Please read just a few of the headlines that World Net Daily has published.
A controversial American Islamic advocacy group has planned a voter
registration drive to coincide with the upcoming Muslim holiday at the
end of the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, alleged to have ties to terrorist groups such as Hamas, says “our goal, insha’Allah (if Allah wills), is to register more than 100,000 new Muslim voters over the next eight months.” CAIR is urging Islamic communities to sign up Muslim voters at festivals that follow Eid ul-Adha prayers, held on Feb. 22 or 23, depending on the new moon. The holiday commemorates what Muslims believe was the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael at God’s Command.
Some observers of CAIR and similar organizations insist that while these groups have a right to lobby just as any other public interest, their aims are suspect.
“They may not admit it, but ultimately they want to make the U. S. a Muslim country,” Steven Emerson, a leading anti-terrorism specialist, told WorldNetDaily. “In the interim they want to acquire as much political power as possible to push their agenda, to be afforded legitimacy by political officials,” Emerson said. “So this (voter drive) is part and parcel of their campaign.”
CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper indicated in a 1993 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he wants to see the United States become a Muslim country.
“I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future,” Hooper told the Star Tribune. “But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement on the voter drive that “recent events and new government policies have served to spur already growing political participation by American Muslims.”
“We have an obligation, because of the Islamic duty of ‘enjoining good and prohibiting evil,’ to make our voices heard on a number of important issues,” Awad said. “Voting, at both the local and national level, is the best way to accomplish that goal.”
Awad once worked for the Islamic Association of Palestine, considering by U.S. intelligence officials to be a front group for Hamas operating in the United States. While acknowledging Awad’s former affiliation, Hooper has denied any connection between CAIR and IAP.
But CAIR recently rallied to the defense of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development – a U.S. –based group accused of channeling funds to Hamas – arguing that President Bush’s decision to freeze their assets could give the impression that “there has been a shift from a war on terrorism to an attack on Islam.”
Emerson cites as evidence of CAIR’s affinity for Hamas “their co-sponsorship of conferences calling for the death of Jews, statements on behalf of Hamas leaders, statements defending Iran and the Sudan and sponsorship of hate rallies where attacks on America are made.”
World Net Daily
May 20, 2003
Other related articles from other sources:
An Ontario man convicted of promoting hatred against Muslims says his community-service sentence has included indoctrination into Islam. After losing an appeal to Canada's Supreme Court on October 17, Mark Harding must resume his sentence of two years probation and 340 hours of community service under the direction of Mohammad Ashraf, general secretary of the Islam Society of North America in Mississauga, Ontario.
Ashraf, according to Harding, said that instead of licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, " it would be better if you learned about Islam."
The cleric made it clear, Harding recalled in an interview with WorldNet Daily, that during the sessions nothing negative could be said about Islam or its prophet, Muhammad.
"He said he was my supervisor, and if I didn't follow what he said, he would send me back to jail," recounted Harding, who had been prevented from speaking publicly about his case under a gag order.
Harding
was convicted in 1998 on federal hate- crime charges stemming from a
June 1997 incident in which he distributed pamphlets outside a public
high school, Weston Collegiate Institute in Toronto.
Harding - who said that until that point he spent most of his time evangelizing
to Muslims-was protesting the school's policy of setting aside a room
for Muslim students to pray during school hours.
…The pamphlet said: "The Muslims who commit these crimes are no different than the Muslim believers living here in Toronto. Their beliefs are based on the Quran. They sound peaceful, but underneath their false sheep's clothing are raging wolves seeking whom they may devour. And Toronto is definitely on their hit list."
"The
point I was trying to make is that you shouldn't have a violent religion
like Islam allowed in a school when Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism
is not allowed," he told WND
Harding, and evangelical Protestant, insists that he has love rather
than hatred toward Muslims and wants to see them go to Heaven.
…During his 1998 session with Ashraf, Harding was told to read a book called Towards Understanding Islam, by Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi.
On Page 12 of the book, Harding noted, it gives a description of a "kafir", or infidel, a person who does not follow Islam.
…"It was obvious that he intended to make sure that I understood that I was a kafir", Harding said of Ashraf.
