NO MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO

No Mosque at Ground Zero

One of our biggest mistakes in the aftermath of 9/11 was naming our response to the attacks "the war on terror" instead of accurately identifying radical Islamists (and the underlying ideology of radical Islamism) as the target of our campaign. This mistake has led to endless confusion about the nature of the ideological and material threat facing the civilized world and the scale of the response that is appropriate.

Radical Islamism is more than simply a religious belief. It is a comprehensive political, economic, and religious movement that seeks to impose sharia--Islamic law--upon all aspects of global society.

Many Muslims see sharia as simply a reference point for their personal code of conduct. They recognize the distinction between their personal beliefs and the laws that govern all people of all faiths.

For the radical Islamist, however, this distinction does not exist. Radical Islamists see politics and religion as inseparable in a way it is difficult for Americans to understand. Radical Islamists assert sharia's supremacy over the freely legislated laws and values of the countries they live in and see it as their sacred duty to achieve this totalitarian supremacy in practice.

Some radical Islamists use terrorism as a tactic to impose sharia but others use non-violent methods--a cultural, political, and legal jihad that seeks the same totalitarian goal even while claiming to repudiate violence. Thus, the term "war on terrorism" is far too narrow a framework in which to think about the war in which we are engaged against the radical Islamists.

Sharia and Western Civilization

Sharia law is used in many Muslim countries to justify shocking acts of barbarity including stoning, the execution of homosexuals, and the subjugation of women. Sharia does not permit freedom of conscience; it prohibits Muslims from renouncing their Islamic faith or converting to another religion. Sharia does not support religious liberty; it treats non-Muslims as inferior and does not accord them the same protections as Muslims. In these and other instances, sharia is explicitly at odds with core American and Western values. It is an explicit repudiation of freedom of conscience and religious liberty as well as the premise that citizens are equal under the law.

Thus, the radical Islamist effort to impose sharia worldwide is a direct threat to all those who believe in the freedoms maintained by our constitutional system.

Creeping Sharia in the United States

In some ways, it speaks of the goodness of America that we have had such difficulty coming to grips with the challenge of radical Islamists. It is our very commitment to religious liberty that makes us uncomfortable with defining our enemies in a way that appears linked with religious belief.

However, America's commitment to religious liberty has given radical Islamists a potent rhetorical weapon in their pursuit of sharia supremacy. In a deliberately dishonest campaign exploiting our belief in religious liberty, radical Islamists are actively engaged in a public relations campaign to try and browbeat and guilt Americans (and other Western countries) to accept the imposition of sharia in certain communities, no matter how deeply sharia law is in conflict with the protections afforded by the civil law and the democratic values undergirding our constitutional system.

The problem of creeping sharia is most visibly on display in France and in the United Kingdom, where there are Muslim enclaves in which the police have surrendered authority and sharia reigns. However, worrisome cases are starting to emerge in the United States that show sharia is coming here. Andy McCarthy's writings, including his new book The Grand Jihad, have been invaluable in tracking instances in which the American government and major public institutions have been unwilling to assert the protections of American law and American values over sharia's religious code. Some examples include:

In June 2009, a New Jersey state judge rejected an allegation that a Muslim man who punished his wife with pain for hours and then raped her repeatedly was guilty of criminal sexual assault, citing his religious beliefs as proof that he did not believe he was acting in a criminal matter. "This court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited." Thankfully, this ruling was reversed in an appellate court.

In May 2008, a disabled student at a public college being assisted by a dog was threatened by Muslim members of the student body, who were reluctant to touch the animal by the prescription of sharia. The school, St. Cloud State, chose not to engage the Muslim community, but simply gave the student credit without actually fulfilling the class hours so as to avoid conflict.

In a similar instance in November 2009, a high school senior in Owatonna, Minn., was suspended in order to protect him from the threat of violence by radical Islamists when he wrote an essay about the special privileges afforded his Somali Muslim counterparts in the school environment.

