Showing posts with label Islam watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam watch. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

"...The film’s central gay character extols the beauty of the Koran, the followers of which would endorse his murder — yet he is murdered by Christians who, in life, might condemn his practices but would also preach his loving acceptance as a fellow sinner. The same supposedly enlightened character also rhapsodizes on the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, whose sado-masochistic photos of leather-clad men could easily have illustrated the sexual imaginations of the brownshirts who facilitated Hitler’s rise to power..."


Klavan On The Culture The Mask of Fascism
Another Hotel Cancels Event Critical of Islam|Vision to America

Saturday, August 20, 2011

August 19, 2011
Promoting Islam at Lackland Air Force Base
Timothy Furnish, PhD
On August 7, 2011, in a chapel converted to a mosque on Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, the U.S. government officially became a sponsor of the Mahdi. No, not Barack Husein Obama, but a much more serious and overt candidate: Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. “Harun Yahya,” the Turkish Creationist whose followers consider him the “rightly-guided one” of Islamic tradition, expected to come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim. 
 Mahdism was my original area of academic specialization within Islamic history (about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation, first book and numerous articles, and which I track via this website); I interviewed Oktar in Istanbul a few years ago; and, finally, I spent time in the military, both enlisted and commissioned, the latter training to be a chaplain. So I have some familiarity with all aspects of this troubling story, which came to my attention early on 14 August 2011 via photos posted to my Facebook page by contacts within Oktar’s organization.  I contacted the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) at Lackland and, in summary, was told the following: that such “religious education” classes are provided every weekend from “other” faith perspectives (Latter Day Saints, Buddhists, Pentecostals) besides the main ones (Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox); that these are entirely voluntary; that the “program chaplain …was aware of and approved of the speaker.”
 
The speaker in question was from Oktar’s organization , an Islamic Creationist one, which is very inimical to Darwinian evolution as well as a strong proponent of Islamic Mahdist da`wah (“propaganda” or “evangelism”). From Istanbul Oktar presides over a publishing and Internet franchise dealing in a double-sided coin of Islamic anti-Darwinism and belief in the imminent arrival, if not presence already, of the Islamic deliverer—most likely in the guise of Oktar himself. The Harun Yahya movement resembles that of fellow Turk Fethullah Gülen, insofar as both spring from a neo-Ottoman Sufism with Mahdist overtones. But the latter, with his global chain of Islamic charter schools, is taken more seriously and viewed by many in the U.S. as an ideological threat.  The fact that Gülen lives in exile in the U.S. has so far provided him a higher profile here. But Oktar and his people, while heretofore playing Avis to Gülen’s Hertz, are definitely trying harder—and succeeding even where Gülen’s people have so far feared to tread: onto the U.S. Air Force’s only basic training installation.
 

 
According to both my sources--Oktar’s organization and the Public Affairs Office (PAO) at Lackland—on the first Sunday in August a representative of Harun Yahya was allowed, following an invitation from the Muslim chaplain at Lackland, Captain Sharior Rahman, to present two classes: a morning one on “The Collapse of Darwinism and the Fact of Creation” and an evening one covering “Miracles in the Qur’an.” It would appear that the morning class was attended solely by basic trainees, as the photo above shows (note the screen, which says “The Collapse of Evolution and the Fact of Creation”).
 
The Turkish Muslim group further claims about the evening class (of which I have no pictures) that “attendants were high rank officials [sic]: sergeants, master sergeants and captains. The talks were very well received and appreciated and the attendants were gifted the Quran [sic] (emphasis added). The captain presented a special medal as the token of appreciation to Mr Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya).” “The captain” would be, presumably, Chaplain Rahman—which brings up its own troubling issues, as I shall examine below.
 
Another picture shows a dozen female trainees, sitting separately from the males—whether out of military, or Islamic, mandate is unclear:
 

 
 A wider shot of the Mahdist group’s Islamic Creationism class is this one:
 

 
And at the top of this article, we see Adnan Oktar himself on screen, providing instruction.  
 
