Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers

Posted 06/12/2013 06:34 PM ET

Homeland Insecurity: The White House assures that tracking our every phone call and keystroke is to stop terrorists, and yet it won’t snoop in mosques, where the terrorists are.

That’s right, the government’s sweeping surveillance of our most private communications excludes the jihad factories where homegrown terrorists are radicalized.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover sting operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

Before mosques were excluded from the otherwise wide domestic spy net the administration has cast, the FBI launched dozens of successful sting operations against homegrown jihadists — inside mosques — and disrupted dozens of plots against the homeland.

If only they were allowed to continue, perhaps the many victims of the Boston Marathon bombings would not have lost their lives and limbs. The FBI never canvassed Boston mosques until four days after the April 15 attacks, and it did not check out the radical Boston mosque where the Muslim bombers worshiped.

The bureau didn’t even contact mosque leaders for help in identifying their images after those images were captured on closed-circuit TV cameras and cellphones.

One of the Muslim bombers made extremist outbursts during worship, yet because the mosque wasn’t monitored, red flags didn’t go off inside the FBI about his increasing radicalization before the attacks.

This is particularly disturbing in light of recent independent surveys of American mosques, which reveal some 80% of them preach violent jihad or distribute violent literature to worshipers.
What other five-alarm jihadists are counterterrorism officials missing right now, thanks to restrictions on monitoring the one area they should be monitoring?

Posted on 12 Jun 13 by Investors.com

(h/t to Joe Miller/Restoring Liberty)

[Editor’s Note: This does not necessarily entail the beliefs, thoughts, or theories of the local Act chapters or the National Act office…they are my beliefs, thoughts and/or theories. How does this work…Sheikh Obama tells us that the War on Terror is over, but he has the NSA take cellphone account info (so the government can listen to all phone calls) and take bank account info and credit card info (to see what everyone is buying) to prevent terrorists from attacking…thought the mehdi said the War of Terror was over…sad thing, Muslims and mosques are exempted from his “spying”, so only NON-MUSLIMS are affected by this.

Some people say he is just trying to become king, but in reality, knowing that he is Muslim and a Muslim Brotherhood puppet, he is doing what the Qur’an and Shari’a (Islamic) Law tells him to do…lie to (or mislead) non-Muslims into thinking you are working for them so they give in to what you’re doing and eventually turn to allah for his cause.

No, Obama is doing a lot of things right now to push America into becoming a Muslim country…he is working on killing the economy so we would want to go to Shari’a finance, he is taking away 1st and 2nd Amendments of freedom from us, he is violating his oath of office so he can cater to his Muslim Brotherhood handlers to help them take over the world, he has taking out privacy (cell phone and bank/credit card accounts) to spy on us, he is allowing Muslims to be exempt from all the aforementioned. All this lines up with Shari’a Law. He is operating in Islamic justice, which means that Muslims are better than everyone else, so they get privies and are not looked at, only kuffars (non-Muslims).

So, in knowing Islam, and what the Qur’an, ahadith, Shari’a Law, and the Sira (all of which are the Islamic “sacred” text) Obama isn’t trying to be a tyrannical, dictator type king, he is doing what he can to be the tyrannical, dictator type mehdi. This is why, out of all the previous individuals in history (Nero, Napoleon, Hitler) that score points for being the anti-Christ, but Obama not only scores more points for being the anti-Christ (I am not say he is, just stating his actions is all), but he scores points for being the Mehdi as well, which the other “anti-Christ” figures did not meet at all. So, Sheikh Obama is not trying to become a king, he wants to be the mehdi.]

Tawriya: New Islamic Doctrine Permits ‘Creative Lying’

by Raymond Ibrahim
Stonegate Institute
February 28, 2012

Perhaps you have heard of taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances, primarily when Muslim minorities live under infidel authority. Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances—including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah—provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a way that is true to him. (Though tawriya is technically not “new”—as shall be seen, it has been part of Islamic law and tradition for centuries—it is certainly new to most non-Muslims, hence the need for this exposition and the word “new” in the title.)

The authoritative Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary defines tawriya as, “hiding, concealment; dissemblance, dissimulation, hypocrisy; equivocation, ambiguity, double-entendre, allusion.” Conjugates of the trilateral root of the word, w-r-y, appear in the Quran in the context of hiding or concealing something (e.g., 5:31, 7:26).

As a doctrine, “double-entendre” best describes tawriya’s function. According to past and present Muslim scholars (several documented below), tawriya is when a speaker says something that means one thing to the listener, though the speaker means something else, and his words technically support this alternate meaning.

For example, if someone declares “I don’t have a penny in my pocket,” most listeners will assume the speaker has no money on him—though he might have dollar bills, just literally no pennies. Likewise, say a friend asks you, “Do you know where Mike is?” You do, but prefer not to divulge. So you say “No, I don’t know”—but you keep in mind another Mike, whose whereabouts you really do not know.