In order to accommodate sharia's prohibition of interest payments in financial transactions, the state of Minnesota buys homes from realtors and re-sells them to Muslims at an up-front price. It is simply not the function of government to use tax money to create financial transactions that correspond to a religious code. Moreover, it is a strategy to create a precedent for legal recognition of sharia within U.S. law.

Amazingly, there are strong allegations that the United States now owns the largest provider of sharia financing in the world: AIG.

Last month, police in Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Muslim population, arrested Christian missionaries for handing out copies of the Gospel of St. John on charges of "disturbing the peace." They were doing so on a public street outside an Arab festival in a way that is completely permissible by law, but, of course, forbidden by sharia's rules on proselytizing. This is a clear case of freedom of speech and the exercise of religious freedom being sacrificed in deference to sharia's intolerance against the preaching of religions other than Islam.

Shockingly, sharia honor killings-in which Muslim women are murdered by their husbands, brothers or other male family members for dishonoring their family-are also on the rise in America but do not receive national attention because they are considered "domestic disturbances." (A recent article in Marie Claire Magazine highlights recent cases and the efforts to bring national attention to this horrifying trend.)

Cases like this will become all the more common as radical Islamists grow more and more aggressive in the United States.

It is in this context that the controversy over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero must be seen.

Exposing Radical Islamist Hypocrisy at Ground Zero

There are many reasons to doubt the stated intentions of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero mosque. After 9/11 he did not hesitate to condemn the United States as an "accessory" to the attacks but more recently refused to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is unsurprising considering he has well-established ties to U.S. branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also refused to reveal the sources of funding for the mosque project, which is projected to cost $100 million.

More importantly, he is an apologist for sharia supremacy. In a recent op-ed, Rauf actually compared sharia law with the Declaration of Independence. This isn't mere dishonesty; it is an Orwellian attempt to cause moral confusion about the nature of radical Islamism.

The true intentions of Rauf are also revealed by the name initially proposed for the Ground Zero mosque--"Cordoba House"--which is named for a city in Spain where a conquering Muslim army replaced a church with a mosque. This name is a very direct historical indication that the Ground Zero mosque is all about conquest and thus an assertion of Islamist triumphalism which we should not tolerate.

They say they're interfaith, but they didn't propose the building of a mosque, church and synagogue. Instead they proposed a 13-story mosque and community center that will extol the glories of Islamic tolerance for people of other faiths, all while overlooking the site where radical Islamists killed almost 3,000 people in a shocking act of hatred.

Building this structure on the edge of the battlefield created by radical Islamists is not a celebration of religious pluralism and mutual tolerance; it is a political statement of shocking arrogance and hypocrisy.

We need to have the moral courage to denounce it. It is simply grotesque to erect a mosque at the site of the most visible and powerful symbol of the horrible consequences of radical Islamist ideology. Well-meaning Muslims, with common human sensitivity to the victims' families, realize they have plenty of other places to gather and worship. But for radical Islamists, the mosque would become an icon of triumph, encouraging them in their challenge to our civilization.

Apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy are trying to argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America's commitment to religious liberty. They say this despite the fact that there are already over 100 mosques in New York City.

In fact, they're partially correct-this is a test of our commitment to religious liberty. It is a test to see if we have the resolve to face down an ideology that aims to destroy religious liberty in America, and every other freedom we hold dear.

NEWT GINGRICH

HARRY REIDS POLITICAL OBITUARY?

Charlotte zings Reid from beyond the grave

Posted by John L. Smith
Tuesday, Jul. 13, 2010 at 10:43 AM

Election 2010 has just heard from a member of the Silent Majority.

You know, from a deceased person.

Chances are good you never met Charlotte McCourt during her 84 years, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be hearing about her in the coming days now that her obituary has taken Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to task. It’s the kind of small story that has the potential to ricochet like a bullet through the campaign showdown between incumbent Reid and Republican challenger Sharron Angle.

Not because McCourt, who died July 8 after a long illness, was a political player or business powerbroker, but precisely because she was neither of those things. She was a homemaker, proud mother and grand mother and wife of 67 years to Patrick McCourt.

