Levitt Letter Extra News

by Robert Spencer
www.humanevents.com

Can you imagine a public school founded by two Christian ministers, and housed in the same building as a church? Add to that — in the same building — a prominent chapel. And let’s say the students are required to fast during Lent, and attend Bible studies right after school. All with your tax dollars.

Inconceivable? Sure. If such a place existed, the ACLU lawyers would descend on it like locusts. It would be shut down before you could say “separation of church and state,” to the accompaniment of New York Times and Washington Post editorials full of indignant foreboding, warning darkly about the growing influence of the Religious Right in America.

But such a school does exist in Minnesota, in a different religious context, and so far the ACLU has uttered nary a peep.

Tax dollars are currently at work funding the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, a popular, rapidly growing K-8 charter school with campuses in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine, Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Department of Education, as a Minnesota charter school implementing a statewide “performance and professional pay program” known as Q-Comp, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy pocketed $65,260 in state money for the 2006-07 school year. The school’s website, meanwhile, boasts that it offers a “rigorous Arabic language program” and an “environment that fosters your cultural values and heritage.” Whose cultural values and heritage? According to the indefatigable investigative reporter Katherine Kersten of the Star Tribune, “there are strong indications that religion plays a central role” there.

Which religion? Do you need three guesses?

The Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy was co-founded by two imams; is housed in the same building as a mosque and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS); features a carpeted space for prayer; and serves halal food in the cafeteria. All students fast during Ramadan. They attend classes on the Qur’an and Sunnah, or Islamic tradition and law, after school. The school is closely tied to the MAS: Kersten observes that “at MAS-MN’s 2007 convention, for example, the program featured an advertisement for the ‘Muslim American Society of Minnesota,’ superimposed on a picture of a mosque. Under the motto ‘Establishing Islam in Minnesota,’ it asked: ‘Did you know that MAS-MN … houses a full-time elementary school’? On the adjacent page was an application for TIZA” — the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy.

The existence of the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy is, of course, yet another manifestation of the witless multiculturalism that grants protected victim status to Muslim groups in view of the “racism” and “Islamophobia” from which they supposedly suffer. Latitude that would never be granted to other faith groups, particularly Christians, is readily given here.

But it’s even worse than that. According to a 2004 Chicago Tribune exposé, the Muslim American Society is the name under which the Muslim Brotherhood operates in the United States. And according to a 1992 Brotherhood memorandum about its strategy in the U.S., it is embarked upon a “grand Jihad” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Is Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy part of this “grand jihad”? A clue might come from the name of the school itself. Kersten notes that it was named after the eighth-century Muslim conqueror of Spain. Islam Online praised Tarek ibn Ziyad in a 2004 article as a “man of valor, a man of extraordinary courage and a true leader.” He is chiefly remembered for one incident in particular. Landing in Spain, he ordered the Muslim forces’ boats to be burned, and then told his soldiers: “Brothers in Islam! We now have the enemy in front of us and the deep sea behind us. We cannot return to our homes, because we have burnt our boats. We shall now either defeat the enemy and win or die a coward’s death by drowning in the sea. Who will follow me?” The soldiers, crying “Allahu akbar,” rushed ahead and defeated a vastly superior Spanish force.

Does the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy represent the same idea for those who founded it and now operate it — the burning of the boats, representing the determination of Muslim immigrants to stay in the U.S., followed by conquest? In light of the Brotherhood memorandum and other evidence about the jihadist allegiances of the Muslim American Society, it is not an illegitimate question.

But what public official, in Minnesota or elsewhere, dares to ask it?

A familiar scene.

By Victor Davis Hanson
www.nationalreview.com

Gaza erupted in celebration recently to the news that a Palestinian had murdered Jewish religious students in Jerusalem. And almost daily terrorists send rockets from Gaza into nearby Israeli cities, hoping to kill civilians and provoke Israeli counter-responses — and perhaps start another Middle East war.

This is not the way some imagined Gaza two and half years after the Israelis withdrew both civilians and soldiers from the territory in September 2005. At the time, the Palestinian Authority controlled Gaza, but in early 2007, Hamas took over in a violent civil war, claiming legitimacy after once winning a popular election.

Gaza has plenty of natural advantages. It enjoys a picturesque coastline on the Mediterranean with sandy beaches and a rich classical history. There is a contiguous border with Egypt, the Arab world’s largest country and spiritual home of pan-Arabic solidarity.

The Palestinians are a favorite cause of the oil-rich Middle East, and would seem to be in store for at least a few billions that accrue from $100 a barrel oil. In short, an autonomous Gaza might have been a test case in which the Palestinians could have crafted their own Singapore, Hong Kong, or Dubai.

