements to Ceuta, partly to protect the Jewish community during the New Year celebrations.

The local government played down the seriousness of the attacks. According to official sources, radical Muslims in Ceuta, allegedly connected to the drug trafficking Mafia, were creating a climate of agitation in the city in order to distract security forces from the clandestine traffic of hashish.

In Melilla the Jewish cemetery was desecrated on 23 September. When the president of the Jewish community and some journalists arrived to inspect the damage, a group of Arab youths shouted “Jewish pigs” and pro-bin-Ladin slogans. Municipal workers who came to clean graffiti from the wall of the cemetery were stoned and had to receive police protection. In addition, rocks and bottles were thrown at the synagogue and “Death to the Jews” was scrawled on the walls. Pro-bin Ladin slogans also appeared on a Catholic church. Twelve Arab boys, allegedly supporters of Badr, were detained for these offenses and later released.

A spokesman for the Islamic Commission of Melilla branded the Moroccan ulemas (religious scholars) who pronounced a fatwa (religious edict) against supporting a US attack on Afghanistan as “fundamentalist.” He advised Melilla’s imams not to announce the fatwa in the city’s mosques because it might be understood as “justifying terrorism.” One Melilla imam urged his faithful to defend Afghanistan and to dissociate themselves from “skeptics” – “Christians, Jews, Hindus and idolaters” – whom he denounced. The representative of the Melilla government sent a translation of this sermon to the Spanish attorney general in order to determine whether it constituted a crime.

On the Spanish mainland, leaders of the Islamic community condemned the September 11 attacks but doubted they were the work of Usama bin Ladin or of Muslims. On 21 September, the imam of Valencia told worshipers: “All the evidence shows that the Jews are guilty.”


Insults and Propaganda

Antisemitic remarks by the world president of the Internet company Terra Lycos, Joaquin Agut, were reported by the journalist Jesus Cacho in the magazine Epoca (no. 836). According to Cacho, at a dinner in honor of a former director of the Terra company, Agut maintained: “I have done business with Jews all my life and they have always tried to deceive me.” He went on to say: “If someone has any problem with Jews he should tell me, I have some cousins in Sicily who will take care of them.” He also made some disparaging references to the Holocaust.

Representatives of the Spanish Jewish community demanded a public explanation from Agut and an investigation by Cesar Alierta, president of Telefónica, which owns 35 percent of Terra Lycos. The American Jewish Congress (AJC) and B’nai B’rith International also sent letters of protest. In mid-March, Alierta published a communiqué in the media categorically denying that the alleged remarks had been made. The AJC decided to accept his statement, in a communiqué published in New York on 28 March.

Antisemitic cartoons were published in the leading Spanish newspaper El Pais. On 23 May Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was shown standing beside a muse holding a moustache. The caption read: “Cleo, muse of history putting Hitler’s moustache on Ariel Sharon.” On May 24 another cartoon depicted a caricature of an ultra-Orthodox Jew holding a flag, a holy book and a rifle. The caption read: “We are the chosen people of weapons factories.”

In June 2001 Muslims in Melilla participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. They chanted antisemitic slogans and carried placards reading, “Jews, dregs of humanity,” “[Jews] You are going to die,” Hebrews, you kill four thousand people a day,” and “Hebrews are pigs.” Israeli flags were burned, swastikas were displayed, and the youngest demonstrators (some only aged only five or six) offered their “chests against Zionist bullets.” NATO, the European Union, the UN and the US were described as “friends of the Zionist invaders and enemies of the Muslims.” The Islamic association Badr allegedly declared its support for the demonstration.

Dismissal of workers in May from the Potasa factory in Barcelona provoked antisemitic accusations from workers. The factory was bought by the Israeli Dead Sea Works in 1999. Workers burned down the house of a manager, drew swastikas on the walls and wrote: “We are not Palestinians: go back to Israel.” Employers and employees held meetings to reduce tensions..



Internet

Shortly after 11 September 2001, the Florida-based server Stormfront of the American White Supremacist Don Black struck the Spanish neo-Nazi Nuevorden (www.nuevorden.org) off its client list, explaining in Spanish:



We have watched with deep anger and disgust the unfeigned joy with which many “patriots” from Spain and from other countries have welcomed the attack against our own country, which has so far given you the opportunity to put information on line through this site. Thousands of my fellow countrymen have been killed by Arabs, who also invade your country and threaten the entire West. However, we see that many National Socialists like you do whatever is possible to justify what is unjustifiable.



