U.S. wants Islamic-Iranian charity figure held as flight risk

IHT: EUGENE, Oregon: A missing passport and questions about whether he supports radical Islamic doctrine will keep the co-founder of a defunct Islamic charity in jail at least another two weeks after he voluntarily returned to the U.S. to face tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

Pirouz Sedaghaty, a native of Iran and a U.S. citizen, left the United States in 2003 during an investigation that resulted in a federal grand jury indictment in February 2005, accusing him of helping to smuggle $150,000 out of the country to aid Muslim fighters in Chechnya.

Sedaghaty, 49, returned exactly one week ago, on the same day that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing arguments about warrantless wiretapping of the U.S. chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation that Sedaghaty co-founded in the Southern Oregon town of Ashland in 1997.

Cardani said that raised suspicions about where Sedaghaty had traveled the past four years, noting he had lived in Syria, Iran and the United Arab Emirates at different times.
Cardani said Sedaghaty offered no explanation about how he supported himself, noting he had trouble finding work and apparently had to live on less than $80,000 from the sale of a house in Ashland for more than four years.

But Sedaghaty's lawyer, Larry Matasar, agreed to meet with federal investigators to document his travels pending another hearing in two weeks. He also said they would try to locate the original passport, believed to be with authorities in Dubai.

Matasar also said Sedaghaty has always been a moderate and had steered away from the fundamentalist version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.

"He's just the opposite of a danger to the community," Matasar told the judge.
"He has consistently spoken out both publicly and privately for peace and understanding," said Karen Caldwell of the United Methodist Church in Medford, Oregon.

Matasar also called an expert witness, As'ad AbuKhalil, a California State University professor who disputed the government's claim that Sedaghaty supported radical Islamic doctrine.
AbuKhalil said Saudi wealth is used to promote Wahabbism worldwide by funding mosques and charities, and distributing a Saudi version of the Quran called the "nobel Quran" that has a more militant interpretation of its teachings.

Muslims seeking to perform charity work often are forced to accept Saudi money in order to pay for buildings or supplies, and distribute the Saudi version of the Quran because it is typically the only free version available.

"The Saudis have been proven to have misused some of these charities for their own nefarious purposes," AbuKhalil said.

But a witness for the government, author Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a former Al-Haramain worker in Ashland, said the charity promoted radical Islamic doctrine by distributing the "noble Quran" to U.S. prison inmates. He noted that version supports violent jihad, or holy war.

However, Baztab, the state-run news agency of the Islamic Republic, reports the news in their usual twisted way and mistranslates the piece in IHT to portray America as an intolerant nation and against muslims.

The news headline says, "An Iranian is detained for distriubting Koran in the U.S." Then, it charcterizes the alleged tax evader as a "charitable and well-wishing" person.

بازداشت يك ايراني به اتهام پخش قرآن در آمريكا!

روزنامه «هرالد تريبون» گزارش داد: يك ايراني خيرخواه به دليل پخش قرآن در آمريكا زنداني شده است

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Cartoon!

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The Culture of Denial

China Confidential has learned that the left-leaning Speaker of the House was actually advised to adopt the ugly symbol of submission to backwardness and terrorism during her visit to Syria by our own State Department, despite the Bush administration's public criticism of her outrageous "fact-finding" mission.

Reason: in the name of democracy, ascendant appeasement advocates at State wanted to signal a supposed faction of so-called moderate Syrian Islamists that the United States is sympathetic to their struggle against the secular Syrian regime.

An Islamist revival is sweeping Syria and threatening Baath Party rule, and the US, incredibly, seems to think that this is a good thing. More than five-and-a-half years after the Islamist attacks of 9/11, America's dumbbell diplomats--led by the duplicitous Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice--still believe they can ride the Islamist tiger, in keeping with decades of covert and overt backing for rightwing political Islam dating to US support for the Muslim Brothers of Egypt during the time of Nasser.

The cynical bipartisan policy, which blew back in our faces on 9/11, has not been discredited; rather, it has been revamped. The old Cold War rationale of supporting Islamism to counter Soviet expansion and influence and suspect Arab nationalism and pseudo-socialism has been replaced with the cockeyed concept that the only realistic alternative to clerical-fascist Islamism is "democratic Islamism"--an oxymoron only an intellectual, or US diplomat, could concoct and embrace.