Instead, despite Palestinian rule of Gaza, Hamas has continued its civil war with the Palestinian Authority, and looters have ruined infrastructure that was left by the United Nations and the Israelis. Mobs crashed the border crossing with Egypt. Hamas-led terrorists have launched over 2,500 mortar rounds into Israel, as well as over 2,000 Qassam rockets.

We all now know the familiar Gaza two-step. The Israeli Defense Forces respond to Hamas rockets with targeted air strikes against terrorist leaders or small-rocket factories. Hamas makes certain both these targets are intermingled with civilians in the hopes of televised collateral damage.

Hamas counts on the usual sympathetic European and Middle Eastern media coverage and commentary. Terrorists deliberately trying to murder Israeli civilians are seen as the moral equivalents of Israeli soldiers trying to target combatants who use civilians as shields. To the extent that the IDF kills more of the terrorists than Hamas kills Israeli civilians, sympathy goes to the “refugees” of Gaza.

This tragic charade continues because Hamas wants it to continue. Its purpose is to make life so unsure and frightening for nearby affluent Israelis that they will grant continual concessions, hopefully leading to such wide-scale demoralization that the Jewish state itself will collapse and disappear. In that regard, the last thing Hamas wants is calm and prosperity in Gaza, which would turn the population’s attention toward living rather than killing and dying.

Hamas in Gaza also feels that the war is not static — and that it is already winning on all fronts. As Europeans, Middle Easterners, and the United Nations lecture Israel about “inordinate” or “disproportionate” responses, the terrorists’ smuggled missiles increase in range, payload and frequency of attack.

Hamas has gained powerful patrons in Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Both provide terrorist training and weapons as long as Gaza serves as a useful proxy in their own existential struggles against Israel.

On the world front, we’ve reached a new threshold in which evoking the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews has become commonplace and almost acceptable. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, publicly brags about hoarding the body parts of captured Israelis. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly talks of Israelis in Hitlerian terms as “filthy bacteria” that should be wiped off the map.

Palestinians in Gaza can enshrine mass murderers and praise terrorist killers without much worry that the world will be appalled at their grotesque spectacles — much less cease its sympathy and subsidies.

And what a world it is that enables Gaza! The Russians have fought a dirty war against Muslim separatists in Chechnya. The Chinese have been hunting down Muslim separatist Uighurs who claim Xinjiang Province as their own. India wages bloody periodic wars against Muslim terrorists who claim Kashmir.

Imagine tomorrow that all of the above nations told the Gazans that their dispute is no more or less important to the world than similar land quarrels in Cyprus or Azerbaijan; that they are no more or less deserving of international money and sympathy than are the Chechnyans or Uighurs or the Muslims of Kashmir; or that the Israelis have as much right as the Chinese, Indians or Russians to retaliate and put down neighboring Islamist attacks. Then the crisis would shortly recede from the world’s attention.

And Hamas in Gaza would either begin negotiating and building Palestinians’ own civil society — or face the sort of typical Chinese, Russian, or Indian retaliation that Israel is quite able to unleash.

by Kenneth Timmerman
www.NewsMax.com

The firing of the Pentagon’s only resident expert on Islamic law, Maj. Stephen Coughlin, has begun to attract the attention of key members of Congress and the White House, which has launched a “fact-finding” mission into the case, Newsmax has learned.

Coughlin, of the U.S. Army Reserves, was on contract to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to brief U.S. commanders en route to Iraq, as well as officers at various staff colleges around the country, on the role of Islamic teachings in the mind of America’s enemies.

His contract was terminated after an encounter with a top aide to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, who dismissed his findings and called him a “Christian zealot with a pen.”
The aide, Hesham Islam, is an Egyptian-born former U.S. Navy officer, who joined England’s staff while he was secretary of the Navy in 2001 and moved with him when England was promoted to the Pentagon’s No. 2 slot.

Heshem Islam encouraged England to address the annual conference of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) last fall, even though federal prosecutors had named the group as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorism funding case last year.
Coughlin aroused the ire of Mr. Islam and others in September by authoring an analysis of a Muslim Brotherhood document entered into evidence in the Justice Department’s case against the Holy Land Foundation.

In addition to naming ISNA and other “mainstream” Muslim organizations as members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s network in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood document stated that its members “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within… It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.”
Coughlin also took issue with an effort underway by intelligence community analysts to declare al Qaeda terrorists and insurgents in Iraq as “false Muslims,” whose version of jihad conflicted with “true” Islamic teachings.

The White House has launched its own investigation into the Coughlin affair, and has conducted at least one interview with Coughlin himself, sources knowledgeable of the probe told Newsmax.

