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The show begins with dis­cus­sion of the death of a 9/11 activist who had met with Pres­i­dent Obama shortly before her death in a plane crash. Skep­ti­cal of the offi­cial ver­sion of events, the late Bev­erly Eck­ert had gar­nered the President’s attention.

A con­sid­er­able por­tion of the first side high­lights aspects of the recent wild­fires that struck the Vic­to­ria sec­tion of Aus­tralia. That region has been the focal point of reli­gious strife between Mus­lims and some of their Chris­t­ian prelate neigh­bors. In that con­text, it  is impor­tant to note that Aus­tralian Jihadists have been urg­ing the use of wild­fires as weapons against “infi­dels.” By the same token, jihadists have taken sat­is­fac­tion in the recent wild­fires in Vic­to­ria. Did they author these events?

Next, the pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of pos­si­ble jihadist activ­ity in South Asia by turn­ing to the sub­ject of the ter­ror­ist attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team in Lahore, Pak­istan. After exam­in­ing a num­ber of con­spir­a­to­r­ial analy­ses prof­fered by knowl­edge­able Pak­ista­nis, the broad­cast sets forth inves­ti­ga­tors’ analy­sis that Pak­istani jihadist ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and al Qaeda authored the event.

Other Pak­istani Mus­lim Broth­er­hood affil­i­ates have launched ad cam­paigns on pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems in both the Bay Area and New York. The Islamic Cir­cle of North Amer­ica is not a benign orga­ni­za­tion. Much of the rest of the pro­gram also deals with the Brotherhood.

Although it rep­re­sents itself as a peace­ful, civil right rights orga­ni­za­tion for Mus­lims, the Broth­er­hood is actu­ally an Islamic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that has enjoyed con­sid­er­able pub­lic rela­tions suc­cess. After dis­cussing the Brotherhood’s appar­ent pen­e­tra­tion and dom­i­na­tion of the Al Jazeera net­work, the broad­cast sets forth a num­ber of recent devel­op­ments in that organization’s attempts at dom­i­nat­ing the U.S. Islamic com­mu­nity and issues relat­ing to Amer­i­can Mus­lims. One for­mer FBI agent claims that all sig­nif­i­cant Amer­i­can Mus­lim insti­tu­tions are dom­i­nated by the Brotherhood.

Con­clud­ing with an event that high­lights how Islamic fas­cist ele­ments fit into, and net­work with, the Under­ground Reich and the post­war fas­cist inter­na­tional, the broad­cast revis­its the 1994 AMIA bomb­ing in Argentina. An event authored by a net­work bring­ing together Shi­ite reac­tionar­ies in Iran and Lebanon, Argen­tin­ian secu­rity forces and Amer­i­can neo-fascist and white suprema­cist ele­ments, the AMIA bomb­ing con­tin­ues to be actively covered-up. An inves­ti­ga­tor into that attack was recently kid­napped, tor­tured and point­edly warned, appar­ently by Argen­tine secu­rity forces linked to the per­pe­tra­tors of the event.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Amer­i­can Mus­lim Broth­er­hood attempts at chang­ing lan­guage that would weaken attempts at reign­ing in jihadist ele­ments in the U.S.; protests by the Broth­er­hood of infil­tra­tion of mosques by secu­rity forces, despite proof that jihadist ele­ments are delib­er­ately using mosques as refuge from scrutiny; British intel­li­gence agents’ down­play­ing of the the poten­tial threat of Hamas and Hezbol­lah elements.

1. The show begins with dis­cus­sion of the death of a 9/11 activist who had met with Pres­i­dent Obama shortly before her death in a plane crash. Skep­ti­cal of the offi­cial ver­sion of events, the late Bev­erly Eck­ert had gar­nered the President’s atten­tion. Had she gar­nered the atten­tion of ele­ments hos­tile to [and deadly for] her situation?

” . . . [9/11 activist Bev­erly] Eck­ert was going to Buf­falo, her home­town, to cel­e­brate the 58th birth­day of her late hus­band, Sean Rooney, and to award a schol­ar­ship in his mem­ory. On Sept. 11, 2001, he had phoned his wife to say a last good­bye as the South Tower of the World Trade Cen­ter burned around him and then collapsed.

Last week, Eck­ert vis­ited the White House when Pres­i­dent Obama met with rel­a­tives of those killed in the 9/11 attacks and the bomb­ing of the USS Cole, to explain the new administration’s poli­cies on cap­tur­ing and pros­e­cut­ing ter­ror­ism sus­pects, and pre­vent­ing future attacks.

Speak­ing at the White House on Fri­day, Obama praised Eck­ert as ‘an inspi­ra­tion to me and to so many others.’ . . .”

“2 Well-Known Advo­cates among the 50 Killed in Plane Crash” by Bob Dro­gin [Los Ange­les Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/14/2009; p. A6.

2. A con­sid­er­able por­tion of the first side of the broad­cast high­lights aspects of the recent wild­fires that struck the Vic­to­ria sec­tion of Aus­tralia. That por­tion of Aus­tralia has been the focal point of reli­gious strife between Mus­lims and some of their Chris­t­ian prelate neighbors.

“The Supreme Court of Vic­to­ria in Aus­tralia upheld the appeal of two Aus­tralian pas­tors who could have faced jail time for pub­licly com­par­ing Chris­tian­ity with Islam.

The court ruled in favor of Daniel Scot and Danny Nal­liah, who were pre­vi­ously found to have ‘vil­i­fied Islam’ with their pub­lic com­ments by the Vic­to­rian Civil and Admin­is­tra­tive Tribunal.

In 2004, the tri­bunal ruled that the pas­tors were in vio­la­tion of Victoria’s Racial and Reli­gious Tol­er­ance Act. It deemed the pas­tors’ beliefs ‘offen­sive’ and ‘unrea­son­able’ inter­pre­ta­tions of Chris­t­ian and Islamic teach­ings. It also ordered the pas­tors to apol­o­gize for their ser­mon. The pas­tors could have faced jail time if they refused to comply. . . .”

