Losing Sight In Western Skys ... Forgetting True Friends ...

Based On Gary Bauer's - Western Civilization’s Hope in the Middle East: Our Friendship With Israel

"Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” It’s certainly true today. The biggest threat to the peace and security of Israel, and the peace and security of the West, is not Iran’s Ahmadinejad or Hamas or Osama bin Laden but rather our own complacence and inaction. What happens in the battle against Islamo-fascism ultimately depends on us, our resolve and courage to do what it takes to defend our way of life."

... Both Democrat and Republican Parties and their respective Leadership represents this inaction and complacency, as does most Western leadership. American "Libertarians" simply want to withdraw into their drug-ridden wombs. The Bush Administration, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon - all live by a mistaken dogma that; one can win over pure evil by working with it and not against it. Unfortunately, most western peoples accept this pagan belief.

If this idea were true, their would be no "Satan" - GOD would have "won him over" long ago. Some argue exactly that; there is no "Satan" and we should be "beyond this violence" by now and should live our lives in some Nietzscheian fashion where good and evil don't exist. See if you can manage to gurgle this concept through your lips as an MS13 gangster slits your throat or a Radical Islamist cuts off your head.

They all forget so easily; if this idea of "live and let live" were true, evil would not be a part of our existence. I've got news for ya folks - it's still here! - [Tiger]

This week’s third annual Christians United For Israel Summit in Washington, D.C., commenced amid predictable media chatter over the political implications of the burgeoning Christian-Jewish alliance.

But the summit’s true purpose -- to foster greater respect and understanding between Christians and Jews -- was rooted in a much deeper insight into the relationship between these two faiths: that the future of Western Civilization may well depend on it.

Mid-way through the conference, I was approached by a young Israeli Jew who grabbed me by the shoulder and thanked me for my work on behalf of Israel. He also told me that he was “astonished” by the level of support for Israel by Americans and particularly by conservative Christians. At first, he told me, he had been skeptical of Christians’ intentions for supporting Israel, believing that there must be some sort of “hidden agenda” in our concern for the beleaguered state. Only recently had he come to realize that Christian support for Israel is sincere.

And it’s true. Most American Christians have long recognized an obligation to support Israel. A poll conducted this month by the Washington-based Joshua Fund, an evangelical organization, found 82 percent of American Christians felt they have a “moral and spiritual obligation” to support Jews and Israel.

Christians support Israel because the Bible commands us to pray and act for the peace of Jerusalem and to speak out for Israel’s sake. But Christian support for Israel is important also because Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East, America’s only reliable ally there and the only nation in that region rooted in the Judeo-Christian values that have allowed Western Civilization to thrive. American Christians, and all Americans of goodwill, must recognize that Israel and America’s futures are inextricably linked.

The media, United Nations and European elites often trumpet the notion that Israel is the primary impediment to peace in the Middle East. They claim that if only Israel would agree to a few concessions -- to divide Jerusalem, abandon Judea and Samaria, give up on the Golan Heights and accept unlimited refugees -- peace could be established. But it is becoming clear that the intention of Israel’s enemies is not to argue about the details of peace agreements but rather to debate a much more fundamental issue: whether Israel has the right even to exist.

The enmity that fuels that debate is inculcated early. Israeli children are taught to reject bigotry and racism and to be tolerant of other faiths. But in many Muslim countries, children are taught to hate Jews and Christians. A recent report by the Hudson Institute revealed that the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education teaches literal hatred of “unbelievers.” Even Palestinian television programs aimed at young children showcase Islamic radicalism and teach that nothing is more glorious than to become a suicide bomber for Islam.

But the lack of reciprocity goes further. While Israel’s judicial system relentlessly protects the rights of Israel’s Muslim citizens, a culture of hatred of the “infidel” is endemic in much of the Muslim world. A new report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found that Gaza’s 3,500 Christians are increasingly at risk of violence, that Christian schools have become targets of terrorist attacks and that the tiny Christian minority living in Gaza lives in daily fear and intimidation and often tones down Christian holidays and observances in order not to provoke the extremists. In much of the Islamic world, Christianity is illegal and Christians who worship openly are imprisoned or worse.