Back to Syria. The Islamist threat to decades of secular dictatorship is largely a result of the regime's unsuccessful efforts to accommodate Islam itself. After crushing the Muslim Brothers in the early 1980s with great ferocity, the Baathists built hundreds of mosques throughout the country and encouraged people to practice pious but non-militant Islam. The policy backfired: Islamist preachers took over the mosques, and banned Islamist books were published and distributed widely.

Another military solution seems unlikely. Instead, the regime continues to promote moderate Islam, while aligning itself with Islamist Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Meanwhile, headscarves have proliferated, even in the most upscale Damascus neighborhoods. Read more

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Pseudo-Religious Utopianism (Islam-e-Nab-e-Mohammadi)Leading to Mass Murdrer!

Professor Yehuda Bauer, Pre-eminent Holocaust scholar, historian, author (former academic advisor to the Yad Vashem )and currently Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents in his first of a series of lectures on 'Radical Islam' at the University of Hawai'i.

Runtime:00:57:15
Click here to Watch the video clip.

In essence Bauer, to my delight, further supports a few of my very early posts when I first started blogging, "Khomeini's Manifest Destiny being Fulfilled ","I'ts about Islam","Khomeini: Islam is in Danger" and several others.

Basically Bauer has suggested that the nazis were motivated by a kind of ''redemptive antisemitism,'' because an important element in Nazism was the dream of universal redemption for “Aryans”- a kind of (false) messianism that one normally finds in Christianity, Judaism and in Khomeinist Islam (Islam-e-Nab-e Mohammadi) In Bauer’s own words:

This kind of pseudo-religious utopianism, which one also finds in Marxist- Leninist thought, contains the seed of mass murder. I know of no such redemptive ideology that is not murderous-from crusading Christianity, to contemporary Jewish, Muslim, or Hindi fundamentalism, to Chinese communist dreams of a leap forward. Utopias with a universal message are a sure way to mass murder.

Building on Marx’s concept of the lumpenproletariat, Bauer has suggested that the Nazi elite might be called "Lumpenintellectuals" because they were largely unemployed, exceedingly bitter (Basij and Quods Force or as a friend calls them Islamist Jacobins or Robespierrians) regarding the bourgeois society that rejected them for a variety of reasons, and searching for explanations for their disappointment in a society that had lost a war but did not understand why, a society that appeared to them to to be disintegrating.

Translating this worldview to the context of todays radical Islamists should really not be too hard.

That there is today a growing confrontation between modernising secular culture and radical religion.

That Fighting terrorism by force alone is impossible. (Bauer says plainly that this is what America is trying to do in Iraq and that it won’t succeed.)

That Saudi Wahibism, whilst “fundamentalist” is not modern- it is pre-modern, and that the really modern version of radical Islam has grown out of the basic efforts at education and social services provided by Hassan al Banna and the Moslem brotherhood in post-war Egypt.
That the Elements of radical Islam include: a Fight for World supremacy. Anti-nationalism. Antisemitism (Bauer insists the word should never be hyphenated.)And that it will target firstly non-radical muslims before turning on non-radical governments which are presently in power in "the muslim world", and will culminate in the mass murder of Jews and anyone else who does not follow the ideology.

That the radicals feel that Democracy itself is blasphemy, and as the word of God has already been passed down all that is needed is to have clerics read the sources and decree what needs to be done at any given time. That there is a clear parallel with both the Nazis and Marxism-Leninism -but, unlike with other manifestations of radical utopias there is no central core to radical Islam. There is nothing which can be destroyed: The "Downfall" of Bin Laden will only result in yet another Bin Laden springing up.

That a Small minority of European muslims are turning to radical Islam basically because they have not been integrated into society. But that in various countries, parts of the radical agenda are being accepted and are thus moving into the mainstream. Penetrating (for instance) into the media of their opponents.
That radical Islam can only be fought from within Islam itself. The only ideological confrontations can and should come from within. Holy scriptures can be interpreted any way you wish. But non-moslems cannot do this. The only way to fight radical Islam is to stretch out the hand of friendship to Islamic communities and the Islamic world- there exist millions of non-radical muslims who non-muslims must reach out towards.

That there are four ways in which radical Islam can be fought:Firstly non-radical muslims can attack with ideologySecondly the poverty in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh needs to be addressed. Western governments should not put money into the pockets of dictators and corrupt monarchs. The creation of stable middle-classes in these countries should be a priority as, (and it pains me to say it) without a middle-class there is no democracy. Therefore we should ally ourselves with any government that turns against radicalismThe use of force should not be ruled out (when there is a clear target.)