“Court Rules in Favor of Aus­tralian Pas­tors, Accused of Vil­i­fy­ing Islam”; The Indian Catholic; 12/14/2006.

3. Aus­tralian Jihadists have been urg­ing the use of wild­fires as weapons against “infidels.”

“Aus­tralia has been sin­gled out as a tar­get for ‘for­est jihad’ by a group of Islamic extrem­ists urg­ing Mus­lims to delib­er­ately light bush­fires as a weapon of terror.

US intel­li­gence chan­nels ear­lier this year iden­ti­fied a web­site call­ing on Mus­lims in Aus­tralia, the US, Europe and Rus­sia to ‘start for­est fires’, claim­ing ‘schol­ars have jus­ti­fied chop­ping down and burn­ing the infi­dels’ forests when they do the same to our lands’.

The web­site, posted by a group called the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Net­work, argues in Ara­bic that light­ing fires is an effec­tive form of ter­ror­ism jus­ti­fied in Islamic law under the ‘eye for an eye’ doctrine.

The post­ing — which instructs jihadis to remem­ber ‘for­est jihad’ in sum­mer months — says fires cause eco­nomic dam­age and pol­lu­tion, tie up secu­rity agen­cies and can take months to extin­guish so that ‘this ter­ror will haunt them for an extended period of time’.

‘Imag­ine if, after all the losses caused by such an event, a jihadist organ­i­sa­tion were to claim respon­si­bil­ity for the for­est fires,’ the web­site says. ‘You can hardly begin to imag­ine the level of fear that would take hold of peo­ple in the United States, in Europe, in Rus­sia and in Australia.’

With the nation head­ing into another hot, dry sum­mer, Aus­tralian intel­li­gence agen­cies are treat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that bush­fires could be used as a weapon of ter­ror­ism as a seri­ous concern.

Attorney-General Robert McClel­land said the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment remained ‘vig­i­lant against such threats’, warn­ing that any­one caught light­ing a fire as a weapon of ter­ror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.

‘Any infor­ma­tion that sug­gests a threat to Australia’s inter­ests is inves­ti­gated by rel­e­vant agen­cies as appro­pri­ate,’ Mr McClel­land said. . . .”

“Islam Group Urges For­est Fire Jihad” by Josh Gor­don; theage.com.au; 9/7/2008.

4. After the Vic­to­ria wild­fires of early 2009, jihadists cel­e­brated the event. Is there any con­nec­tion between the reli­gious dis­cord between Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian in Vic­to­ria, the call for “jihadist” for­est fires in Autralia and the recent conflagration?

“Jihadists are cel­e­brat­ing the worst tragedy in Victoria’s history.

Ter­ror watch­dogs said fun­da­men­tal­ists had blogged on web­sites across the globe, applaud­ing the lives lost and destruc­tion in the Vic­to­ria fires.

Senior ana­lyst at SITE Intel­li­gence Group Adam Rais­man said they were post­ing pic­tures of burnt homes and dev­as­tated vic­tims and ‘tak­ing joy in the scenes’, the Sun­day Her­ald Sun reports.

One jihadist wrote: ‘It would be an act of revenge for Australian’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

Bush­fires vic­tims said they were stunned.

‘We’re mind­ing our own busi­ness and try­ing to cope with all this and they are cel­e­brat­ing our suf­fer­ing,’ said Denise McCann who lost her home in the Kinglake blaze. . . .”

“Jihadists Cel­e­brat­ing Vic­to­ria Fires; Tak­ing Joy in the Scenes” by Eleni Hale; The Aus­tralian; 2/15/2009.

5. Next, the pro­gram turns to the sub­ject of the ter­ror­ist attack on the Sri Lankan national cricket team in Lahore, Pak­istan. In Pak­istan, con­spir­a­to­r­ial inter­pre­ta­tion of the event abound, var­i­ously attribut­ing author­ship to, among other ele­ments: Pak­istani secu­rity forces, Indian secu­rity forces, Pakistani-based Islamists and for­eign Islamists.

“Yes­ter­day after­noon, Ali Raza went to the hos­pi­tal. A 25-year-old con­sta­ble in the Pun­jab police depart­ment, Ali Raza was accom­pa­ny­ing an old man who needed an M.R.I. scan. In the recep­tion area, he noticed that the wait­ing patients had aban­doned their chairs and were stand­ing around the tele­vi­sion. They had been watch­ing the same images all day: a dozen uniden­ti­fied gun­men, two wear­ing back­packs, fir­ing at a van near the Lib­erty Mar­ket round­about. The intended vic­tims, the TV sta­tions had reported, were mem­bers of the Sri Lankan national cricket team, in town here to play Pak­istan. The dead: eight Pak­ista­nis, includ­ing six of Ali Raza’s fel­low police officers.

‘Every­one at the hos­pi­tal was say­ing the same thing,’ Ali Raza told me later that night, as we stood in line at a brightly lighted stall sell­ing paan — a mild stim­u­lant made with betel nuts — near the Main Mar­ket round­about, just a short walk away from the site of the attack. ‘They were say­ing that this was done to show the Indi­ans that we in Pak­istan are also the vic­tims of terrorism.’

‘You think our own gov­ern­ment did it?’ I asked.

‘No one else could get away with this kind of thing,’ he insisted.

He described the attack­ers’ feat: they appeared out of nowhere at one of the city’s busiest inter­sec­tions and fired for more than 20 min­utes at the van car­ry­ing the play­ers to Qaddafi Sta­dium, and then fled in rickshaws.

‘I know the kind of pre­cau­tions we have to take when we are in a V.I.P. motor­cade,’ the young offi­cer told me. ‘And this was a ‘V.V.I.P.’ motor­cade. Every house in that neigh­bor­hood was sur­rounded by the police. My friend was there and he told me the attack­ers didn’t receive a sin­gle wound.’