The message concluded with “Good luck and bye. On this our day of mourning, we apologize for not welcoming you any more at this site which has up to now been yours as well. GOD BLESS AMERICA.” A US flag fluttered under the message. This declaration manifests serious differences between US white supremacists and some of their European brethren.

After a few weeks, Nuevorden reappeared on the Internet from a new server in the US, which appears to be closer to them ideologically. Nuevorden’s first editorial, entitled “Serving Liberty,” complained that in Spain “it is virtually impossible to express our opinions … except in repressive trials [reference is to the trial of right-wing extremist Pedro Varela, owner of the Europe bookshop – see ASW 2000/1].” They noted that throughout Europe “incredible” laws, which prohibit any deviation “from the dogmas of capitalist democracy,” have been passed.

The rector’s office and many students at Carlos III University received racist electronic mail messages which reproached them for their support of immigrant communities. One of the letters was signed by the “Spanish National Socialist Party” and another offered more information about Spanish neo-Nazis through the Nuevorden website. The secretary of education said blocking incoming electronic mail with Nazi content at the university would be too problematic. Voicing his concern about the multiplicity of racist outbreaks in Madrid universities, he announced that he was planning to propose the creation of a study program to “raise student awareness to the enriching qualities of immigration.”


Other Racist Incidents

According to a survey on Spanish attitudes to immigration, conducted by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas in March 2001, 42 percent of citizens thought there were too many immigrants in Spain and 32 percent considered immigration the principal social problem in Spain, ahead of unemployment, drugs and terrorism. It should be pointed out that immigrants constitute only 2 percent of the population in Spain, five times less than in France or Germany.

Several minors were arrested in March in Alquerias (Murcia) for alleged participation in violent and xenophobic incidents after a demonstration in which residents of the town demanded increased security measures against a wave of robberies in the region. After the demonstration, the youngsters set fire to an abandoned warehouse where immigrants were once housed overnight, and then proceeded to attack two immigrants, a Bulgarian woman and an Ecuatorian man, with baseball bats and chains.

The extreme right-wing PNT (see above), whose heaquarters are in Murcia, asked the government of Murcia for permission to carry out a “first major anti-immigration march” on 1 April in Torre Pacheco. Permission was refused because the authorities feared an outbreak of xenophobic incidents in the region, where foreigners make up a large part of the population. The PNT announcement of the march on the Internet received the support of other far right groups.


ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST and the nazi era

In May, Jewish institutions and organizations in Madrid, together with the Israeli embassy, led a candle lighting ceremony in memory of the Holocaust. The main commemorative ceremony took place in the Asamblea de Madrid, (regional parliament), for the second consecutive year.

The government of Aragon plans to request that documents found in the old international border station of Canfranc in the Pyrenees be transferred to the state archives. These documents, discovered by a French citizen born of Spanish emigrant parents, prove that Franco’s Spain concealed the entry from Switzerland of more than 86 tons of Nazi gold, stolen from European banks and from concentration camp prisoners, of which 12 tons remained in Spain during World War II. Surviving witnesses in Canfranc recall that gold ingots entered Spain through Canfranc, under the eye of the Guardia Civil (civil guard).

The German government will compensate almost 200 (non-Jewish) Spanish forced laborers from the Nazi era with sums of up to 5,000 marks.


responses to racism and antisemitism

The Association against Intolerance has detected an increasing “Islamophobia” and “identification of all that is Arabic with terrorism,” especially in schools and among youth. The association warned that “stigmatization” of the Islamic community would provoke an increase of violence. Two cars belonging to Muslims were burned and a mosque was attacked in the city of Marbella.

The Jewish electronic bulletin Gueshernews (www.guesherweb.com) in its issue of September/October 2001 noted “two apparently contradictory attitudes” in Spanish public opinion: on the one hand, demonization of the Muslim and on the other, demonization of Israel (or the Jews in general in some cases). Both were equally worrying – in fact they were faces of the same coin. Antisemitism, disguised as support for the Palestinian cause, had proved once again its capacity to justify absolute atrocities through the use of dialectical acrobatics. The anti-Muslim trend was nourished by a profound xenophobic sentiment. “We condemn [these attitudes] not only from an ethical point of view but also from a pragmatic one: when a minority suffers defamation and discrimination, [other minorities] are in danger as well.”