But mainly we must reach out to ordinary muslims. As Bauer concludes:
“The only security we will ever achieve is by integration and not by the opposite.”
I think that at Harry’s Place there are three general positions taken whenever radical Islam is mentioned. The first, extreme-to my way of thinking, position –(let’s call it the “Farnos”) is that any mention of any muslims at all in a negative light is “islamophobic”. The second (extreme) position, (The Morgoth) is that all Muslims are to a greater of lesser extent part of the problem and that the religion itself should be destroyed. The third position (taken by myself and I think most of the other posters here) is much closer to Professor Bauer’s analysis that we should reach out to ordinary Muslims..

Personally I fail to see how the criticism of those who would subject ordinary Muslims to their unbending will is "Islamophobic" or how anyone who realises just how much those same ordinary Muslims are the targets of the islamists can seriously accuse them of all being part of the same process. So I would ask all those who think that all Muslims are being tainted by islamophobia when anybody so much as mentions the proven dangers of a radical minority, along with those who think that all Muslims are the same and are all part of the problem, and that the very “ideology” itself needs to be destroyed, "what exactly they disagree with in professor Bauer’s analysis?" And also if there is anything that they can add to it.
Indeed this question also goes out to those of us who would broadly agree that Professor Bauer is right.

In the lecture itself Professor Bauer makes the points that Radical Islam today is a genocidal ideology which must be seen in the global context of the rise of radical politicised religion during the last 20 years. There is something very modern about the way radical religion operates, and it often seems concerned with establishing "ideal" societies which have never really existed at any time in the past.

Via Harry's place

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Iranian Officials Break Teeth of Prominent Womens Rights Activist

Nahid Jafari

**Iranian officials broke the teeth of a prominent womens rights activist, Nahid Jafari, when they bashed her head on a police van on Saturday.

The regime is refusing her medical treatment for the injury.Here are a few of the women activists arrested Saturday in Tehran. The other jailed activists are on a hunger strike.

Faces of my jailed sisters in Iran.

The crux of the problem lie in the very tenets of Islamic laws and jurisprudence. These official are just doing their job as true devotees of the faith and they would not be doing Allah's will if they didn't stop these affronts to Islam, "The fundamental problem we face in Iran is in fact in the letter and the spirit of the Shi’i law - medieval in its jurisprudence, feudal in its tenets, patriarchal and undemocratic in the very fabric of its lexicon and written into the skeletal vertebra of Iranian culture (Imperial, Leftist, Nationalist or Islamist). "

One of the Islam’s principle pillars is the “Amr-e be Maroof and Nahy az Monker” Amr means “ordering” and Nahy means “preventing”. This principle is basically the terror aspect of Islam. On this basis, terrorising the society is encouraged and authorised by the religion. According to this principle a Muslim is under the obligation to order another to adhere to the Islamic ways and if ineffective take measures to prevent the unislamic act from taking place. According to the Islamic directions, this action is necessary even if it means losing one’s life or taking others’ lives. Imam Hussein lost his life while carrying out this principle.

In Islam human rights are not recognized since they are refuted by the totality of the word of Allah; hence irrelevant to the Islamic society and ummah.

Islam requires total submission to One God (Allah), including the subjugated's sense of what is right and wrong to what God declared right and wrong. If you are not willing to accept that then you are not a muslim. It is not gauranteed that the subjugated will understand the wisdom behind each and every command and decree of God but they have to follow like a herd...talk about Manufacturing Consent methods a la Chomsky.LOL
The muslim’s god, Allah, must view his/her creation (human beings) as incompetent, feeble-minded, and untrustworthy to use their own brains ergo total control over every aspect of life, body, mind and soul...

In this way, the subjugated lose any ability to develop decision-making skills and indepedent thinking capabilities, and this leaves them more vulnerable and pliable to being manipulated by clergies, Imams, Sheiks ,and the ayatollahs alike. And that is how the business industry of Islam is maintained and perpetuated and we see the result in all muslim countries in full display, defeated as people and defeated as a civilization.

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NONIE DARWISH ON CAIR's ANTI-AMERICAN AGENDA

MUST WATCH VIDEO:

Nonie Darwish on Radical Islam and American Muslims: They are radicalizing moslem families right here in America.

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