The 'end of the beginning' on Shariah
by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=5794

As I looked out at the thousands of people assembled near Ground Zero on Sunday to oppose the construction of a megamosque there, I was reminded of Winston Churchill's famous line that enspirited Britain at the first sign the tide was turning in World War II:  ”Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

 

To be sure, the rally held two blocks from the World Trade Center was not a decisive defeat of the enemy like that dealt by the storied British “Desert Rats” to Hitler's Afrika Korps in November 1942.  But there was something pivotal about the fact that throngs of ordinary Americans – many of them family or friends of those who died on 9/11 – had come together to stand for hours in an intermittent rain not just to contest the construction of a megamosque at a wholly inappropriate location, but in informed opposition to the impetus behind that mosque: shariah.

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INN Editorial: The Freedom to Build in Jerusalem
by Rachel Sylvetsky

(IsraelNN.com) Karl Marx accused his fellow Jews of being a “cosmopolitan” people who could not develop roots in any specific area of the world. No Jew lover, he wrote his barbed phrase as though it was an inherent Jewish characteristic, along with usury and other unproductive occupations, without taking into account that it might be an acquired one. After all, Jews could hardly be expected to plant roots when history was replete with banishments, expulsions, pogroms and ghettoizing that hardly served to make the Jewish populace in most countries feel at home.

The Jew’s image in the Diaspora was also that of the People of the Book, a more positive, and continuing, pursuit than that attributed to them by Marx. Intellectualism made up for a normal nations’ construction, farming and production, denied to them for centuries. 

However, the Jewish people certainly had a history of building. It began when they first constructed permanent dwellings in Egypt, but not for their personal use. They were the slaves who build the cities of Pithom and Raamses, but who, once freed on Passover, were satisfied with the tents Balaam described in Numbers 24:5 as “goodly”. This newly- formed people spent forty years in the desert in temporary “booths” where, while they complained about the monotony of their manna menu, they did not demand less flimsy residences for their families.
For them, it was G-d’s cloud of glory that provided the permanence and security a home usually symbolizes. Their central place of ritual in the desert was a portable, curtained Tabernacle, which was brought to Shiloh once they entered Israel.

This was in sharp contrast to what transpired when the Jews had a monarchy in the land of Israel. This was when roots of construction, farming and production were planted in the Promised Land. King David described himself as living in a permanent home, feeling guilty because G-d ‘s Ark had only a temporary one. His son King Solomon spent many years building the First Temple and his own palace, enlisting the help of experts from Lebanon. His people, too, built permanent homes in the land of their forefathers. 

When the first group of Jews was exiled to Babylon, the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to tell them that they were to build homes there.  That symbolized permanence to them, and so strong was their yearning for Zion, that they wanted to stay sojourners in their land of exile awaiting the rebuilding of their beloved Temple in Jerusalem.

Throughout the ages, even when their status allowed for beautiful residences, the Jewish people was willing to abandon them for a week and return to those temporary booths, Sukkahs, that reminded them of G-d’s guarding presence in the desert, so longed for during their sufferings in exile. In fact, Rav Tzvi Hirsh Berliner was once asked by the Prince of Mannheim why children don’t ask four questions on Sukkot, as moving into a booth is just as unusual as the Passover seder. He answered that the opposite is true, for leaving one’s home hastily for a temporary haven is the most commonplace of occurrences in the Diaspora with which even a child is familiar.

Construction is the symbol of permanence.  A “guarding wall and lookout tower” were what early Zionists built with Haganah help to create settlements during the memorable period in which they countered 1936-39  Arab insurgency by creating “facts on the ground”. It is tragic to think that their offspring did not internalize the difference between a people at home and the wandering Jews of Marx and were willing to destroy Jewish homes in Israel and send thousands of Katif Bloc residents to temporary booths as if they were back in the desert of the Diaspora.
It is true that in the Diaspora, when Jews lived in places that were good to them, they built homes, communities and public buildings, such as the hospitals with Jewish names that dot the USA, for the good of the countries who treated them kindly. History showed  most tragically that this does not help Jews achieve permanence. Perhaps all the Jews, even those living most comfortably in the Diaspora, expressed this truth subliminally when they sang “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” at the close of the Seder each year.

“Rebuilt Jerusalem”--

Those words once meant the exiles’ hope to return to rebuild the city, but after it was reunited in 1967and the sounds of construction filled the air as Jerusalem grew and expanded naturally in all directions, it seemed to be happening in our time.  Jews still sang those words hoping for the Redemption, when they could rebuild the Holy Temple in the “city in which King David settled”, as Jerusalem is called in a poem of longing and idealism written by Rabbi Avraham Yitschak HaKohen Kook, Israel’s first Chief Rabbi.

