Dar al Hijrah's Other Weekend Guests

As we reported last week, students training for diplomatic careers at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute spent Sunday afternoon at Virginia's Dar al-Hijrah mosque. Despite its long history of ties to terrorists and radicals, the students went to learn about Muslim attitudes toward America.

As it turns out, the mosque played host to other outsiders last weekend. This time, the cops were called. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani led a group of women to "the 9/11 mosque" to see what would happen if women tried to pray alongside men.

Both sides filed complaints. The mosque accused Nomani and her six companions of trespassing, while Nomani filed an assault claim against Imam Shaker El-Sayed. In a column published by the Daily Beast, Nomani describes what happened.

Their entrance was greeted by an angry man shouting "Get out of here!" as he charged at them, before another man held him back:

"The prayers complete, men surrounded the women in our group, some of us still sitting on the carpet. 'Get up! Get up!' they shouted. Elsayed walked by, charging us with 'fitna,' a loaded word in Muslim communities that refers to people who cause conflict. It can be grounds for killing another Muslim. A member of the congregation responded, 'Go! Go! Go! You are not allowed here!'

Elsayed then told the men, 'This is what we talked about in the khutbah (sermon) yesterday … They are among those people aligned with Satan and want to influence 1 billion Muslims.' We knew how significant that statement could be. We considered it a verbal threat, giving men grounds by which to assault us. In March 2010, a Saudi cleric said it was acceptable to kill Muslims—like us—who accept gender mixing."

In addition to the police involvement, Nomani planned to file a complaint with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR officials are close with Dar al Hijrah's leadership, so the response may be interesting to watch.

The campaign is rooted in Nomani's belief the practice is "part of a broader, problematic interpretation of Islam that I believe often incites violence against civilians, suicide bombings, and terrorism." Her concerns over growing radicalism her home mosque in West Virginia, and the start of her campaign to end gender segregation in prayer, were chronicled in a documentary called "The Mosque in Morgantown."

Islamist Activists Suffer Drubbing in London Elections

Exposure of radical Islamist political maneuvering seems to have helped turn voters against them in last week's elections. Reporter Andrew Gilligan, who reported on the connections, summarizes the results here.

Lutfur Rahman, a Labour Party leader at the Tower Hamlets Council in East London, was ousted following reports of his connections with the radical Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). He was replaced by Helal Abbas, another Labour Party member, who attacked the group's influence on the council.

The IFE is based at the East London Mosque, which calls the group a "social welfare organization." A very different picture emerged earlier this year, following a brilliant expose on Channel 4's "Dispatches" and in the pages of the London Telegraph.

In fact, the organization, which supports Sharia law, seeks to change British culture and institutions "from ignorance to Islam." The IFE and the mosque have hosted a number of radical Islamists, including Anwar al-Awlaki and Azad Ali, who has defended Hamas and Hizballah and justified the killing of British troops in Iraq.

Re-elected was senior Labour Party official Jim Fitzpatrick, who stood against the IFE's growing influence. For that, the IFE targeted him for defeat, claiming his cooperation with the Telegraph investigation showed he was "Islamophobic" and should be removed from Parliament.

Instead, Fitzpatrick was re-elected with a much larger majority. Coming in a distant third was George Galloway, whose Respect Party won just 17.5 percent of the vote. Galloway's defeat came after the Telegraph obtained a secret recording of him stating that his victory in the 2005 general election in a neighboring district owed "more than I can say, more than it would be wise for me to say, to the IFE."

In Galloway's former district, Labour Party candidate Rushanara Ali won a commanding victory to become one of Britain's first three Muslim MPs. The result occurred after Abjol Miah, the Respect Party candidate in that race and a leading IFE activist, was secretly filmed by Channel 4 stating: "We've consolidated ourselves now. We've got a lot of influence and power in the council, councillors, politicians."

As Ali declared victory and mentioned Galloway by name, her supporters reportedly shouted "scum" and "out, out, out." In all, Galloway's Respect party lost 11 of the12 seats it won in Tower Hamlets in 2006.

Rahman, the deposed Labour Party chief in Tower Hamlets, withdrew from the race when it became apparent he would lose.

As leader, he promoted plans to erect ceremonial arches shaped like a hijab. Radical materials, including taped Awlaki sermons, were made available at public libraries, and substantial sums of council money were paid to the East London Mosque and other community groups linked to the IFE.

"This was a victory against extremism. We were really fearful, both for Jim [Fitzpatrick] and Rushanara [Ali]," said Ansar Ahmed Ullah, a local opponent of the IFE. "The IFE and its allies fought a very divisive campaign, just focusing on the Muslim community as if no one else lived in the borough. But people wised up."

"It is a very good result, thanks to your investigation," Badrul Islam, another local foe of the IFE, told the Telegraph. "They tried to pull out all the stops, and they failed."