As I said, I’ve interviewed Oktar and some of his supporters, read his writings and corresponded with members of his organization for several years. I think they are sincere, well-meaning and peaceful Muslims, whose view of the Mahdi as a pacific figure runs counter to that of him among the Sunni jihadists, as well as the ruling clerical clique in Iran—both of which see the Mahdi as a global warlord who will come to earth not to bring peace, but a bloody sword. But the degree to which Oktar and his people hold moderate Muslim positions is not the issue. Rather, the issues are as follows:
 
1)    The whole question of something being “voluntary” in basic training is debatable.  As one online basic training survival site says, “In the military, there will ALWAYS be someone telling you what to do, when to do it, and how to do it -- and you've got to do it…. Military boot camp is like nothing you've ever experienced. However, the rigid routine and absolute control over every aspect of your life is several times worse than normal military duty -- on purpose. It's the job of the Training Instructors (T.I.'s) and Drill Instructors (D.I.'s) to…adjust your attitude to a military way of thinking (self-discipline, sacrifice, loyalty, obedience)….” All it would take for these “voluntary” Sunday morning classes to become rather more compulsory would be for a T.I. to suggest that anyone not attending Christian chapel services find something productive to do—or spend extra time shining brass or doing KP (kitchen patrol) duty while their mates are at church. Given such a choice, agnostic trainees might very well opt for the Islam classes.
 
2)    And these were not simply general classes on Islam provided by a mainstream Sunni group; rather, they were sect- or cult-specific classes on highly charged topics.    Oktar’s book “Miracles of the Qur’an,” no doubt used as the basis for that lecture, is a long proselytizing work purporting to explain how the Qur’an is the word of God. His works “The Collapse of Evolution” and “The Fact of Creation” are stridently anti-Darwinian evolution. But both these salients are simply gateways, for Harun Yahya, no doubt leavened with references to the group’s most important teaching: the centrality of the Mahdi to human history. Mahdism is a controversial topic within Islam, and many Muslims consider Oktar to be a charismatic cult leader—even heretic. Even allowing such a contentious Islamic group to teach other Muslims on a US military installation would be problematic, analogous to bringing followers of a heterodox Christian like Perry Stone, or a very controversial one like John Hagee, to lecture on to Christian trainees. Permitting them to teach non-Muslims—in effect, to proselytize—is simply beyond the pale. 
 
3)    This is the crux of the issue: According to the Lackland PAO, not only are such classes as this important to upholding First Amendment rights of military personnel, they are necessary: “if we did not allow trainees to attend the services or religious classes of their choice,” their religious rights would be violated. But this is absurd. When I attended Army chaplain’s school at Ft. Jackson, we were taught that providing First Amendment rights for troops meant that, for example, if you had three Buddhist soldiers and no Buddhist chaplain, you could scour the local village for a Buddhist priest and ask him to come minister to them weekly—it did NOT mean that a Buddhist monk could be invited onto base and allowed to, in effect, recruit among non-Buddhist personnel. The Air Force, at least at Lackland, is thus allowing Islamic proselytizing among non-Muslim Air Force trainees (and possibly higher ranking permanent party). 
 
4)    The Lackland basic training command seems to have deferred to the Muslim Chaplain, Rahman, on this issue—and the PAO told me as much. I have no desire to cast aspersions on Chaplain Rahman, for I have never met him and know little about him. But if a non-mainstream group like Oktar’s can gain entrée so easily to a major US military installation simply on the Muslim chaplain’s advice, what’s to prevent another Muslim military chaplain in this, or another, branch of service from signing off on Hizb al-Tahrir’s preaching their plans for peacefully resurrecting the caliphate or Tablighi Jama’at from inculcating trainees with ideal Islamic piety and the need for shari`ah?  Both HT and TJ are non-jihadist and operate (at least in this country) via Islamic da`wah (“missionary work”), not terrorism. But should the U.S. military really have such a coarse vetting net—based on this episode—that it could very readily allow these, or similar, groups to slip through and disseminate their ideas to some of the most impressionable members of our military?
 