At the end of my conversation with the young Israeli Jew at the CUFI Summit, he told me that he already fully appreciated the threat of Islamic terrorism. “What I want is hope,” he said as he recounted how he had spent four years in the Israeli Defense Forces and attended the funerals of at least 10 friends killed by terrorists before he was 21 years old. He also told me that he had a 17-month-old child whose name means hope in Hebrew. This young man wanted reassurance from me that there was hope that his child would grow up in a peaceful Israel.

There is hope. Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” It’s certainly true today. The biggest threat to the peace and security of Israel, and the peace and security of the West, is not Iran’s Ahmadinejad or Hamas or Osama bin Laden but rather our own complacence and inaction. What happens in the battle against Islamo-fascism ultimately depends on us, our resolve and courage to do what it takes to defend our way of life.

The only way we lose this battle is if we decide it’s not important enough to us to win. If good people do nothing, the enemy will win. But the good news is that we ultimately have control over this battle’s result. There is reason to hope, then, and that hope was palpable at this week’s CUFI summit. Hope for a peaceful future begins with Christians, Jews and all people of goodwill deciding that the values of Western Civilization are values worth defending.

The Observer

Wartime Malpractice - Criminal Frontline

An NRO Q&A

Andrew C. McCarthy, a National Review Online contributing editor and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is author of the new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, released this week by Encounter Books. He talks about the book and the war we’re in with NRO editor Kathryn Lopez.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Do I have the sides right? They say “Allahu Akbar!” we say “Imagine the liability!”

Andrew C. McCarthy: Unfortunately, that’s exactly right, and you’ve hit on the key difference. They are a religious ideology reveling in a mission for which, far from making any apologies for their brutality, they exude a zeal found only in people convinced they are both right and justified. You won’t ever hear from them the slightest misgiving — no careful references to Infidelo-fascists so as not to offend all the wonderful moderate infidels out there.

We, on the contrary, are an odd combination of diffidence, self-loathing, and arrogance: doubtful we are worth the trouble to defend; apt to figure that if people hate us, we must deserve it; and sure that it is within our power to satisfy their grievances — even though we didn’t cause them — by dialogue, political processes, sensitivity-training, and, of course, buying them off — which simply confirms them in their suspicion that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.

Remember when the Israelis built their security fence and reduced Palestinian suicide bombings by about 95 percent? Prompted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the U.N.’s Court of International Justice promptly pronounced the fence — a passive, life-saving defense measure — to be a shameful violation of international law. In a nutshell, that’s where we’re headed: Ruled by a delusion that, in a world full of lawless savages abetted by rogue regimes, legal processes will save rather than enervate us.

Lopez: Who most damningly has been Willfully Blind?

McCarthy: Well, it’d be easy to say, “Why, the government, of course.” But government is heavily influenced by the media and the commentariat, and those elites will not abide the notion that there just might be a connection between Islam and Islamic terrorism. I think most people are more sensible than that. The more extensive government gets, though, and the more dependent on it we all become, the less will the public has to demand a governmental course correction. Absent some hair-raising event like 9/11, we go along.

Lopez: American investigators have been penalized for foiling plots?

McCarthy: In a perverse way, you’re penalized by your own success, yes. After 9/11, law enforcement was appropriately pushed to become more pro-active, to interrupt plots at a very early point (or even prevent the plots from forming at all, through devices like the laws barring material support to terrorist organizations). Human nature is Pollyannish. When you’re worried about a threat, and you take protective measures that cause you some inconvenience, and then the threat doesn’t further materialize, you are more likely to conclude that the threat wasn’t so serious after all rather than that the protective measures are your salvation. You start questioning, “Do we really need all this surveillance? How can we detain people without a trial? How do we really know those people were supporting al-Qaeda or Hezbollah rather giving to Islamic charities?” So sure, the more we succeed in preventing attacks, the more likely it is we will lose the tools required to prevent attacks.