A young man in a T-shirt who was stand­ing next to us at the paan stall asked, ‘Was your friend hurt?’

Ali Raza said, ‘He is fine, by the grace of God.’

This kind of talk was not lim­ited to paan stalls. There had been all sorts of opin­ions expressed on the pri­vately owned TV chan­nels, which now bring live video and com­men­tary from the sites of ter­ror­ist attacks to much of Pakistan’s urban pop­u­la­tion. The gov­er­nor of Pun­jab Province, who last week ousted the elected provin­cial gov­ern­ment on the orders of Pres­i­dent Asif Ali Zardari, was on cam­era imme­di­ately after the attack, and com­pared it to the ter­ror­ist attacks in Mum­bai, India, last November.

Oth­ers were more spe­cific: a mem­ber of the oppo­si­tion Pak­istan Mus­lim League said he ‘had no doubt’ that this was the work of the Indian intel­li­gence agen­cies. A for­mer head of Pakistan’s secu­rity ser­vice, the I.S.I., agreed with him. An ana­lyst from Islam­abad, dis­cussing the attack later in the day on a pop­u­lar chat show, said that ‘from every angle’ it was evi­dent that India, by attack­ing a for­eign cricket team in Pak­istan, had gained. ‘Who ben­e­fits?’ she said. ‘You have to ask who benefits.’

Another guest on the show, an elderly sage in a dark blue suit and a bright blue tie, wear­ing spec­ta­cles and speak­ing with slow, slot­ting move­ments of his hand, said that the blam­ing of one coun­try by another was always coun­ter­pro­duc­tive because, in the end, it took the focus away from domes­tic trou­bles. He gave the exam­ple of Benazir Bhutto’s assas­si­na­tion, which had imme­di­ately led to con­spir­acy the­o­ries but was still await­ing a proper inquiry. ‘When there is con­fu­sion,’ he said, ‘the only peo­ple who ben­e­fit are the miscreants.’

A for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial I know had a dif­fer­ent the­ory. He said he had seen a report some weeks ago warn­ing of exactly this kind of attack in Lahore, pos­si­bly against a cricket team. He said it came from the rumor mill that ‘leads back to Waziris­tan’ in Pakistan’s tribal areas. ‘So this is a secu­rity fail­ure,’ he said. ‘But it’s not an intel­li­gence failure.’

Later at night it was reported that the gov­ern­ment had found bags that held guns, hand grenades and almonds. This was fol­lowed by the tele­vised funeral of one of the slain police­men. His female rel­a­tives were sit­ting around his corpse, wail­ing and beat­ing their chests. His father, sur­rounded by cam­eras, was look­ing at the floor and say­ing that he was proud of his son for serv­ing his country.

Again at the paan stall, now sur­rounded by lis­ten­ers, I asked Ali Raza if he thought there was a chance that the attack was the work of ter­ror­ists or crim­i­nals. ‘There is a chance,’ he admit­ted. ‘But it could be the agen­cies. It could be the gov­ern­ment. It could be India also.’

I asked, ‘What about other people?’

‘Which other people?’

I said, ‘The peo­ple who kid­nap jour­nal­ists and bomb the homes of politi­cians and slit the throats of gov­ern­ment spies.’

He was think­ing about it.

The man oper­at­ing the paan stall was lin­ing moist­ened betel leaves with spices and condi­ments. He had on a tat­tered apron, which is worn by men like him to keep the noto­ri­ously messy paan juice from stain­ing their clothes. He smiled at us and said, ‘Who­ever has done this has a lot of intel­li­gence.’ He paused. As he did, I looked over the crowd, and thought that for all our var­i­ous the­o­ries, it was a point we could agree on. And then he fin­ished, ‘For poor peo­ple, every­thing is the same.”

“Lahore Mur­der Mys­tery” by Ali Sethi; The New York Times; 3/4/2009; p. A21.

6. Pak­istani author­i­ties have con­cluded that al-Qaeda affil­i­ates were respon­si­ble for the attack.

“Pak­istan has iden­ti­fied the gun­men who attacked Sri Lanka’s cricket team in Lahore and arrested some key sus­pects, includ­ing the brother of the sus­pected mas­ter­mind, accord­ing to sev­eral officials.

Most of the two dozen detainees belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the out­lawed mil­i­tant groups with close links to al-Qaeda, secu­rity offi­cials have told The Times.

Senior police offi­cials said that the men behind Tues­day morning’s attack might also have links to other mil­i­tants fight­ing in Pakistan’s law­less tribal region bor­der­ing Afghanistan.

How­ever, it remained unclear last night whether those arrested included the gun­men who killed eight Pak­ista­nis and injured six Sri Lankan play­ers and one British assis­tant coach in Lahore. Salman Taseer, the Gov­er­nor of the east­ern province of Pun­jab, said only that the Gov­ern­ment had iden­ti­fied the attack­ers but refused to give details until the inves­ti­ga­tion was completed.. . .”

“Gun­men Who Attacked Crick­eters in Lahore ‘Had Links to al-Qaeda” by Zahid Hus­sain; timesonline.co.uk; 3/6/2009.

7. A Pak­istani Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is the exec­u­tive force behind a pub­lic­ity cam­paign being car­ried out on Muni buses in the Bay Area.

” . . . The Islamic Cir­cle of North Amer­ica (ICNA) was founded in 1971, via the Mus­lim Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (MSA), as an umbrella group for South Asian-oriented mosques and Islamic cen­ters.  It also con­tains a youth divi­sion called Young Mus­lims (YM), a mul­ti­me­dia divi­sion called Sound Vision, a web infor­ma­tion cen­ter called Why Islam, a mag­a­zine called The Mes­sage Inter­na­tional, and char­i­ties which go by the names ICNA Relief and Help­ing Hand.