Ousted MP Galloway Returns to the U.S.

George Galloway has returned to the U.S. for a speaking tour which began on Saturday, following a crushing defeat for re-election in the UK Parliament.

Galloway, the head and founder of Viva Palestina, an organization that supports the terrorist organization Hamas, was banned from entering Canada last year, and was declared "persona non grata" by the Egyptian foreign ministry in January, barring him from entering the country again. A Canadian judge is currently deciding whether to uphold the ban against Galloway.

Galloway has 11 speaking engagements planned, eight of which are organized by the Chicago-based group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) as part of its "Al-Nakba Commemoration Campaign." The other three events are organized by the Muslim Legal Fund of American (MLFA), an organization which has expressed its support for groups including the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which saw five former officials sentenced by a federal judge last May for providing material support to Hamas; Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman convicted of attempted murder of U.S. citizens in Afghanistan; and the Islamic American Relief Agency, designated by the U.S. Treasury in 2004 for its support for a variety of terrorist organizations.

During Galloway's last visit to the U.S. in January to raise money for Viva Palestina, he praised Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and vilified Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for his "tin pot tyranny."

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued a press release expressing concern over Galloway's entry into the country. AJC Executive Director David Harris asked, "Only a few days after voters ousted George Galloway from the British Parliament, has he returned to our country to seek additional funds for Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization?"

Will Western Sweeteners Move Peace Process Forward?

As the Obama Administration pushes ahead with Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks, Israel is being wooed with sweeteners like money for missile defense against Hamas and Hizballah rocket attacks and admission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

On Monday, the OECD (an association of democracies that encourages international trade) voted unanimously to admit Israel, rejecting efforts by the Palestinian Authority to deny membership to the Jewish State.

Ha'aretz correspondent Aluf Benn wrote that until the OECD vote, "only [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu had given and given" to facilitate recent U.S.-led peace efforts:

"He agreed to as Palestinian state, a freeze on settlement construction and an undeclared construction freeze in East Jerusalem. Now he's also receiving. 'The world' rejected the Palestinian demand to leave Israel outside the organization and use acceptance as a bargaining chip to end the occupation of the West Bank."

Israel's admission to the OECD is just one recent example of the administration's efforts "to shower Israel with shows of affection, the likes of which haven't been seen for some time," Benn wrote Thursday. Defense Minister Ehud Barak received red-carpet treatment during a recent visit to Washington (a sharp contrast to the reception Netanyahu received from Obama in March.)

Administration speeches today are full of language about the American commitment to Israel's security, and talks about the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are expected to conclude shortly with language that will leave the Israeli policy of "ambiguity" about its weapons arsenal unchanged.

But the change in tone does not mean that the substance of Obama's approach has changed. Obama is "tired" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Benn wrote, and "the world is fed up with this nuisance, and he wants to put an end to it. Or at least achieve an accord that eluded his predecessors."

The problem is that, by summer's end, both the proximity talks and the settlement freeze will expire. The U.N. General Assembly will convene in New York and the Obama Administration will attempt to mobilize international support for an Iran sanctions package. Obama will want the settlement freeze extended, but Netanyahu may not be in a political position to do so.

According to Benn, there are two major camps in the Israeli government: One, including Barak and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, are suggesting that Israel advance a proposal to establish a Palestinian state with temporary borders. A second faction, which reportedly includes Netanyahu's political adviser Ron Dermer and more hawkish members of the prime minister's coalition, believes Israel would benefit by waiting until after the November elections, believing that Obama will be politically weakened and less likely to try to pressure Israel for new concessions.

Indonesia's Mumbai-style attack foiled

Indonesian police say they have foiled a plot to assassinate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and other top officials, murder foreigners, and declare an Islamic state in the world's most populous Muslim nation. The attack focused on the August 17^th Independence Day celebration, which would be attended by the leading Indonesian politicians and foreign dignitaries.

"They were confident that all state officials and dignitaries would be there," national police chief General Bambang Hendarso Danuri told reporters. "Killing all the state officials would have accelerated the transition from a democracy to a state controlled by Islamic Shariah law."

This news also comes just weeks before President Obama's planned visit in June, which had been postponed from earlier this year.

It also follows a crackdown on the Al Qaeda-inspired terrorist organization, Al Qaeda in Aceh, in the rebellious province of Aceh. Police shut down a training camp run by the group in February. Indonesia has been fighting a running battle with Al Qaeda-linked militants since the 2002 Bali bombing, which killed 202 people in a nightclub frequented by Westerners.