And she was at one time a loyal supporter of Harry Reid.

Her obituary, printed in Tuesday’s Review-Journal, reads in part, “We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.”

Ouch.

McCourt was born Dec. 25 in Wellington, Utah and was a 40-year Nevada resident. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Perhaps by coincidence, Reid’s re-election hangs in no small part on his ability to encourage conservative and religious Democrats to support him. He is also a member of the LDS faith.

RACE IS A LOOSER'S TOOL,OBAMA USES IT CONSISTANTLY.

Black GOP candidate slams Obama for exploiting race

One of the GOP's handful of black candidates for Congress condemned President Barack Obama of exploiting race for political gain.

Allen West, the Republican challenging Rep. Ron Klein (D) in Florida's 22nd congressional district, sharply criticized the Obama administration for having allegedly declined prosecuting the New Black Panther Party on voter tampering charges for political reasons.

"For an Administration that promised a new era in race relations, Obama and the Democrats in Congress have demonstrated that race will continually be exploited for political gain," West, who is one of two African-American Republicans running for Congress who have survived their primaries, said in a statement.

West was picking up on a meme that's made its way through conservative blogs in recent days, based on whistleblower claims made by a former Justice Department employee. Charges against the Black Panthers for their actions on Election Day 2008 weren't pursued because of racial politics, the employee charged. The Justice Department says charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

West drew on his own history with race to condemn the Black Panthers, as well as other black Democrats, who he said had "remained silent" when he'd been called racially-ringed names during the course of his campaign.

"The dye has been cast in this election cycle - Democrats and their liberal progressive socialist allies will continue to play the race card when it is politically expedient," West said. "I demand an investigation of the New Black Panther Party and the placement of it, along with any extremist group, onto the Terrorist Watch List if warranted. If that it not done prior to my taking the oath of office as a United States Congressman, it will happen soon thereafter."

The words have more weight coming from this candidate, who's seen as one of two black Republican candidates who have a good shot at making their way to Washington next year.

West is seen as a top challenger to Klein after having come closer than expected to the incumbent Democrat in 2008. Republican Tim Scott is seen as likely to win his race in South Carolina's first congressional district this fall, too. Either man, if elected, would be the first African-American lawmaker in the GOP since former Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who retired in 2003.

OBAMA'S FIRST LESSON, LEARN DUDE LEARN

Christie looks to privatize motor vehicle inspections, other services

New Jersey would close its centralized car inspection lanes and motorists would pay for their own emissions tests under a sweeping set of recommendations set to be released by the Christie administration today.

State parks, psychiatric hospitals and even turnpike toll booths could also be run by private operators, according to the 57-page report on privatization obtained by The Star-Ledger. Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls.

All told, the report says, New Jersey could save at least $210 million a year by delivering an array of services through private hands.

"The question has to be, ‘Why do you continue to operate in a manner that’s more costly and less effective?’ rather than, ‘Why change?’ " said Richard Zimmer, the former Republican congressman who chaired the task force.

It is unclear how many of the recommendations will be adopted by Governor Christie, who commissioned the report in March. Christie’s spokesman declined comment Thursday.

But the car inspection proposal is sure to stir up controversy in a state with a tortured history of privatizing emissions testing.

The report says that beginning next July, "New Jersey should withdraw entirely from direct participation in the vehicle inspection process." Before then, the state would develop a plan to certify service stations and other shops "to make the transition seamless for motorists and assure that private inspection fees will be transparent and reasonable."

The state would then sell the land where its facilities now operate.

The proposal would require breaking the state’s contract with Parsons Corp., which is two years into a five-year, $276 million deal to do emissions and mechanical inspections. The mechanical inspections were already phased out under the budget that went into effect July 1.

The state conducts more than 1.94 million initial inspections a year and pays for all of them. Drivers pay only if they fail the inspections and have to make repairs.