The Assembly of the Autonomous City of Melilla held a minute’s silence following the September 11 attacks and some Muslim associations spoke out against Muslim youth that had supported them. A few days later, during the celebration of the 504th anniversary of the Spanish foundation of the city, an Interdenominational Committee of Melilla was created. Consisting of representatives of the four principal religious communities, Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu, its purpose is to work for peaceful coexistence and understanding among religions.

King Juan Carlos of Spain told European Jewish representatives in June that he regretted the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492 and welcomed their presence in contemporary Spain.

 

El Fadl, 39, who was raised in Kuwait and Egypt, has been writing critically of fundamentalist Islam for years in scholarly articles and books, most recently “The Place of Tolerance in Islam.” But he gained international attention after publishing an op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times three days after the Sept. 11 attacks in which he asserted that the suicide missions were the result of an “ethically oblivious form” of the religion

 

The Jews of Egypt
By Mitchell Bard
1948 Jewish population: 75,000
2004: Less than 1001

Between June and November 1948, bombs set off in the Jewish Quarter of Cairo killed more than 70 Jews and wounded nearly 200.2 In 1956, the Egyptian government used the Sinai Campaign as a pretext for expelling almost 25,000 Egyptian Jews and confiscating their property. Approximately 1,000 more Jews were sent to prisons and detention camps. On November 23, 1956, a proclamation signed by the Minister of Religious Affairs, and read aloud in mosques throughout Egypt, declared that "all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state," and promised that they would be soon expelled. Thousands of Jews were ordered to leave the country. They were allowed to take only one suitcase and a small sum of cash, and forced to sign declarations "donating" their property to the Egyptian government. Foreign observers reported that members of Jewish families were taken hostage, apparently to insure that those forced to leave did not speak out against the Egyptian government.3

When war broke out in 1967, Jewish homes and property were confiscated. Egypt's attitude toward Jews at that time was reflected in its treatment of former Nazis. Hundreds were allowed to take up residence in Egypt and given positions in the government. The head of the Gestapo in occupied Poland, Leopold Gleim (who had been sentenced to death in absentia), controlled the Egyptian secret police.

In 1979, the Egyptian Jewish community became the first in the Arab world to establish official contact with Israel. Israel now has an embassy in Cairo and a consulate general in Alexandria. At present, the few remaining Jews are free to practice Judaism without any restrictions or harassment. Shaar Hashamayim is the only functioning synagogue in Cairo. Of the many synagogues in Alexandria only the Eliahu Hanabi is open for worship.4

Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian press is found primarily, but not exclusively, in the nonofficial press of the opposition parties. The Government has condemned anti-Semitism and advised journalists and cartoonists to avoid anti-Semitism. There have been no anti-Semitic incidents in recent years directed at the tiny Jewish community.5

In September 2000 construction began on a highway-bridge through the ancient Basatin Jewish cemetery in Cairo. Cooperation and funding were provided by the Egyptian Ministry of Housing and an American ultra-Orthodox Jewish Athra Kadisha group. The plans will not harm any tombs and it will honor Jewish law concerning cemeteries.

Anti-Semitism is rampant in the government-controlled press, and increased in late 2000 and 2001 following the outbreak of violence in Israel and the territories. In April 2001, columnist Ahmed Ragheb lamented Hitler’s failure to finish the job of annihilating the Jews. In May 2001, an article in Al-Akhbar attacked Europeans and Americans for believing in the false Holocaust.6 On March 18, 2004, ’Bad al-Ahab ’Adams, deputy director of Al Jumhuriya, accused the Jews of the terrorist attack in Madrid on March 11 as well as of the September 11, 2001 attacks.7

A positive development was the announcement that a Cairo synagogue built in 1934, which had been closed because so few Jews remain in Egypt, would be reopened in July 2005. The head of Cairo’s Jewish community, Carmen Weinstein, and Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen, arranged to reopen the synagogue, which the Israeli Embassy will help to maintain.8
Notes

1David Singer, Ed. American Jewish Year Book 2001. NY: American Jewish Committee, 2001.
2Howard Sachar, A History of Israel, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 401.
3 AP, (November 26, 1956); New York World Telegram, (November 29, 1956).
4Jewish Communities of the World.
5U.S. Department of State, 2000 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Washington, DC, (September 5, 2000).
6 U.S. Department of State, 2001 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Washington, DC, (October 26, 2001).
7U.S. Department of State, 2004 Report on Global Anti-Semitism, Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Washington, DC, January 5, 2005).
8 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, (July 13, 2005).