However, Coughlin would appear to hold out little hope of a White House “rescue.”
As he pointed out in his 333-page thesis, “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring what Extremists say about Jihad,” President Bush’s statements downplaying the role of Islam in the terrorist attacks on America have “exerted a chilling effect on those tasked to define the enemy’s doctrine by effectively placing a policy bar” on examining the role of jihadist teachings.
Even Coughlin supporters such as Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, doubt that the Army reservist lawyer and expert on Islamic law will get his contract reinstated by the Joint Chiefs.

But Gaffney has urged members of Congress in both parties and others who care about the war on terror to make Coughlin “a cause célèbre” in the coming months.
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., has taken that call seriously, and said that she was examining the possibility of holding congressional oversight hearings on Coughlin’s dismissal.
“We want to get to the bottom of this,” Myrick said. “This sounds like another example of someone protecting national security and being told to shut up,” she told Cybercast news service. “If we don’t get over being politically correct, we won’t be here as a country.”
Myrick co-chairs the bi-partisan House Anti-Terrorism Caucus with Rep. Jane Harmon, D-Calif., which she started last year out of frustration that no one was educating the American people about the threat from Islamo-fascism.

“President Bush does not talk to the American people about the long-term threat of radical islamofascism infiltration in America,” she said.
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz first revealed Coughlin’s firing, as well as Hesham Islam’s confrontation with him, in his “Inside the Ring” column in January.
Pentagon higher-ups then planted stories that Coughlin was fired because he had had unauthorized contacts with reporters, a charge that Gertz denied.
Coughlin writes in the introduction to his 333-page thesis that his research into the legal underpinnings of jihadi doctrine was inspired in part by a Dec. 1, 2005, speech by Gen. Peter Pace to the National Defense University, when Pace was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“To talk about how we are going to proceed, we need to understand the nature of the enemy,… [which] is different than any we have faced in the past,” Pace said.
“Remember Hitler. Remember he wrote ‘Mein Kampf.’ He said in writing exactly what his plan was, and we collectively ignored that to our great detriment,” Pace argued.

“Now, our enemies have said publicly on film, on the Internet, their goal is to destroy our way of life. No equivocation on their part. They’re not saying if you stay home, we will not come after you. They are saying their goal is to rid the Middle East of all foreigners. Then, overthrow all governments that are not friendly to them, which means every single one of those governments,” Pace said.

Coughlin argues in his thesis that the U.S. intelligence community is making a similar mistake today as it made in the 1930s, by not reading what the enemy has said and written about their goals.

Officers who have listened to Coughlin’s presentation on the Islamic underpinnings of the jihadist movement have come to his aid.

“The termination of Stephen Coughlin on the Joint Staff is an act of intellectual cowardice,” Lt. Col. Joseph C. Myers, Army adviser to the Air Command and Staff College, wrote on Jan. 5 public letter of support.

“Coughlin has briefed senior Marine Corps leaders and staff and has presented his thesis in various military education venues,” Myers wrote.

“We have spent much intellectual capital revamping and analyzing our own doctrine as it relates to counterinsurgency. It’s time we do our homework on the threat,” he added.
Former Army intelligence officer Jerome Gordon, who has discussed Coughlin’s thesis with former colleagues who have attended his briefings, told Newsmax that Hesham Islam is not Coughlin’s only enemy.

“If there is a cabal that is opposing him, it’s in the military intelligence community,” Gordon said. “Clearly, they have been cowed by the significant entrée provided by the U.S. government to leaders of Muslim Brotherhood fronts here in America.”
In a 153-slide PowerPoint presentation he uses to brief U.S. military officers headed for the Middle East, Coughlin criticizes analysts such as Harlan Ullman, a Washington Times columnist who boasts of his ties to Condoleezza Rice.

“And unlike the Nazis, these extremists lack a central, unifying ideology, come from many diverse movements and so far have not been inclined to develop a political theory for seizing political power,” Ullman wrote in a November 2007 column.

Coughlin called that statement a “non-sequitor,” and said that U.S. military officers had a “duty” to base their assessment on an objective analysis of the facts, not on assumptions or desires.

“If the Enemy in the War on Terror (WOT) states that he fights jihad in furtherance of Islamic causes… and Islamic law on jihad exists and is available in English… then Professionals with WOT responsibilities have an affirmative, personal, professional duty to know the enemy that includes ALL the knowable facts associated with the law of jihad,” Coughlin argued.
Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, believes that Coughlin’s firing lies “at a very serious fault line” in U.S. defense strategies.

“I don’t understand why is there so much intellectual commotion about this matter in the West and in the U.S.,” Dr. Phares told Newsmax. “Muslim scholars and historians agree that the theological texts have also a military dimension. In Islamic studies there is no debate about that. So why is there one in non-Muslim research and political circles, particularly in America? Major Coughlin was studying the texts used by the Jihadists to call for military action.”
While politicians might attempt to separate Islam from Jihad for their own purposes, Phares added, “the study of the theological roots of Jihad is something else, and that is an academic not a political issue.”