When ICNA was cre­ated, it was to act as the Amer­i­can coun­ter­part to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood of Pak­istan, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).  Indeed, if one looks at the web domain infor­ma­tion for ICNA’s offi­cial web­site (as well as the site for Why Islam), he/she will find that the site is reg­is­tered to farrukh.net, a for­mer mir­ror (replica) site of JI’s media divi­sion.  Today, farrukh.net is being used to show­case the works of Maulana Muham­mad Yusuf Islahi, a Jamaat leader.

Fur­ther evi­dence of the con­nec­tion between ICNA and JI is found in a July 2000 “Unity Meet­ing” that took place in New York between ICNA and its Baltimore-based rival, Jamaat al-Muslimeen. [pdf] Speak­ing for the side of ICNA, in his native lan­guage of Urdu, was none other than the Pres­i­dent (Amir) of JI, Qazi Hus­sain Ahmad (who is still the head of JI). Dur­ing the meet­ing, he stressed the need for “par­tic­i­pa­tion in Jihad;” he stated that “Islam must be trans­lated into polit­i­cal dom­i­nance;” and he said that “the sword and the Quran go together…”  His sharp rhetoric was not unusual, given his pub­lic sup­port for the Tal­iban and his numer­ous get-togethers with Osama bin Laden. . . .“

“Help­ing Hand to Hamas” by Joe Kauf­man; FrontPageMagazine.com; 5/15/2007.

8. The same group is con­duct­ing a sim­i­lar cam­paign on New York City subways.

“Ads pro­mot­ing Islam are to be placed on New York sub­way cars in Sep­tem­ber, but a U.S. con­gress­man finds peo­ple spon­sor­ing the mes­sages unacceptable.

“I have no prob­lem with the ad itself, but I have a very, very real prob­lem with those behind it,” Rep. Peter King, a New York Repub­li­can, said Tues­day. He is urg­ing the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Tran­sit Author­ity to reject the ads.

The cam­paign is to fea­ture ads on 1,000 of the sub­way system’s roughly 6,200 cars. The main spon­sor is a grass-roots orga­ni­za­tion, Islamic Cir­cle of North Amer­ica. [Ital­ics are mine–D.E.]

The ads, sim­ple black-and-white pan­els, will fea­ture key words or phrases about Islam on one side of the panel such as “Head Scarf?” or “Prophet Muham­mad?” and the words “You deserve to know” along with the Web site address WhyIslam.org on the other side.

“The idea is to evoke cer­tain thoughts in the mind­set of the per­son who is look­ing at the ads and get them to a point where they can reflect upon cer­tain words that one could define as hot words or key­words that get thrown around a lot but are not nec­es­sar­ily defined in the most proper con­text,” said New York University’s Imam Khalid Latif, a cleric who is pro­mot­ing the project in a YouTube video cre­ated by the Islamic Circle.

Another of the back­ers of the adver­tis­ing cam­paign — which will launch in Sep­tem­ber to coin­cide with the month­long Islamic hol­i­day of Ramadan — is Siraj Wah­haj, imam of a Brook­lyn mosque.

Wah­haj was the first Mus­lim to lead a prayer before the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, but King objects to him because he was a char­ac­ter wit­ness for con­victed 1993 World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing mas­ter­mind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

“He is a known Islamic extrem­ist, and you would be giv­ing him cred­i­bil­ity and stature through a known gov­ern­ment facil­ity,” said King, rank­ing mem­ber of the Home­land Secu­rity Com­mit­tee. Wah­haj also appeared on a list of 170 poten­tial unin­dicted co-conspirators in the 1993 bomb­ing case. A pros­e­cu­tor said that not every­one on the list was con­sid­ered a co-conspirator. . . .”

“Islam Sub­way Ads Cause Stir in New York”; cnn.com; 7/22/2008.

9. Sadly, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood appears to be tak­ing over the Al Jazeera net­work.

“The Global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Daily Report (free sub­scrip­tion required) has an inter­est­ing look at the grow­ing Islamist agenda of the al Jazeera TV sta­tion, and the roots of the shift in the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

It is an impor­tant obser­va­tion since so much of the Arab world-as well as the West­ern media-look to the sta­tion to por­tray and inter­pret events, par­tic­u­larly the Hamas-Israeli conflict.

It is easy to for­get (and shock­ingly sel­dom reported) that Hamas is an organic part of the global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, accord­ing to arti­cle 2 of its own char­ter. So that the Ikhwan would seek to con­trol the main medium for the out­side world to inter­pret the con­flict is not at all unusual.

The report looks at Wadah Khan­far (aka Wad­dah Khan­far), the station’s Gen­eral Man­ager, as the dri­ving force behind al Jazeera’s move toward embrac­ing the Islamist agent, while mar­gin­al­iz­ing other voices in the sta­tion that once had a sig­nif­i­cant role.

In Octo­ber 2006, one of Al Jazeera’s own cor­re­spon­dents stated that Mr. Khan­far had a Mus­lim Broth­er­hood back­ground and asked him about it directly, receiv­ing a non-denial and eva­sive reply:

Mr. Wad­dah, you have and Islamic back­ground, specif­i­cally Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, don’t you think that this is con­flict­ing with your posi­tion as a head of the biggest Arab media orga­ni­za­tion now? In fact, I do not clas­sify myself as belong­ing to a cer­tain polit­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal move­ment, this is firstly an impor­tant issue which is very .. (inter­rupt­ing) ..Or you were belong­ing .. I think that firstly I belong to this Nation includ­ing its col­lec­tive legacy and mind, and that this some­thing I value and am keen on it, but I tell you clearly and frankly, Aljazeera taught us always that our affil­i­a­tion to Aljazeera– as an admin­is­tra­tion or press– is an affil­i­a­tion to an insti­tu­tion with deep-rooted rules and with a clear iden­tity based pri­mar­ily on pro­fi­ciency and respect­ing the opin­ion and the other opin­ion, and it isn’t absolutely based on dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between peo­ple on ide­o­log­i­cal, intel­lec­tual or party bases.Inter­est­ingly, it was the Nation Mag­a­zine arti­cle from 2007 that first reported on the grow­ing Islamist agenda of the TV station.