Lopez: What’s the most devastating lesson from 15 years ago we still haven’t learned?

McCarthy: That the primary cause of Islamic terrorism is Muslim doctrine, and that we are not fighting a tiny, rag-tag collection of fringe lunatics who have somehow “hijacked” the “true Islam.” Mark Steyn reminds us of Toynbee’s observation that civilizations die from suicide rather than murder, and our mulish refusal to look at what we’re up against is case in point. It’s really a frightful commentary on the low regard we have for ourselves: that we don’t think we are capable of soberly assessing the Islamic challenge without smearing all Muslims as terrorists — as if, in the scheme of things, it’s more important to shield the tender sensibilities of Muslims than fulfill our duty to protect American lives. The stubborn fact is: Islamic doctrine is supremacist, chauvinist, and rife with calls to violence against non-Muslims. That doesn’t mean that these are the only elements of Islam. Nor does it mean that all Muslims, or even most, have any interest in acting on those elements. But moderate Muslims, no matter how great a majority of the faithful they may be, do not make Islam moderate. Islam is the font from which springs what we call fundamentalist Islam, radical Islam, militant Islam, political Islam, Islamo-fascism, or whatever we are calling it this week to avoid any hint that Islam has anything to do with the problem. There are many different interpretations of Islam, of course. The one that truly threatens us — let’s call it fundamentalist Islam, since I think that’s closest to accurate — is not a fringe ideology. It is a comprehensive social system, with political, legal, and theological prescriptions. It is 14 centuries old; has in its history won the fealty of rich and poor, educated and illiterate, etc.; cuts across divides like Sunni-versus-Shiite; and today boasts hundreds of millions of adherents — not a majority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims, but an influential, dynamic minority. Only a small percentage of fundamentalists cross the line into actual terrorist activity, but even a small percentage of hundreds of millions of people means an awful lot of terrorists, and the equally significant point is that the others — to a greater or lesser extent — share the goals if not the methodology. Moreover, the leading fundamentalist figures, people like Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, exert a powerful influence over even moderates. Their erudition and conviction, their seeming authenticity and command of the scriptures, are very intimidating for the average Muslim who just wants to go about his life.In any event, the forcible tendencies of fundamentalist Islam may be exacerbated or rationalized by poverty, resentment, lack of democracy, etc. But they are not caused by such pretexts. The violence is commanded by scripture.

Lopez: Why did Omar Abdel Rahman want to kill Mubarak?

McCarthy: Because he was breathing. (I was going to clarify the ambiguity, but the “he” works whether you think the antecedent is Abdel Rahman or Mubarak.) The Blind Sheikh regards Mubarak as the “third traitor, backstabber” — that is, following Nasser and Sadat as modern presidents of Abdel Rahman’s native Egypt — who is in cahoots with the United States to destroy Islam.

Note here that when Islamic terrorists and their apologists talk about Islam being under siege, this has to be understood in the context of their hegemonic goals. Any regime that is not governing in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law, is implicitly attacking Islam since Allah commands that all the world be called to Islam and the establishment of sharia is deemed a necessary precondition to that divine injunction.

Lopez: You sent Rahman and Sayyid Nosair away for life. What was the most important lesson from that trial and investigation?

McCarthy: That there are severe limitations to how effective the criminal justice system can be in combating international terrorism, and severe downsides to using it. Under our due-process rules, trials necessarily create and convey to our enemies a lot of intelligence that is very useful to them. If the justice system is the principal counterterrorism response, it betrays a lack of seriousness about our security that our enemies notice and are fortified by. As a practical matter — Abdel Rahman being one of a handful of exceptions — most important jihadists are beyond our justice system’s reach. As I often note, bin Laden’s been under U.S. indictment for a decade — i.e., since before the embassy bombings, the Millennium plot, the Cole bombing, and 9/11. The indictment doesn’t seem to have deterred him much.

Lopez: Why do you love the FBI?