Zimmer pointed out that motorists are already paying for the system through their tax dollars.

Critics said Christie is returning to dangerous territory after Parsons’ early years of managing the inspection program were steeped in controversy. When the inspection network was opened in December 1999, it was plagued by computer malfunctions and frozen equipment that left drivers fuming in lines four hours long.

Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey director of the Communications Workers of America state workers union, said the plans outlined in the report would create "bad service" and "less safety" while failing to save the state money.

But Zimmer stressed "stringent" controls will be put in place.

Despite past predictions that up to 2,000 public employees could lose their jobs to privatization, the report does not specify the number of layoffs to come. But its impact could be felt from parks — where private recreation firms would run concessions, operate facilities and perhaps collect a fee — to preschools.

The report says the state should end public funding to construct preschools and change rules to make it easier for private providers to run them.

David Sciarra, an attorney and advocate for children in the poorest districts where the state Supreme Court has mandated the preschool program, said the report is "misleading and erroneous" in claiming the private sector is being crowded out.

"If anything, the collaboration between districts and providers ... has grown stronger, and the private sector is an integral part of the program," he said. "They should go back to the drawing board on this one."

E-mail: cheininger@starledger.com

New Jersey would close its centralized car inspection lanes and motorists would pay for their own emissions tests under a sweeping set of recommendations set to be released by the Christie administration today.

State parks, psychiatric hospitals and even turnpike toll booths could also be run by private operators, according to the 57-page report on privatization obtained by The Star-Ledger. Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls.

All told, the report says, New Jersey could save at least $210 million a year by delivering an array of services through private hands.

"The question has to be, ‘Why do you continue to operate in a manner that’s more costly and less effective?’ rather than, ‘Why change?’ " said Richard Zimmer, the former Republican congressman who chaired the task force.

It is unclear how many of the recommendations will be adopted by Governor Christie, who commissioned the report in March. Christie’s spokesman declined comment Thursday.

But the car inspection proposal is sure to stir up controversy in a state with a tortured history of privatizing emissions testing.

The report says that beginning next July, "New Jersey should withdraw entirely from direct participation in the vehicle inspection process." Before then, the state would develop a plan to certify service stations and other shops "to make the transition seamless for motorists and assure that private inspection fees will be transparent and reasonable."

The state would then sell the land where its facilities now operate.

The proposal would require breaking the state’s contract with Parsons Corp., which is two years into a five-year, $276 million deal to do emissions and mechanical inspections. The mechanical inspections were already phased out under the budget that went into effect July 1.

The state conducts more than 1.94 million initial inspections a year and pays for all of them. Drivers pay only if they fail the inspections and have to make repairs.

Zimmer pointed out that motorists are already paying for the system through their tax dollars.

Critics said Christie is returning to dangerous territory after Parsons’ early years of managing the inspection program were steeped in controversy. When the inspection network was opened in December 1999, it was plagued by computer malfunctions and frozen equipment that left drivers fuming in lines four hours long.

Hetty Rosenstein, New Jersey director of the Communications Workers of America state workers union, said the plans outlined in the report would create "bad service" and "less safety" while failing to save the state money.

But Zimmer stressed "stringent" controls will be put in place.

Despite past predictions that up to 2,000 public employees could lose their jobs to privatization, the report does not specify the number of layoffs to come. But its impact could be felt from parks — where private recreation firms would run concessions, operate facilities and perhaps collect a fee — to preschools.

The report says the state should end public funding to construct preschools and change rules to make it easier for private providers to run them.

David Sciarra, an attorney and advocate for children in the poorest districts where the state Supreme Court has mandated the preschool program, said the report is "misleading and erroneous" in claiming the private sector is being crowded out.

"If anything, the collaboration between districts and providers ... has grown stronger, and the private sector is an integral part of the program," he said. "They should go back to the drawing board on this one."