Whether it’s report­ing the Hamas per­spec­tive from the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries with­out men­tion of the Pales­tin­ian Authority’s ver­sion of events, or the fawn­ing depic­tion else­where of Islamist par­ties and mili­tias as the grass­roots reflec­tion of Arab sen­ti­ment, Al Jazeera has moved away from its ide­o­log­i­cally diverse ori­gins to a more populist/Islamist approach. After the March 2003 US inva­sion of Iraq, Al Jazeera replaced its long­time sec­u­lar bureau chief in Bagh­dad, Faisal Yasiri, with Wadah Khan­far, who had reported from Afghanistan after the Amer­i­can inva­sion in 2001 and then Kurdish-controlled ter­ri­tory as the war with Iraq was launched in 2003. Shortly there­after, the sec­u­lar head of Al Jazeera, Mohammed Jassem Ali, was ousted and replaced by Khan­far, whom nine cur­rent and for­mer employ­ees of the sta­tion inter­viewed for this arti­cle char­ac­ter­ize as an Islamist. It was around this time that Jazeera’s Iraq bureau “became a plat­form for [Sunni] extrem­ists,” says Shaker Hamid, a sec­u­lar Jazeera cor­re­spon­dent in Bagh­dad from 1997 to 2000, who left to work at another Arab satel­lite sta­tion after get­ting what he says was a bet­ter offer. “I can’t say that Jazeera’s rhetoric is com­pletely against Shi­ites,” Hamid says. “The Amer­i­cans intro­duced this, but the media should not make it worse, and Jazeera did.”

I am all for free­dom of expres­sion and the rights of oth­ers to get their mes­sage out. But I am also in favor of full dis­clo­sure of own­er­ship and inter­ests. Al-Jazeera is los­ing its right to claim to rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent voices, because the Islamist agenda has made it increas­ingly dif­fi­cult for any other voices to be heard.”

“The Islamist (MB) Takeover of Al Jazeera?” by Dou­glas Far­rah; www.douglasfarah.com; 1/16/2009.

10. The Amer­i­can branch of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood has weighed in against the arrest of bin Laden’s brother-in –law, lob­by­ing against the use of FBI infor­mants in mosques. Sadly, mosques have been a fre­quent loca­tion for Islamist oper­a­tional plan­ning and–in some places–weapons stor­age and manufacture.

“The U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is react­ing to the arrest of a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s body­guard on charges of lying about his ties to ter­ror­ist groups on his cit­i­zen­ship and pass­port appli­ca­tions. An AP report describes the case as follows:

In the Cal­i­for­nia case, infor­ma­tion about the infor­mant who spied on the Islamic Cen­ter of Irvine came out last week at a deten­tion hear­ing for a brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden’s body­guard, an Afghan native and nat­u­ral­ized U.S. cit­i­zen named Ahmadul­lah Niazi. Niazi, 34, was arrested Feb. 20 on charges of lying about his ties to ter­ror­ist groups on his cit­i­zen­ship and pass­port appli­ca­tions. He will be arraigned Mon­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Santa Ana. FBI Spe­cial Agent Thomas J. Ropel III tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing that an FBI infor­mant infil­trated Niazi’s mosque and sev­eral oth­ers in Orange County and befriended Niazi. Ropel said the infor­mant recorded Niazi on mul­ti­ple occa­sions talk­ing about blow­ing up build­ings, acquir­ing weapons and send­ing money to the Afghan muja­hadeen. Niazi has not been charged with ter­ror­ism and it’s not yet clear if the FBI was focused on any­thing beyond his activ­i­ties. Nei­ther the mosque nor any other of its mem­bers have been charged. A 46-year-old fit­ness instruc­tor told The Asso­ci­ated Press last week he was the infor­mant. Craig Mon­teilh of Irvine said Niazi talked about blow­ing up build­ings and dis­cussed send­ing Mon­teilh to a ter­ror­ist train­ing camp in Yemen or Pak­istan. Mon­teilh said his tenure as an infor­mant ended after Niazi and other mem­bers of the Islamic Cen­ter of Irvine reported him to author­i­ties. A Mus­lim advo­cacy group has demanded a fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion into whether Niazi was arrested because he refused to become an FBI infor­mant after telling the agency about Monteilh.

The Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil (MPAC) has reacted by stat­ing that the use of infor­mants in mosques “stig­ma­tizes” the mosques and erodes trust. Accord­ing an arti­cle on the MPAC website:

Trust is the cor­ner­stone of any part­ner­ship between law enforce­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. It can only be estab­lished and main­tained through clear and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion. With­out this, trust is eroded and sus­pi­cions arise on all sides. This clearly does not serve anyone’s interests.Federal law enforce­ment can­not estab­lish trust with Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties through meet­ings and town­hall forums, while at the same time send­ing paid infor­mants who insti­gate vio­lent rhetoric in mosques. This mere act stig­ma­tizes Amer­i­can mosques and casts a shadow of doubt and dis­trust between Amer­i­can Mus­lims and their neigh­bors. It has also led many mosques and com­mu­nity groups to recon­sider their rela­tion­ship with the FBI, includ­ing most recently the Islamic Shura Coun­cil of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. It is now up to the FBI and law enforce­ment agen­cies to re-engage with the Mus­lim Amer­i­can com­mu­nity, and re-build trust and respect. MPAC will con­tinue to raise these com­mu­nity con­cerns with fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cials in its efforts to help form poli­cies that pre­serve civil lib­er­ties while also pro­tect­ing our nation.

The Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR) announced that is plan­ning to file a request for the U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into the FBI’s arrest:

On Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 24, the Greater Los Ange­les Area chap­ter of the Coun­cil on American-Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR-LA) will host a news con­fer­ence to announce the fil­ing of a request for the U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral to launch an inves­ti­ga­tion into the FBI’s arrest last week of Ahmad Niazi. The news con­fer­ence will imme­di­ately fol­low a court hear­ing Tues­day for Niazi in Santa Ana, Calif. Mem­bers of his fam­ily will take part in the news con­fer­ence. Mr. Niazi is charged with per­jury, nat­u­ral­iza­tion fraud, mis­use of a pass­port obtained by fraud, and mak­ing a false state­ment to a fed­eral agency. He claims the charges are in retal­i­a­tion for his refusal to become an FBI infor­mant. Mr. Niazi pre­vi­ously reported to CAIR-LA and other com­mu­nity mem­bers that, dur­ing a raid of a friend’s house, an FBI agent urged Mr. Niazi to work with the agency, say­ing that if he refused to coop­er­ate his life would be made a “liv­ing hell.”

MPAC was estab­lished in the mid 1980’s by indi­vid­u­als whose back­grounds are likely rooted in the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and since its incep­tion has acted in con­cert with the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion, like other U.S. Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions, has a long his­tory of fun­da­men­tal­ism, anti-Semitism, and sup­port for ter­ror­ism. The orga­ni­za­tion has long enjoyed gen­er­ally good rela­tions with the U.S. gov­ern­ment and func­tions essen­tially as the polit­i­cal lob­by­ing arm of the U.S. Brotherhood.

Doc­u­ments released in the Holy Land Trial have revealed that the founders and cur­rent lead­ers of CAIR were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as well as iden­ti­fy­ing the orga­ni­za­tion itself as being part of the U.S. Broth­er­hood. Inves­tiga­tive research posted on GMBDR had deter­mined that CAIR had it ori­gins in the U.S. Hamas infra­struc­ture and is an inte­gral part of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood with a long his­tory of sup­port for fun­da­men­tal­ism, anti-Semitism, and ter­ror­ism. Numer­ous ear­lier posts have reported on the rela­tion­ship between the FBI and CAIR which appears to have been ter­mi­nated by the FBI

Both orga­ni­za­tions have long his­to­ries of oppos­ing almost all ele­ments of U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism strat­egy. CAIR in par­tic­u­lar has defended numer­ous indi­vid­u­als accused and/or con­victed of ter­ror­ism offenses and a num­ber of CAIR employ­ees have also been con­victed of terrorism.”

“U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Reacts to Arrest of Bin Laden Brother-in-Law”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

11. A well placed British intel­li­gence offi­cer is join­ing the grow­ing cho­rus of mis­cre­ants run­ning inter­fer­ence for Hamas [Pales­tin­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood] and Hezbol­lah.

“For­mer British intel­li­gence agent Alas­tair Crooke has pub­lished a new book which one reviewer says is aimed at reas­sur­ing the West that Hamas and Hezbol­lah are not ene­mies of the West. Accord­ing to a review of the book by jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh posted on the web­site of Crooke’s organization:

Crooke’s mis­sion in this eru­dite and most read­able book is to reas­sure Amer­ica and the rest of the world that Hamas, Hezbol­lah and the seem­ingly men­ac­ing Islamic gov­ern­ments in Iran and else­where are not the ene­mies of the West… a schol­arly and closely argued cri­tique of what passes for West­ern diplo­macy today.

Crooke is a a for­mer agent of the British MI6 for­eign intel­li­gence agency and is described in a media report as secretly one of Britain’s lead­ing inter­me­di­aries with mil­i­tant groups. For­mer CIA agent Milt Bear­den, who played a lead­ing role in the war against the Sovi­ets in Afghanistan, and Gra­ham Fuller, a for­mer Vice-chair of the National Intel­li­gence Coun­cil at the CIA, are mem­bers of the Advi­sory Board of the Con­flicts Forum headed by Crooke. Also a mem­ber of the Advi­sory Board is Azzam Tamimi, a leader fig­ure in the U.K. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and often described as a Hamas spokesman.

The media reported cited above describes a March 2005 meet­ing in Beirut attended by Crooke that included the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as well as Musa Abu Marzuq, deputy leader of Hamas, and two of his senior col­leagues, lead­ers of Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Pak­istan’s Jamaat-e-Islami party. The report states that Crooke is part of an effort to estab­lish a dia­logue with rad­i­cal Islamists through the Con­flicts Forum, described by Crooke as an “action tank, not a think-tank”.”

“New Book by For­mer British Spy Says Hamas/Hezballah Not Ene­mies of the West”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

12. Accord­ing to a for­mer FBI agent, vir­tu­ally all U.S. Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions are sub­sumed into the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work. In this con­text, it is essen­tial to keep in mind the organization’s vio­lent, fas­cist ide­ol­ogy and his­tory. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood can only be under­stood as part of the post­war fas­cist international.