All these are legitimate according to Sharia law and do not constitute “lying,” which is otherwise forbidden in Islam, except in three cases: lying in war, lying to one’s spouse, and lying in order to reconcile people. For these, Sharia permits Muslims to lie freely, without the strictures of tawriya, that is, without the need for creativity.

As for all other instances, in the words of Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajid (based on scholarly consensus): “Tawriya is permissible under two conditions: 1) that the words used fit the hidden meaning; 2) that it does not lead to an injustice” (“injustice” as defined by Sharia, of course, not Western standards). Otherwise, it is permissible even for a Muslim to swear when lying through tawriya. Munajid, for example, cites a man who swears to Allah that he can only sleep under a roof (saqf); when the man is caught sleeping atop a roof, he exonerates himself by saying “by roof, I meant the open sky.” This is legitimate. “After all,” Munajid adds, “Quran 21:32 refers to the sky as a roof [saqf].”

Here is a recent example of tawriya in action: Because it is a “great sin” for Muslims to acknowledge Christmas, this sheikh counsels Muslims to tell Christians, “I wish you the best,” whereby the latter might “understand it to mean you’re wishing them best in terms of their [Christmas] celebration.” But—here the wily sheikh giggles as he explains—”by saying I wish you the best, you mean in your heart I wish you become a Muslim.”

As with most Muslim practices, tawriya is traced to Islam’s prophet. After insisting Muslims “need” tawriya because it “saves them from lying,” and thus sinning, Sheikh Uthman al-Khamis adds that Muhammad often used it. Indeed, Muhammad is recorded saying “Allah has commanded me to equivocate among the people inasmuch as he has commanded me to establish [religious] obligations”; and “I have been sent with obfuscation”; and “whoever lives his life in dissimulation dies a martyr” (Sami Mukaram, Al Taqiyya Fi Al Islam, London: Mu’assisat al-Turath al-Druzi, 2004, p. 30).

More specifically, in a canonical hadith, Muhammad said: “If any of you ever pass gas or soil yourselves during prayers [breaking wudu], hold your nose and leave” (Sunan Abu Dawud): Holding one’s nose and leaving implies smelling something offensive—which is true—though people will think it was someone else who committed the offense.

Following their prophet’s example, many leading Muslim figures have used tawriya, such as Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, founder of one of Islam’s four schools of law, practiced in Saudi Arabia. Once when he was conducting class, someone came knocking, asking for one of his students. Imam Ahmed answered, “He’s not here, what would he be doing here?”—all the time pointing at his hand, as if to say “he’s not in my hand.” The caller, who could not see Ahmed, assumed the student was simply not there.

Also, Sufyan al-Thawri, another important Muslim thinker, was once brought to Caliph Mahdi who refused to let him leave, until Thawri swore to return. As he was going out, Thawri left his sandals by the door. After a while, he returned, took his sandals and left for good. When the caliph asked about him, he was told that, yes, Thawri had sworn to come back—and, indeed, he had come back: only to take his sandals and leave.

Lest it seem tawriya is limited to a few colorful anecdotes more befitting the Arabian Nights than the religious law (Sharia) of a billion people, here are some more modern Muslim authorities—Sheikh Muhammad Hassan, the famous cleric who says Islam forbids Muslims from smiling to infidels, except when advantageous, and Dr. Abdullah Shakir—justifying it. They both give the example of someone knocking on your door, you do not wish to see them, so a relative answers the door saying, “He’s not here,” and by “here” they mean the immediate room, which is true, since you will be hiding in another room.

Likewise, on the popular Islam Web, where Muslims submit questions and Islamic authorities respond with a fatwa, a girl poses her moral dilemma: her father has explicitly told her that, whenever the phone rings, she is to answer saying “he’s not here.” The fatwa solves her problem: she is free to lie, but when she says “he’s not here,” she must mean he is not in the same room, or not directly in front of her.

Of course, while all the sheikhs give examples that are innocuous and amount to “white” lies, tawriya can clearly be used to commit terrible, “black” lies, especially where the adversarial non-Muslim infidel is concerned. As Sheikh al-Munajid puts it: “Tawriya is permissible if it is necessary or serves a Sharia interest.” Consider the countless “Sharia interests” that run directly counter to Western civilization and law, from empowering Islam to subjugating infidels. To realize these, Muslims, through tawriya, are given a blank check to lie—a check that surely comes in handy: not just in trivial occasions, like avoiding unwanted callers, but momentous ones, such as at high-level diplomatic meetings where major treaties are forged.