5)    Where is the inimitable Mikey Weinstein on this issue? The anti-Christian fulminations of him and his group, the Orwellian-named “Military Religious Freedom Foundation,” just recently intimidated the command at Vandenberg Air Force base into dropping just war classes for officers because they dared include the Bible. One would think this case would set him salivating. But Mr. Weinstein seems to view Christianity as the only First Amendment threat to our military, alas.  What would be his response if a Christian group were to give out Bibles to non-Christians, as Oktar’s Muslim representative gave Qur’ans to non-Muslims? Mikey would be calling for the unit commander and probably the entire chain-of-command to be crucified.
 
I first learned Arabic in the mid-1980s at the Defense Language Institute, and I have been studying Middle Eastern and African Islamic history for two decades. I have no problems with Muslims attempting to spread their faith peacefully in this country, nor even with our military service members learning about Islam as an important adjunct to the global struggle in which we are engaged. What I do have a problem with—as an American, a veteran, a Christian and an Islamic expert—is Islamic groups being given access to young, impressionable basic trainees under the spurious guise of the First Amendment. 
 
As it is, Lackland Air Force base is in the business of promoting Islam in general, and the Mahdi in particular, over the faith of the vast majority of military personnel (73% of Air Force enlisted are Christian; 0.2% are Muslim).  And that should be unacceptable to all Americans. 
 
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Timothy R. Furnish is a conservative Christian with a PhD in Islamic history, a US Army veteran, and a published author of one book and numerous articles in  venues such as The Weekly Standard, The Washington Times, The Lutheran Witness  and History News Network (HNN).  His website is www.mahdiwatch.org and he also blogs on HNN as Occidental Jihadist.
 
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011

"...Islam understands the reality of Commissar Hall’s “social justice”: You give ’em an inch, and they’ll take the rest. Following a 1988 cease-and-desist court judgment against the Lord’s Prayer in public school, the Ontario Education Act forbids “any person to conduct religious exercises or to provide instruction that includes religious indoctrination in a particular religion or religious belief in a school.” That seems clear enough. If somebody at Valley Park stood up in the cafeteria and started in with “Our Father, which art in Heaven”, the full weight of the School Board would come crashing down on them. Fortunately, Valley Park is 80-90 per cent Muslim, so there are no takers for the Lord’s Prayer. And, when it comes to the prayers they do want to say, the local Islamic enforcers go ahead secure in the knowledge that the diversity pansies aren’t going to do a thing about it..."



SteynOnline - HOW UNCLEAN WAS MY VALLEY

Monday, June 27, 2011

"In 2007, through the Texas High School Project, the Gates Foundation shelled out $10,550,000 to the Cosmos Foundation, a Gulen enterprise that operates 25 publicly funded charter schools in Texas.

The Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for Cosmos shows that the Cosmos Foundation received $41,570,721 from taxpayers.

At present, there are 85 Gulan madrassahs (Islamic schools) in the United States, and all operate with public funding..."



Bill Gates Funds Gulen Islamist Movement Publications Family Security Matters

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Gülen expressed this sentiment in another sermon as well:

“The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do.”
Weiner's In-Laws and the SECRET Muslim Brotherhood Connections REVEALED

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

""You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers...You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it..."

"You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all in confidence. Know that when you leave here -- as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here."


The Gulen Movement: A New Islamic World Order? - World - CBN News - Christian News 24-7 - CBN.com

Monday, May 23, 2011

"What happened in this village has given me strong feelings," he said. "There was a girl here. Ayesha is her name." The Prophet Muhammad's youngest wife was also named Ayesha, but this was not of interest to our Mohammed just now. He was extremely angry. "She is 10 years old," he said. "Very tiny. The man she married is 50 years old, with a big belly, like so." Spreading his arm around him, he indicated massive girth. "Like a rat getting married to an elephant."
Child Brides - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

Monday, March 15, 2010

"...The global Islamic jihad is threatening the entire free world, and it is succeeding, and we don’t even know what has hit us! The West is sliding into Islamicization(sic), because of a strategy outlined decades ago by the Islamic Brotherhood, which says: You set up your institutions, you then use the mores of your designated country to give you more and more, you Islamicize the country, and then you take it over. The central point of this strategy is the demoralization caused by the intellectual confusion brought on by the psychological warfare, the essence of which is that the victims have no idea of what is being done to them. The West doesn’t get it, at all. We must fight against their verbal fire – and realize that if our minds are enslaved, then our bodies will be next..."