McCarthy: It is filled with good, decent, patriotic folk — the kind of people you’d like to have living next door. I have never loved the Bureau as an institution. As with any big institution of that kind, there are things to admire and things to revile. But I love the agents. I virtually grew up around them, and I’ve found them to be very honorable even in our disagreements, which have been many.

Lopez: You write, “If American lives are to hinge on the prosecution of terrorists vested with the full protections of the criminal justice system, it is alarming to consider the dross that can be the difference between success and failure.” Explain.

McCarthy: When someone is brought into our criminal justice system, no matter how serious the crime and how strong the evidence appears to be, our underlying presumption is that he is innocent, that courts and lawyers should zealously protect his liberty and privacy, and that he should get every bounce of the ball. In sum, our system proudly boasts that we’d prefer to see the government lose — i.e., we’d prefer to see guilty people go free than see a single innocent wrongly convicted. A murderer will be acquitted in the federal system if the murder is not proved to have affected interstate commerce. A would-be terrorist will be acquitted of attempted bombing if the jury finds his exertions amounted only to “mere preparation” rather than the legally required “substantial step.” Bill Ayers, one of the terrorists who enjoys a friendly relationship with Barack Obama, is a free man today — despite his own admission of having participated in several bombings — because government surveillance violations caused evidence of his guilt to be suppressed. The defendants in my case tried to get the charges dismissed on the ground that the main informant made unauthorized recordings that the FBI — which didn’t know about them — failed to preserve.

These are the sorts of things that happen in legal cases. But a national security threat is not, essentially, a legal case. When the protection or even the preservation of the country is at stake, our position has to be that government must prevail — not that we’d prefer to see government lose. Government does not create our rights and our freedom, but it is necessary to their protection. If the system is not preserved, we are no longer free and our rights are worthless.

Lopez: Why are terrorism trials “intense, rewarding, and preposterous”?

McCarthy: They are intense because the stakes could not be higher. Acquitted terrorists will eventually be freed to return to the jihad, to kill again, so there is more than the usual imperative for prosecutors to see that justice is done in a case where the law has been violated. They are rewarding, especially if you win, because by nullifying terrorists for long stretches, you know you have done more than the usual amount of good. Moreover, every interesting legal issue under the sun tends to come up, so they are a tremendous professional experience if you are striving to be a better lawyer. They are preposterous because, from up close, you can see day-to-day, in a way that’s hard to quantify but patent, how crazy it is to think we could protect the country by relying on terrorism trials — which are prohibitively expensive, take years to complete (especially when appeals are factored in), can reach only a small fraction of the terrorist threat, are a telling indicator to our enemies that we shun fighting them in more decisive ways, and generate scads of information that is sure to help the people trying to kill us do so more efficiently.

Lopez: You argue that “international terrorism is not the type of national challenge the criminal justice system is designed to address.” You say that “trials in the criminal justice system don’t work for terrorism. They work for terrorists.” So how do we deal with terrorism and terrorists, realistically, ASAP?

McCarthy: Well, I am not against using the criminal justice system as a component in a comprehensive government response to the jihadist threat. I object to its being the centerpiece of a national counterterrorism strategy, as it was until 9/11, because as a national security matter, that’s counterproductive — it endangers us more than it helps. But when people are arrested in the United States plotting terrorism, and we can prosecute them without having to provide mounds of discovery and testimony describing our intelligence about, say, al-Qaeda or Iran's Republican Guards Corps, then those are cases we should do. And since the best analyses indicate the jihadist threat is more atomized now — i.e., that the ideology is so widely available by the Internet and other means that cells are often forming without the mediating influence of an established terrorist organization — that means we should be able to do criminal cases against such cells without having to compromise our intelligence and our methods and sources for obtaining it.

A national-security strategy to combat Islamic militancy, however, has to have a strong military component. There is simply no substitute for killing and capturing jihadists. We haven’t been hit again since 9/11 because we have often killed and captured more terrorists in a day in Afghanistan or Iraq than we did in the eight years between the time the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 and its destruction in 2001.