“U.S. media is report­ing that a for­mer FBI agent with exper­tise in Islamic extrem­ism and ter­ror­ism has said that all major U.S. orga­ni­za­tions are con­trolled by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood but that FBI offi­cials are unwill­ing to act. Accord­ing to the report:

A for­mer FBI spe­cial agent told law enforce­ment and Home­land Secu­rity per­son­nel that a net­work of Islamic orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to incre­men­tally imple­ment Islamic law in the United States. Dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at the Bed­ford County Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, for­mer FBI agent John Guan­dolo briefed mem­bers about groups such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which he claims is work­ing with other Islamic groups to slowly imple­ment Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encom­passes all areas of life……..Every major Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tion is con­trolled by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the for­mer FBI agent said, which he said was formed to over­throw Amer­ica and estab­lish Islamic law. “They’re hav­ing great suc­cess of imple­ment­ing Shariah law, I could give you a thou­sand exam­ples,” Guan­dolo said. He said small con­ces­sions like installing foot baths, and col­leges forced to have sep­a­rate swim­ming times for Islamic men and women so not to offend Mus­lims, are other parts of the strat­egy. But Guan­dolo said that fed­eral lead­er­ship is reluc­tant to act against these Islamic orga­ni­za­tions due to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness and the threats of law­suits. He said that Mus­lim groups will demand con­ces­sions on mat­ters by say­ing, “You have to do this; you have to do this or I will be offended.” “The solu­tion to this is you,” Guan­dolo said. “If you are look­ing to DHS, the FBI and Con­gress to solve this … you’re going to be woe­fully dis­ap­pointed.” He said that FBI agents in the field “are work­ing good cases,” but that the FBI lead­er­ship “is unwill­ing to do what the agents are ask­ing them to do, which is to pony up and use some courage and start step­ping on these peo­ple.” “This is polit­i­cal sub­ver­sion, this is an insur­gency in the United States,” he said of the Islamic move­ment. “Insur­gency is thwarted at the local level and the tip of the spear is local police.” Guan­dolo also said that the group CAIR, the Coun­cil on American-Islamic Rela­tions, is actu­ally a front for the ter­ror group Hamas.

The report also describes Mr. Guandolo’s back­ground as well as his expe­ri­ence with the FBI:

Guan­dolo worked in the FBI since 1996, includ­ing nine years as a mem­ber of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the Bureau’s Wash­ing­ton Field Office’s Coun­tert­er­ror­ism Divi­sion, devel­op­ing exper­tise con­cern­ing Al Qaeda, Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tions and the Islamic move­ment in the U.S. He now works with Stephen Cough­lin, for­mer Islamic Expert for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to advise lead­ers at the fed­eral level and also brief local law enforce­ment about the Islamic threat at home. Cough­lin was fired from his posi­tion with the Joint Chiefs fol­low­ing a report reveal­ing oppo­si­tion to his work by offi­cials within the office of Deputy Defense Sec­re­tary Gor­don Eng­land, accord­ing to a Wash­ing­ton Times report dated Jan. 4, 2008. Cough­lin had run afoul of a key aide to Eng­land, Hasham Islam, who accused him of being a Chris­t­ian zealot or extrem­ist “with a pen,” accord­ing to defense offi­cials, the report states……….[Guandolo] also said that he was threat­ened with his job no less than three times by supe­ri­ors in the FBI “that told me we were cre­at­ing waves in the Mus­lim community.”

A pre­vi­ous post has dis­cussed a report that the FBI has recently cut off con­tact with CAIR as a result of the group’s ori­gins in what was described as a ‘Hamas-support network.‘As other posts had reported, the FBI has had an exten­sive ‘out­reach’ pro­gram involv­ing CAIR.“‘

“For­mer FBI Agent Says All U.S. Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions con­trolled By U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

13. U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers are work­ing to soften key lin­guis­tic terms, in order to fur­ther their cause.

“Dur­ing a Sen­ate hear­ing on Thurs­day, two lead­ers of the Lead­er­ship Group of the U.S.-Muslim Engage­ment Project, an orga­ni­za­tion whose report pro­motes the agenda of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, expressed sup­port for chang­ing the lan­guage used to describe ter­ror­ism, a key objec­tive of the U.S. Broth­er­hood. In her state­ment, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Madeleine K. Albright stated:

West­ern media are full of ref­er­ences to Islamic ter­ror­ism. But what does that mean? We do not por­tray the Okla­homa City bomb­ing as Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism, even though Tim­o­thy MacVeigh thought of him­self as a Chris­t­ian. MacVeigh was guilty of mass mur­der – and there was noth­ing Chris­t­ian about it. The same prin­ci­ple applies with Islam. When Mus­lims com­mit ter­ror­ist acts, they are not prac­tic­ing their faith; they are betray­ing it.

Dalia Moga­hed, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Gallup Cen­ter for Mus­lim Stud­ies, con­curred in her statement :

Our lan­guage must reflect the real­ity that the pri­mary vic­tims of vio­lent extrem­ism are Mus­lims abroad, and that they fear falling vic­tim to polit­i­cal vio­lence more than Amer­i­cans do. We are, there­fore, nat­ural allies against this com­mon threat. This will mean de-emphasizing the unquench­able demand for main­stream Mus­lims to con­demn ter­ror­ism again and again as this assumes their co-membership in one group with the ter­ror­ists, instead of with us as fel­low vic­tims of the same crime. Use of terms like “Islamic ter­ror­ism” or “Jihadists” glo­ri­fies the ter­ror­ists with reli­gious ven­er­a­tion, while fuel­ing the very per­cep­tions they work to exploit —that Amer­ica is at war with Islam.

Dur­ing her responses to ques­tion­ing, Ms. Moga­hed sug­gested using the term “Bin Ladenism” as a sub­sti­tute for “Islamic Terrorism.”

Chang­ing the lan­guage used to describe ter­ror­ism has long been one of the goals of the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In Decem­ber 1999, for exam­ple, a leader of the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil (MPAC) stated:

‘There is no such thing as Islamic ter­ror­ism, just as there isn’t Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism or Jew­ish ter­ror­ism,” said Maher Hathout of the MPAC. ”There are Mus­lims who are ter­ror­ists, just as there are Chris­tians who are terrorists.’