Canadian Muslims commended Harding's 1998 conviction on three counts of willfully promoting hatred.
"The verdict sends a message to Christians, Muslims and Jews that personal views of that nature can't be allowed in a public forum", said Shahina Siddiqui, coordinator of community relations and social services for the Manitoba Islamic Association, in a report by the Canadian evangelical publication Christian Week.
"There's
a fine line between freedom of expression and hatred. Harding crossed
that line."
Mohamed Elmasry, president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said after
the verdict that "spreading hate is against Canadian values and
against Canadian law, and it doesn't matter the group is victimized."
Harding asserted at the time that he meant to criticize only Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims. But he added that faithful Muslims would always engage in jihad, or holy war, against non-Muslims because it is required by Islamic teachings.
Harding said that after his case became public, he no longer felt safe, due to threats from Muslims. When he entered court for the first time for his trial, he required police protection as a large crowd of Muslims gathered with some chanting, "Infidels, you will burn in hell."
Harding said he received many death threats among more that 3,000 hate-filled calls that came to his answering service in 1997. Police and the Ontario attorney general received similar calls, he said.
"I had a call from someone who said they were from (Louis) Farrakhan's (Nation of Islam) group, and they were going to break my legs," he said. "Another caller said he would rip my testicles."
…"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I would like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future", Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on Islamic American Relations, stated in an interview with the Star Tribune. "But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
…Harding said he's received support from Christians who immigrated to Canada from Muslim countries, where minority religions experience discrimination and persecution.
"I have a lot of Pakistani and Egyptian friends helping me through this because they understand what Islam is all about," he said. "When they heard about me in the news, they called to offer their support."
October 31, 2002
By: Art Moore, WorldNet Daily
"Today the Church is under Islamic-inspired attack as never before. Christians around the world are being tortured, raped, burned, murdered and sold into slavery. Bin Laden's mindset is determined by this worldview, and we should expect to see more manifestation of this horrendous theological interpretation. Afghanistan was to be his personal kingdom from which he could cleanse Islam from its accretions. Many Afghan villages and people underwent the application of Islamic ethnic cleansing in order to provide a "pure state" for Islam to be practiced.
By
Ron George
World Christian Dec. 2002
Franklin Graham - At a time when many political and religious leaders were at pains to paint "true" Islam as a religion of love and peace, Mr. Graham broke with the party line. He called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion," criticized its inherent intolerance, and challenged Saudi Arabia's Muslim leaders to issue a public apology to the United States… "Suddenly I'm a radical and an extremist because I don't believe that all ways lead to God?"… "My opinions and my views are shaped by years of working and seeing Islam up close," he says. "There is no religious freedom. I have seen the persecution. It is taught by them, it is in their Koran. They cannot deny it."
By
Bob Jones in Mendoza, Argentina
World Magazine, Dec. 7, 2002
"One morning of Nov. 21, Bonnie Penner Witherall arrived to open the prenatal clinic at a church complex in the predominantly Muslim city of Sidon (pop. 250,000) on Lebanon's southern coast. Shortly after that, an assailant shot her three times in the face and chest with a pistol... "Actions of killing and bombings that target Americans in any place… are an expression of Muslim condemnation of U.S. policy," declared a leading Sunni cleric in south Lebanon Sheikh Maher Hammoud said he doesn't condemn Mrs. Witherall's killing.
World Magazine Dec. 7, 2002
A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement warned the West Tuesday against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam. "The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," said Bassam Tibi, in an interview with United Press International. Syrian-born Tibi, who claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammad and teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty between both parties in these exchanges. "First, both sides acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word "peace" implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam - or "House of Islam" - to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University. When Muslims and the Western heirs of the Enlightenment speak of tolerance they have different things in mind. In Islamic terminology, this term implies abiding non-Islamic monotheists, such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as second-class believers. They are 'dhimmi,' a protected but politically immature minority." According to Tibi, the quest of converting the entire world to Islam is an immutable fixture of the Muslim worldview. Only if this task is accomplished - if the world has become a "Dar al-Islam" - will it also be a "Dar a-Salam," or a house of peace.
United Press International