We also have to be realistic about the ideology at the root of this challenge. When we are not chanting the “religion of peace” mantra, we are encouraging Islamic reformers. Of course, nothing needs reform unless it is problematic in the first place. Islam is, to put it mildly, problematic. We don’t need to insult Muslims gratuitously, and we shouldn’t. Neither, however, do we need to pretend we think Islam is a net-positive. Behind the operatives doing the killing are legions of sympathizers pushing soft jihad — pushing for Islamicization of our culture, court recognition of Islamic legal principles, sharia-compliant financial arrangements, sensitivity-training for our law enforcement and intelligence officers (who are now taught that jihad is the inner struggle to become a better person despite its undeniable history as a military struggle), special access to government agencies for dubious Islamic interest groups, extraordinary limits on free speech in order to suppress information about connections between Muslims and savagery, etc. In their own way, these creeping developments are more insidious for our way of life — with its separation of the religious and political realms — than the bombings, suicide hijackings, riots-on-demand and other less subtle forms of intimidation.This all needs to be discouraged, and that can’t be done by only applying law enforcement or the military. You have to apply pressure diplomatically, by immigration restrictions, by an aggressive Treasury that tracks and seizes funds. It has to be comprehensive, and it has to start from the premise that, while we hope Islam reforms itself (something we can’t do for Islam), we make no apologies for the fact that we are not an Islamic society and have no intention of becoming one.

Lopez: I know you don’t like to talk about it but there are prosecutors and investigators who are putting their own lives and those of their families in danger, aren’t there?

McCarthy: Of course, but what we are asked to do, even at its most demanding, is a pittance compared to the selfless sacrifices the men and women in our military make every day. Those remarkable people stare death down, day in and day out, no complaint, so I think it would be a bit much for a prosecutor to whine about how hard he has it. Plus, the point of terrorism is to terrorize — if you let them think they are getting to you, they win.

Lopez: Is anyone running for president NOT willfully blind?

McCarthy: Sen. McCain is head and shoulders better than the two Democrats — I don’t think you’ll ever see a President McCain consulting with or pardoning Weather Underground and FALN terrorists. But McCain follows the party line in most respects, is enthusiastic for democracy-promotion even as it legitimizes Islamic fundamentalists, thinks we need to bolster Abbas despite Fatah’s legacy of terror, etc. I don’t see anything on the horizon that would suggest a change in our current mindset.

Lopez: How is Islam like fire?

McCarthy: Fire is a useful but very dangerous thing. For those who are careful with it and rigorously harness its explosive potential, it can be very beneficial. That’s why most Muslims lead productive, dignified, honorable lives. But Islam always has that explosive potential, many of its most influential figures, like Sheikh Abdel Rahman, believe that potential is meant to be unleashed to vanquish non-Muslims. There are far too many Muslims who internalize that message.

Lopez: “Militant Islam may actually pose an existential threat to the United States…” you write. What must be done?

McCarthy: The first step is to recognize the threat and its source. If, as I contend, the doctrine is the source, then security policy has to direct itself to the doctrine. We can’t change the doctrine ourselves. But we can protect ourselves, and increase the pressure for reform, by refusing to tolerate terrorist safe-havens; punishing regimes that facilitate jihadist organizations, particularly by giving them safe-haven; imposing restrictions on business with and immigration from Islamic countries unless they reform; punishing regimes that promote the exportation of Wahhabist and Salafist interpretations of Islam; dealing only with authentic Muslim reformers while shunning groups like CAIR; and making clear that, until Islam actually reforms — until Muslims and Islamic regimes systematically reject and crack down on jihadism in a convincing way — we are not going to pretend that a person’s adherence to Islam is irrelevant to whether we should regard him with suspicion. That doesn’t mean we investigate people solely because of their religion. Yet, as long as we are under siege from Islamic terror groups, we can’t take the position that it is irrelevant whether a person who is here, or wants to come here, is an Islamic fundamentalist who believes sharia should be installed and jihad is the legitimate means toward that end.