Pre­vi­ous posts have exten­sively dis­cussed the impor­tance of this issue to the U.S. Broth­er­hood. For exam­ple, one ear­lier post described a Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity memo urg­ing employ­ees not to use terms includ­ing ‘jihad,’ ‘jihadist’ or ‘Islamic ter­ror­ist’ in describ­ing Islamic ter­ror­ists. The post observed that this pro­posed pol­icy was in accord with global Mus­lim Broth­er­hood strate­gies attempt­ing to con­trol the use of lan­guage used in counter-terrorism efforts. Another post dis­cussed pas­sages in the DHS memo fur­ther sup­port­ing the con­nec­tion to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and noted that the mem­o­ran­dum was based on “rec­om­men­da­tions from a wide vari­ety of Amer­i­can Mus­lim lead­ers” and orig­i­nated in a meet­ing with “influ­en­tial Mus­lim Amer­i­cans” As ana­lyzed in another ear­lier post , the attempt by the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood to change ter­ror­ism lan­guage appears to be part of a larger strat­egy towards ter­ror­ism based on denial, decep­tion, defense, and obstruc­tion. As that post described the denial tactic:

DENIAL– Since the Broth­er­hood is pur­su­ing Islamiza­tion and even­tu­ally Shariah (Islamic Law), it is nec­es­sary at all costs to deny that Islam as a reli­gion has any con­nec­tion to vio­lence or ter­ror­ism. Of course, the Broth­er­hood rep­re­sents Islamism as opposed to Islam in this regard but since the gen­eral audi­ence does not under­stand that dis­tinc­tion, it is Islam which is the Broth­er­hood ref­er­ence. They can­not afford to fail in this denial and the denial strat­egy is usu­ally pur­sued through sophistry. That is, the Broth­er­hood claims that Islam is unfairly asso­ci­ated with ter­ror­ism while Chris­tian­ity, Judaism, and other reli­gions are not (e.g. Abor­tion bombers are not called Chris­t­ian Ter­ror­ists) and/or that other reli­gious ter­ror­ism is just as dan­ger­ous as Islamic terrorism.

It should be noted that with regard to Ms. Albright’s tes­ti­mony, Tim­o­thy McVeigh described him­self as an “agnos­tic” rather than a Chris­t­ian shortly before his exe­cu­tion. In any event, the term “Islamic Ter­ror­ism” would appear to refer to the moti­va­tions and claims of the groups involved rather than their reli­gious iden­tity per se.

Pre­vi­ous posts have dis­cussed the U.S.-Muslim Engage­ment Project which includes indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­ated with the U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood such as Ms. Moga­hed. The Lead­er­ship Group also includes other promi­nent for­mer gov­ern­ment offi­cials such as Ms. Albright, Richard Armitage, for­mer Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, and Den­nis Ross, the for­mer Mideast nego­tia­tor in the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion. As one of the ear­lier posts dis­cussed, a close read­ing of the report issued by the Lead­er­ship Group sug­gests that its rec­om­men­da­tions, if adopted, would rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood agenda in the U.S. The rec­om­men­da­tions included:

* Rebrand­ing groups such as the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as “activists”

* Label­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as a group which has “renouced violence”

* Ces­sa­tion of the use of any terms such as “Jihadists” which are said to link Islam as a reli­gion with terrorism

* Involv­ing the “Muslim-American Com­mu­nity” as a birdge to the Islamic world.”

“Lead­er­ship Group Fig­ures Sup­port U.S. Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Desire to Change Ter­ror­ism Lan­guage”; globalmbreport.com; 3/5/2009.

14. Sup­ple­ment­ing past cov­er­age of the AMIA bomb­ing in Argentina (1994), the pro­gram notes the kid­nap­ping and tor­ture of an inves­ti­ga­tor by secu­rity forces linked to the crime. Evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning through the AMIA inves­ti­ga­tion run in many directions.

“The Argen­tinean daily Clarin reported Sat­ur­day that Clau­dio Lif­schitz, a for­mer inves­ti­ga­tor of the 1994 bomb­ing of the Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires, claimed he was kid­napped and tor­tured by ele­ments try­ing to coerce him into dis­clos­ing doc­u­ments related to the case.

The attack on the Argentine-Israel Mutual Asso­ci­a­tion (AMIA) build­ing, which was car­ried out with an explosives-laden truck, left 85 peo­ple dead and hun­dreds wounded. Fol­low­ing a lengthy inves­ti­ga­tion, in March 2007 Inter­pol issued arrest war­rants for five Ira­ni­ans and a Lebanese national it sus­pects were behind the attack.Tehran has repeat­edly denied any link to the bomb­ing, and thus far no one has been indicted for either orches­trat­ing or per­pe­trat­ing the attack. Israel, the US and Argentina con­tinue to argue that Hizbul­lah was behind the act, and also blame Iran, which sup­ports the Lebanese Shi­ite group.In 2008 Lif­schitz, the for­mer adjunct sec­re­tary to the judge who headed the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, Juan José Galeano, reported to the Argen­tinean con­gress of alleged irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the probe – which even­tu­ally led to its collapse.

Lifschitz’s attor­ney told the C5N tele­vi­sion sta­tion that on Fri­day night, at around mid­night, a pass­ing car forced his client to pull over in Buenos Aires’ Villa Devoto neigh­bor­hood. He was then whisked away by unknown assailants, the attor­ney said.

Accord­ing to Lif­schitz, the kid­nap­pers cov­ered his head with a garbage bag, and, using a blow­torch, tat­tooed the case file num­ber on his arm and the let­ters A-M-I-A on his back.

“A van passed me by and hooded men stepped out of it,” he recalled. “They forced me to climb into their vehi­cle, placed a garbage bag over my head and told me not to mess with SIDE (the Argen­tinean inter­nal secu­rity ser­vice). They ques­tioned me a num­ber of times about tapes that tie Iran to the ter­ror attack. They told me ‘you can relax, we won’t mur­der you. You’ll live until we decide otherwise’.”

After tak­ing away his cell phone, the assailants released Lif­schitz near the police acad­emy build­ing in the capital.”

“Buenos Aires: For­mer Jew­ish Cen­ter Bomb­ing Inves­ti­ga­tor Says Was Abducted”; ynetnews.com; 3/7/2009.