Note: The purpose of this essay was to document and describe the doctrine of tawriya. Future writings will analyze its full significance—from what it means for a Muslim to believe the Supreme Being advocates such lying, to how tawriya is liable to suppress one’s conscience to the point of passing a lie detector test—as well as compare and contrast it with the practices of other religions, and more.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum

Posted on 28 Feb 12 by MEF

Top Muslim Declares All Christians ‘Infidels’

Quoting the Quran (correctly) may be fueling the recent slaughter of Christians in Egypt.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article mis-identified Ali Gomaa as the “grand mufti of Al Azhar.” Gomaa is the grand mufti of Egypt, the nation’s second highest religious position, and a member of Al Azhar’s Council for Islamic Research.

To what extent was Egypt’s Maspero massacre, wherein the military literally mowed down Christian Copts protesting the ongoing destruction of their churches, a product of anti-Christian sentiment?

A video of Sheikh Ali Gomaa (or Gom’a), the grand mufti of Egypt, which began circulating weeks before the massacre, helps elucidate.  While holding that Muslims may coexist with Christians (who, as dhimmis, have rights), Gomaa categorized Christians as kuffar — “infidels” — a word that connotes “enemies,” “evil-doers,” and every bad thing to Muslim ears.

After quoting Quran 5:17, “Infidels are those who say God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary,” he expounded by saying any association between a human and God (in Arabic, shirk) is the greatest sin: “Whoever thinks the Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically — for we are all sons of God — but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation,” thereby becoming an infidel.

Gomaa then offered a hypothetical dialogue between Christians and Muslims to illustrate further:

Christians: You have the wrong idea about us; we don’t worship the Christ.

Muslims: Okay, fine; we were under the wrong impression — but, by the way: “Infidels are those who say God is the Christ, son of Mary.”

Christians: But these are philosophical matters that we are unable to explain.

Muslims: Okay, fine; God is one—but, by the way: “Infidels are those who say God is the Christ, son of Mary.”

As a graduate of and long-time professor at  Al Azhar  university before being named grand mufti, Ali Gomaa represents mainstream Islam’s — not “radical Islam’s” or “Islamism’s” — position concerning the “other,” in this case, Christians. Regardless, many in the West hail him as a “moderate” — such as this U.S. News article titled “Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam“; Lawrence Wright  describes him as “a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam”:

He is the kind of cleric the West longs for, because of his assurances that there is no conflict with democratic rule and no need for theocracy. Gomaa has also become an advocate for Muslim women, who he says should have equal standing with men.

How does one reconcile such sunny characterizations with reality?  The fact is, whenever top Muslim authorities like Gomaa say something that can be made to conform to Western ideals, Westerners jump on it (while of course ignoring more “extreme” positions).  It is the same with Gomaa’s alma mater, Al Azhar, the “chief center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world.”

MEMRI, for instance, recently published a report titled “The Sheikh of Al Azhar in an Exceptionally Tolerant Article: Christianity, Judaism Share Basic Tenets of Islam.”  Of course, the day after this report appeared, the same sheikh insisted that the American ambassador wear a hijab when meeting him: just as Muslim “radicals” compel Christian girls to wear the hijab, “moderate” Al Azhar compels U.S. diplomats.

In short, yes, there are commonalities, but they are secondary to the differences, which are more final and define the relationship. Or, to put it in Ali Gomaa’s paradigm: Fine, Christianity and Islam share similar tenets — but, by the way: “Infidels are those who say God is the Christ, son of Mary.”

The fact is, this Qur’anic verse is as much a cornerstone of Islam’s view of Christianity as the unity of God and Christ is a cornerstone of Christianity, articulated some 1700 years ago in the Nicene Creed. The issue is clear cut for all involved.

Accordingly, how can one fault Gomaa? As grand mufti, he is simply being true to Islam’s teachings. Indeed, his consistency is more commendable than the equivocations of Western ecumencalists who, by falling over themselves to assure Muslims that they all essentially believe in the same things, demonstrate, especially to Muslims, that they believe in nothing.

Incidentally, if Gomaa upholds the plain teachings of the Quran concerning who is an infidel, is it not fair to assume he also upholds the Quran’s teachings on how to treat them, as commanded in Quran 9: 29: “Fight … the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”  Of course, prudent Muslims, undoubtedly like Gomaa himself, know that now is not the time to talk openly about such things.

Either way, here is another reminder of how Qur’anic verses and terms that Western people brush aside as arcane or irrelevant have a tremendous impact on current events — such as the Maspero massacre: For the same word Gomaa used to describe Christians is the same word Muslim soldiers used when they opened fire on and ran over Christians; the same word twenty Muslim soldiers used as they tortured a protesting Christian; and the same word Muslims hurled at Christians during the funeral procession for their loved ones slain at Maspero: infidel.

Posted 28 Oct 11 by PJM