Lopez: Don’t be shy: Why is Willful Blindness a “must read”?

McCarthy: That’s so nice of you to suggest, Kathryn. The book is not something I ever thought I’d write. Some of it is personal and a lot of it deals with things we — very much including I — did wrong. But it’s been 15 years and we’re still doing the same things wrong. Because I had the privilege of being inside the official response when the war really started, and dealing face-to-face with the enemy, I have a vantage point that separates my take from the mountains of commentary counterterrorism has generated in the last several years. So for me, that finally made it a “must write.” Whether it’s a “must read” will be for others to decide.

The Observer

Hamas Cleric Predicts 'Rome Will Be Conquered by Islam'

A sermon last Friday by a prominent Muslim cleric and Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament openly declared that "the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital," would soon be conquered by Islam.The fiery sermon, delivered by Yunis al-Astal and aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV, predicted that Rome would become "an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe."

"Allah has chosen you for Himself and for His religion," al-Astal preached, "so that you will serve as the engine pulling this nation to the phase of succession, security and consolidation of power, and even to conquests through da'wa and military conquests of the capitals of the entire world.

"Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad," he added.

Al-Astal last June preached how it was the duty of Palestinian women to martyr themselves by becoming homicide bombers.

"The most exalted form of jihad is fighting for the sake of Allah, which means sacrificing one's soul by fighting the enemies head-on, even if it leads to martyrdom," he said in a June 23, 2007 interview.

"When jihad becomes an individual duty, it applies to women too, because women do not differ from men when it comes to individual duties," he said, calling Jews "the brothers of apes and pigs" who should "taste the bitterness of death."

Friday's rant repeated that theme: "Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam. "

"I believe that our children, or our grandchildren, will inherit our jihad and our sacrifices, and, Allah willing, the commanders of the conquest will come from among them.

"Today, we instill these good tidings in their souls – and by means of the mosques and the Koran books, and the history of our Prophets, his companions, and the great leaders, we prepare them for the mission of saving humanity from the hellfire at whose brink they stand."

Click here to view al-Astal's sermon on MimriTV.org

The Observer

Financing Shari'a, Financing Terror - On Wall Street!

Jihad Comes to Wall Street

"Sharia finance" does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of Sharia — and Terror

If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders's movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.

For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: “Islamic Ethical Investment.” According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.

Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than “Jihad with money.” As al-Qaradawi explains, “God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money.” Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.

Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such “ethical” mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.

Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.

... NRO article continues

The Observer

France Has Been Conquered, England Is Done For - We're Next

LONDON — The British government has cleared the way for husbands with multiple wives to claim welfare benefits for all their partners, fueling growing controversy over the role of Islamic Shariah law in the nation's cultural and legal framework.

Bigamy is outlawed in Britain, but authorities have never prosecuted Muslim men who had legally married more than one woman abroad and continued to live with them after immigrating. Shariah permits men to have up to four wives at one time.

Now, after a review that began in November 2006, a panel of four government departments has decided that all the wives of a Muslim man may collect state benefits, provided that the marriages took place in a country where multiple spouses are legal.

Neither the review nor the decision was announced publicly, and their discovery by newspapers late last month triggered an uproar in the largely Christian nation — a fury exacerbated by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' remark last week that some aspects of Islamic law could be embraced within Britain's legal system.

Archbishop Williams, the spiritual head of the world's 77 million Anglicans, refused to back down from the idea yesterday, but admitted at a meeting of the church's General Synod, or parliament, that the remark had been "clumsy."

The furor contributed to a sense of unease about Islam after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States and the suicide bombings by Muslims on London's bus and rail system that killed 52 commuters three years ago.

The proposed use of taxpayer money to support multiple wives of Muslim men — a figure that one estimate puts at up to $20 million a year — has provoked widespread anger, particularly since bigamy is a crime in Britain, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Although exact figures are unavailable, government ministers have estimated that up to 1,000 polygamous marriages exist in Britain.