PROMISES, PROMISES, PROMISES

Obama's Flim Flam of Preposterous Promises

How could any sane observer above the age of 14 honestly believe that a new federal program would succeed in “wiping out” all “chronic homelessness” by 2015? Or, even more outlandishly, how are realistic grownups supposed to credit the notion that the same bureaucratic initiative will somehow manage to “end” homelessness of every sort within ten years?

The only factor that prevented a deafening national chorus of hoots and guffaws from greeting the announcement of President Obama’s ambitious new “Opening Doors” program (officially described as a “Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness”) was the lack of publicity accorded to the administration’s latest utopian scheme. Major media understandably paid little attention to a big new federal thrust unveiled with considerable fanfare on June 22, in the midst of soaring deficits, a teetering world economy, a failing war in Afghanistan, a catastrophic oil spill, a stymied “jobs bill”, a surging Republican opposition and a chief executive with precipitously plummeting approval ratings.

In fact, the odd timing of Obama’s “end homelessness” initiative raises an uncomfortable question: how is a federal government that has been utterly unable to seal off a single oil well in the Gulf of Mexico supposed to solve (within ten years, no less!) an intractable, nationwide, social and psychiatric problem that has foiled governmental authorities at the federal, state and local level for a half century?

Defenders of the administration’s arrogant approach would insist that there’s no meaningful comparison between federal impotence in the face of the Gulf oil slick and the painful predicament of the homeless hordes, since the undersea gusher was properly the responsibility of BP and its associates, not the feds. But this logic leads to another unanswerable challenge: since when did the dilemma of homeless citizens in Hoboken and Honolulu become the responsibility of preening panjandrums in Washington, D.C., rather than the local leadership in Hoboken and Honolulu?

In fact, the new federal effort mostly duplicates costly efforts already underway in every corner of the country. According to the advocacy group The National Alliance to End Homelessness, cities and towns are currently conducting 234 local plans to “end homelessness,” and 84% of them include ten year deadlines—just like the Obama undertaking.

How is it logical to assume that Washington officials could do a better job clearing destitute transients from the parks and sidewalks of your home town than could the local armies of social workers, medical care professionals, anti-poverty counselors and law enforcement, already working (chances are) on ten year deadlines?

The reliance on federal power illustrates the twisted thinking that undergirds every aspect of the president’s domestic agenda. Would even the glib and accomplished commander-in-chief be able to explain why acute local troubles --like homelessness, or the provision of medical care, or struggling schools-- require ministrations and money from far away Washington, instead of the more flexible and accountable efforts of public servants who are closer (in every way) to the pressing problems?

Reflexive liberals might provide the immediate answer that Washington has more money to spend but in the current context that claim comes across like a sour joke. If anything, the national authorities have even less financial flexibility than state and local authorities, since most local governments are prohibited by law from operating at a deficit, and Washington has recently accumulated the staggering total of more than 13 trillion in debt. It’s true that the feds can borrow money more readily than local authorities, but the level of indebtedness has already become so perilous that purely fiscal considerations (aside from problems of efficiency and responsiveness) should lead the national authorities to avoid any expensive intrusions in challenges best left to state and local responses.

The sad, shabby truth is that the new homeless initiative, like so many other sweeping federal boondoggles, relies exclusively on the flim-flam of preposterous promises. Dutiful bureaucrats assigned to the “Opening Doors” program can’t possibly feel confident they’ll end all homelessness by 2020, any more than the operators behind the president’s “race to the top” campaign can count on reinvigorating a sclerotic national school system, or the federal officials charged with deploying Obamacare can rely on beating state reform efforts in Massachusetts, Oregon and other states, by reaching all the uninsured while lowering costs for everyone.

The messianic visions of the Obama administration stand little chance of success in their announced purposes, but they might still fulfill their primary unacknowledged goal: making national Democrats look good because they’re doing something—anything, no matter how feckless and lame – to address the concerns of the public. By federalizing these efforts, however, the liberal agenda only cripples government at every level: pre-empting the proper responsibilities of local leadership, and enfeebling federal operations by making the national government an ever more unwieldy, clumsy and unsustainable behemoth.

Michael Medved