 

http://www.muslimcanadiancongress.org/

 

The Spanish commission's fatwa, or condemnation, follows other signs of the kind of public theological debate rarely seen in the Muslim world, openly challenging the dominance of Saudi Arabia's wealthy Wahhabi fanatics. One Islamic scholar even calls it a sign of "a counter-jihad."​

 

Ummm

No

But, in addition to his Suffism beliefs which are not any more mainstream islamist than the Kabbalah Center is for Judiasm .... he has made this statement which unfortuantately turns this who discussion upside down because it drive home the point of how deseated and extensive Islmofacism is.

"One of the few non-fundamentalist leaders in this country, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, warned the State Department in early 1999 that extremists had "taken over 80 percent of the mosques" in the United States. (As if in confirmation of his point, Kabbani was vilified for his remarks in terms that verged on the threatening.) What this means is that, in startling contrast to countries like Turkey and Egypt, where a lively debate is taking place between moderates and fundamentalists, here, in the land of the free, the moderate majority hardly has a voice."


ruben

 

"Indonesia's moderate Muslim majority disdains extremists"
by Slobodan Lekic (AP, October 27, 2002)

JAKARTA, Indonesia - When Riyanto noticed the black plastic bundle hidden in the bushes beside the Ebenezer Pentacostal Church, he didn't hesitate.
With a shouted warning to hundreds of people emerging from the church after a Christmas Eve service, the Muslim militiaman guarding the church grabbed the package and raced for an open field across the road. He never made it — an explosion killed him instantly, damaging the church but leaving the congregation's 600 members unscathed.

The bombing two years ago in the town of Mojokoerto when a member of the moderate Muslim Nahdlatul Ulama sacrificed his life to save his Christian neighbors was perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the close ties between the majority Muslims and other faiths in Indonesia.

The bomb, though, demonstrates that the tradition has been under severe strain in recent years by a minority of Islamic extremists. Last week, radical Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir was arrested for allegedly orchestrating 11 church bombings on Christmas Eve 2000.

Nineteen people — including Riyanto, who like many Indonesians uses only one name — died and dozens were injured.

Indonesia's founding fathers wrote a constitution enshrining a secular government and harmony between the Muslim majority and minorities including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus.

But turmoil since the 1998 ouster of former dictator Suharto has sparked the growth of Muslim militancy, feeding bloody sectarian conflicts in Maluku province and Sulawesi island and giving a group like Jemaah Islamiyah space to operate.

Still, Indonesia's largest Muslim organizations — the 40 million member Nahdlatul Ulama and the slightly smaller Muhammadiyah — have condemned the bloodshed. These moderate social and educational organizations have demanded that authorities crack down on Muslim extremists.

Political and religious leaders have repeatedly said the small cells of radical militants do not reflect the views of most of Indonesia's 170 million Muslims.
Indonesia's version of Islam is heavily influenced by traditions from its Hindu and Buddhist past. Beliefs in genies, evil spirits, and a goddess of the south seas — which devout Muslims elsewhere might regard as pagan or even blasphemous — mesh comfortably with Islamic practices here.

"Although Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesian Muslims are indeed moderate and among the most religiously tolerant Muslims in the world," said Amien Rais, speaker of Indonesia's top legislative body and a former head of Muhammadiyah.

Rais himself participated in the overwhelming defeat of a recent proposal to amend the secular constitution and introduce Sharia law for Muslims. Although religious parties control a third of the legislature, even the majority of their members opposed the proposal.

"Implementing Sharia is an obligation for Muslims," said Muis Kabri, head of a network of hundreds of religious schools on the islands of Sulawesi, Sumatra and Borneo. "But that does not mean legalization or implementation by the state."