Middle East and Terrorism: Islamic strategy.
More Islam infiltration:

Vermont Schools to Celebrate Islamic Feast | FrontPage Magazine

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Muslim propaganda is relentless in trying to mis portray Islam in the eyes of the West. While mainstream mosques and Muslim leaders across the globe are shouting jihad, death to America, death to the Jews, and encouraging Muslims to take over the West, our children are told if you fear such threats you are an Islamophobe. When mainstream Muslim schools and universities teach that apostates must be killed and that jihad means “to war with non-Muslims to establish the religion” and that jihad is a permanent war institution against Jews Christians and pagans, we are told to never dare misinterpret this as encouraging violence. Islamic education, like communism and Fascism, must control children’s minds, which is the best system to produce adults who will submit.

I am not the one who compared Islam to communism and fascism; this comparison was made by none other than the most prominent Muslim scholar of the 20th century, Sheikh Abu Ala Maududi, who stated in his book, “Islamic Law and Constitution,” on p. 262, that the Islamic State:

“seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity…. In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.” Maududi added “Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.”

Islamic Indoctrination vs. Education | FrontPage Magazine

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Chesler Chronicles Buried Alive In Turkey—and Under the Burqa: "IIn Turkey — a country which was nearly accepted as a member by the European Union — a father and grandfather recently buried Medine Memi, a sixteen-year-old girl, alive — and all because she was seen talking to boys. Medine was repeatedly beaten. She ran to the police but they did not help her. When the men buried her she was “alive and fully conscious.”

This savage, heartless, primitive act is the ultimate, logical consequence of burying women alive — shrouding them — while they are still allowed to roam the earth. One becomes claustrophobic under the burqa, until one gets used to, indeed becomes dependent upon, being seen as a ghost, a phantom, invisible, not-quite-human, as good as dead."

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Instructions on coming to the US and dealing with the infidel:

"...In general, the attache recommends that the Muslim believer avoid friendships with the infidels, be careful not to imitate their customs (e.g. not to wear a cap and gown at a graduation ceremony), and try not to remain in the country any longer than required..."

Don't dare say hello to your `infidel' neighbor - Jihad Watch

Monday, January 25, 2010

Exclusive: ‘One Nation under Allah’Publications Family Security Matters
"...The literal translation of Sharia is path, or path to water. “Šarīat Allāh” (God’s Law), refers to the legal framework within which the public and private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Islamic principles of jurisprudence. Sharia deals with all aspects of day-to-day life, from family, sexuality, hygiene, politics, economics, banking, business, contracts and social issues..."
Read it all.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

"... The Mosque Foundation" in Chicago Southwest Suburban Bridgeview is HAMAS' Home Base in the Chicago Metro Area. It is CONNECTED to and INTER-CONNECTED with the organizational shell game that supports Hamas & The Muslim Brotherhood such as CAIR,ISNA, ICNA,etc. Bridgeview ,just South of Midway Airport adjoins the Chicago SW Side Marquette Park neighborhood and together they and surrounding areas make up the Largest concentration of Palestinians in the Midwest . TWICE-CONVICTED (in the US and Israel)Hamas Senior Leader and Fundraiser Mohammed Saleh used "The Mosque Foundation" as his Base of Operations . .."

And they are running political seminars and workshops

Muslim Brotherhood is Hamas (CAIR, MAS, ISNA, ICNA) and they've achieved absolute intellectual dominance at the senior level of the Executive branch, the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Department of State..."


Yikes - Atlas Shrugs