By Hal Lindsey
www.hallindsey.com

One of the popular topics of confrontation among this year’s crop of presidential hopefuls is what to “do” about the war in Iraq, as if “war” was merely one option among many.
It’s when pressed for alternative options that the candidates start stammering and seeking inventive ways to answer a different question instead.
There are two “options” being presented for consideration by the American electorate this year.
The first option is to remain on the battlefield until the other side is either killed, captured or has surrendered. That is generally the working plan on both sides when the war breaks out. (Neither side goes to war planning to lose.)
The second option, after the war has begun, is for one side to surrender and the other side to declare victory. It doesn’t much matter what euphemisms are used to describe it. When you get into a fight and the other side didn’t lose, it means that you did. Half a victory is equally half a defeat.
But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend there is a way to withdraw from Iraq that doesn’t involve decisively defeating the enemy. Call it “peace with honor” or “strategic redeployment” or whatever substitute for “surrender” suits you.
The problem with Option No. 3 is that it only counts if both sides agree to surrender at the same time. If the enemy isn’t defeated, he remains the enemy. Many of those we’ve released from Gitmo to go home to their families have turned up later either being killed or captured after they returned to the battlefield.
It isn’t like we should be surprised when the enemy doesn’t quit and go home. What will he do without the infidel enemy to fight? Go back home and resume civilian life?
Maybe go to school on the Jihadi Bill? Get a good-paying factory job? Start a small IED manufacturing business? Vocational rehab?
Or just seek out a new battlefield?
The Jerusalem Post reported this week that a Palestinian Authority security official said thousands of jihadis poured into Gaza after Hamas blew up the border wall between Gaza and Egypt.
Most of the foreign fighters who entered Gaza, the paper reported, were fighters who had previously fled the fighting in Iraq.
This is something the advocates of Option 3 should note carefully. The jihadis fled Iraq in defeat. But not in terror. They didn’t go back home to return to herding goats and chasing camels. They “fled” to the Gaza Strip, where they offered to join Hamas and Jihad Islami in the war against Israel.
“Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an international center for global jihad,” said one official quoted by the Post. “Most of the men who entered the Gaza Strip through the breached border are now being trained in Hamas’ camps and schools.”
Another official quoted by the Post said, “They brought with them tons of explosives and various types of weapons, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles. … What’s happening in the Gaza Strip is very dangerous not only for Israel, but for many Palestinians as well.”
If the jihadis that America’s finest have defeated in Iraq simply packed up in search of a new, less defended battlefield, then where is the logic in assuming that they will go home and “tend goats” if we withdraw, albeit “honorably”?
If they run away from defeat simply to fight another day, why would they run away from victory, whether real or perceived?
If the jihadis think that we are on the run, both logic and the historic lessons about jihadist fighters teach that, rather than running “the other way,” he will take off in hot pursuit of the one who “withdraws with honor.”
And once we withdraw, the thousands of jihadist fighters, “with tons of explosives and various types of advanced missiles,” that didn’t “run” from Iraq to take advantage of the breach in Gaza’s border will run to America’s porous borders to fight us.
It is absolutely impossible to successfully protect ourselves from an enemy we don’t understand. Americans have never misunderstood an enemy as much as the one who is now determined to destroy us.
Our common enemy is unlike any enemy ever faced by the modern Western world. We don’t understand them because in the West our goals are primarily no longer religiously based.
Our goal is to die peacefully in our beds of old age with the least amount of personal sacrifice. Anything less than that is considered a tragedy. If one of our prominent congressmen stood up and said, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death,” we would send him out for psychological evaluation. We just don’t have any Patrick Henry’s around any more.
However, our enemy’s life-long goal, indeed his crowning achievement in this life, is to die in battle against the infidel. According to his religion, it is his only guarantee of Paradise. If we withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, he will rush to our soil “to guarantee his Paradise” by dying in battle here.
To us, war is an evil that many Americans today do not believe is ever necessary. Virtually nothing is worth dying for to most Americans today.
To our enemy, jihad is a rare opportunity and death by jihad is a rare blessing to be sought after. And don’t forget: His ultimate hope is spending eternity in Paradise with his own harem of 72 virgins. That’s a powerful motivator for sex-starved young men.
So there aren’t three options for the war in Iraq, no matter how hard the candidates try to convince the American public that there are.
The actual options are these: We can fight the enemy on his turf, or we can fight him on ours.
The perceived option of not fighting is an illusion. The jihadis aren’t going to go away. Even if we do – especially if we do!