“Rebuilt Jerusalem” has taken on another level of meaning these past few weeks. It seems the joyous rebuilding of the past forty three years is not seen as natural growth by much of the rest of the world. The ancient words of the song now are an assertion of the Jewish people’s right to build everywhere in their holy city and a demand for it to be recognized as rightfully theirs.
Let us sing those words with redoubled fervor this year. Jews are building in their own land, as in days of yore. The other nations are mouthing the words attributed to Esau’s—not Ishmael’s-- descendants, Edom, said by our Sages to be “known to hate Jacob”, at the time of the Temple’s destruction: “Destroy, destroy, unto the very foundations” of Jerusalem (Psalm 137).
The psalmist tells G-d to “Remember what the sons of Edom did on the day of Jerusalem” in the previous verse. We too will remember. And we will keep on building, because we have come home.

Coming to Grips With Sharia
By Frank Gaffney
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney081010.php3

Suddenly, it seems, everyone is talking about Shariah.  In particular, growing controversies over proposed mosques at Ground Zero and other sites are becoming powerful "teaching moments" - raising awareness about the repressive theo-political-military-legal doctrine that animates the builders and that their fellow adherents seek to impose on the entire world.

This is a most welcome development in light of the grave and growing threat posed by this agenda and the concerted effort being made - here and elsewhere, through violent jihad and the stealthy kind - to realize that goal.

Unfortunately, too many Americans still remain unaware of the magnitude of the danger we face from Shariah.  Worse yet, their ability to comprehend this threat, let alone respond appropriately to it, is being seriously disserved by people who know better - or should. Specifically, the public is being seriously misled by 1) some journalists and politicians who are obscuring the true nature of Shariah and 2) Shariah practitioners who engage in deliberate deception to facilitate the penetration of their doctrine into Western societies.

As an example of the former, consider the article that led the New York Times front page on Sunday entitled "Battles around Nation over Proposed Mosques."  It accurately reported that Americans from the Ground Zero neighborhood in Lower Manhattan to San Bernardino are expressing growing concern about Muslim mosques that "seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic Shariah law."

Yet, the Times proceeded to dismiss the idea that such mosques are a problem.  It cited "interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members from other faiths [who] have defended the mosques." One such individual was quoted as saying that the opponents "have fear because they don't know" those involved in such mosques.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg went even further last week declaring that those critical of the construction of a permanent symbol of Shariah adherents' victorious destruction of the World Trade Center "ought to be ashamed of themselves" for being intolerant.  Moreover, he categorically rejected the idea that it was reasonable, let alone necessary, to determine the source of funds for the $100-plus million mega-mosque near Ground Zero.

In other words, the Mayor seemingly is indifferent to whether the funding for the mosque sponsored by the Cordoba Initiative (named for the capital city of the Moorish conquerors of Spain and the site where they triumphally transformed a Catholic church into a massive mosque) might be the Saudis, with their version of Shariah known as Wahhabism.

This cavalier attitude is absolutely stupefying insofar as two years ago this month, the New York Police Department issued a report warning that Wahhabi mosques in America were incubators for "homegrown" Islamic radicals.

The Mayor has a duty to know a lot more than he evidently does about Shariah.  He certainly has an obligation to figure out whether - as is true of, by some estimates, 80% of the mosques in America - the Ground Zero Mosque is going to fit the profile of a Wahhabi-associated facility.

The challenge of assuring public awareness of the Shariah threat would be hard enough if the only impediment were ill-informed politicians and journalists.  Matters are made much worse by the skill with which Shariah's adherents dissemble, or simply lie.

For example, the New York Times article cited Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee - the sponsors of a proposed 52,000 square foot mosque that has precipitated an intense local backlash.  It reported that Ms. Ayash "lamented that people were listening to 'total disinformation' on Islam."  She then engaged in a classic example of real disinformation - or what Shariah calls taqqiya - claiming, "There's no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law."

Now, even the most superficial review of Shariah shows that statement to be preposterous and misleading.  In fact, among other Constitution-affronting features, Islamic law prohibits democratic law-making.  It requires the replacement of constitutions and governments like ours with a global theocracy governed by Islamic law.  It brutalizes women and otherwise treats them as second-class citizens and authorizes the murder of homosexuals and apostates.

Shariah is, in short, wholly incompatible with our legal system, freedoms and way of life.

Then, there was this gem from Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky.  The Times quoted him as saying that while "radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, the youth we worry about are not the youth that come to the mosque[s]."

Look no further than the NYPD report for a reality check.  It reported that:  "This [Shariah] ideology is proliferating in Western democracies at a logarithmic rate.  The Internet, certain Salafi-based non-governmental organizations, extremist sermons/study groups, Salafi literature, jihadi videotapes, extremist-sponsored trips to radical madrassas and militant training camps abroad have served as "extremist incubators" for young, susceptible Muslims - especially ones living in diaspora communities in the West." (Emphasis added.)

Americans across this country are struggling to understand the true nature of the threat we face from Shariah.  They are entitled to straight talk about the extent to which it is being insinuated, promoted and legitimated not only in mosques but by financial institutions, banks, academic institutions and government agencies.  Those who fail to provide such unvarnished truths are part of the problem, and should be treated accordingly.

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