The successful police operation underscores a number of new trends in Indonesian radicalism. Terrorism expert Al Chaidar noted a transition from the use of difficult to obtain explosives toward the use of military-style training, similar to the Mumbai attacks. Aceh, a former haven of independence seeking rebels, is no longer the pacified province which was forced to sign a peace treaty in 2005 following that year's devastating tsunami. Instead, it has transitioned to a front for militants dedicated to overthrowing Indonesia's democracy and replacing it with Sharia-law over all of Indonesia.

Terror Should Be Condemned

An apparent pipe bomb attack took place against a mosque Monday in Jacksonville, Florida and the FBI and local police authorities continue to investigate. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has offered a $5000 reward leading to the arrest of the perpetrator(s).

Readers know CAIR is an organization we do not trust. We just posted an example why. But when circumstances demand fairness and truth, we stand by those principles. CAIR claims this attack on the mosque has received little media attention outside Florida. It may have a point. Most of the media coverage of this event does appear to be focused in Florida.

Fortunately, little damage and no injuries resulted from the attack and that may explain the lack of national media coverage. Nonetheless, any attack or attempted attack against any house of worship is despicable. The use of an explosive device in such an attack is terrorism and should be vigorously investigated and prosecuted as such.

The IPT condemns this attack and hopes the perpetrator or perpetrators are quickly caught and brought to justice. Anyone with any information concerning this heinous act should contact the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

Radical Islamism on Display in Campus Frays

It's been quite a week for radical Islamists on college campuses to show their true faces.

The British cultural magazine Standpoint neatly summarizes two episode, starting Monday at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Writer David Horowitz gave a talk about Israeli Apartheid Week at UCSD. During the question-and-answer session, a woman identifying herself as a member of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), challenged Horowitz.

She objected to Horowitz linking the MSA to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Horowitz responded by challenging her to condemn Hamas. She refused, stating: "Are you asking me to put myself on a cross?"

Horowitz recounted a speech at another college, during which he challenged MSA members in the audience to condemn Hamas or Hizballah. None would. During the q&a session, Horowitz asked the campus MSA president to condemn Hizballah.

"And he said, 'Well, that question is too complicated for an answer.' So I said, 'Okay, I'll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hizbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn't have to hunt us down globally. For or against it?" Horowitz asked the UCSD student.

"For it," she replied.

The next day, Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has caricatured the prophet Muhammad, was attacked during a talk at a Swedish university. A protester attacked him and broke his glasses. Police arrested several people in the crowd, while others screamed "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great.)

University officials said they would "not likely" invite Vilks back to campus because of the disturbance.

Watch video of the attack here (second video). Read more about it here.

On Thursday, radical Islamist Amir Abdel Malik Ali spoke at the University of California, Irvine as part of "Israeli Apartheid Week," a program put together by the Muslim Student Union.

During the question-and-answer session following his speech, Malik Ali said he supported Hamas, Hizballah and Islamic Jihad and explained why students should not hold dialogue with "Zionists."

"You Jews. You wouldn't sit down with Nazis for tea and cake," Malik Ali said. "Y'all the new Nazis."

Read the Orange County Register's account of Malik Ali's speech here. Watch the video here.

The message in each episode is disturbing and hateful. But at least the players showed people their true faces.

CAIR Harassment Complaints in St. Cloud Schools Unsubstantiated

Seven of eight incidents involving alleged harassment of Somali students in Minnesota schools have been determined to be unsubstantiated, a St. Cloud School District investigation finds.

The complaints were filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In some cases, board member Jerry Von Korff said, CAIR did not submit enough information to verify some of the claims.

"Some of them, there's no record of; we don't know who the students are," he said. "There was no way of tracking them down. One incident that was reported about meat being thrust in somebody's face, the students had no recollection of that occurring."

However, Kroff said the school board's findings did not rule out the possibility that the incidents CAIR filed occurred. "When you're investigating something, the fact that you don't substantiate something does not prove conclusively beyond a shadow of a doubt that it didn't happen."

The organization has a history of hyping alleged cases of anti-Muslim bias that turn out to be unfounded. In this case, St. Cloud schools did confirm several complaints of harassment not filed by CAIR, according to an official bias report released by the school system.

The results of the St. Cloud investigation come two months after CAIR sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education requesting a review of reported incidents of discrimination against Muslim students in Minnesota schools. The letter expressed concerns including accounts of bus drivers refusing to pick up Muslim students and a reported incident where two students put bacon and pork in the faces of Muslim students.

At the time of CAIR's complaint, then Superintendent Steve Jordahl said that no administrator was made aware of some of the incidents CAIR described in the letter and that the district would investigate the matter. Jordahl resigned in April commenting that he wanted to work in an environment that was "not quite so political." The St. Cloud Times wrote that CAIR's complaint "might have been the tipping point" for his resignation.

In March, representatives from the St. Cloud school district met with CAIR leaders to discuss CAIR's complaint with the U.S. Department of Education alleging that Muslim students in St. Cloud schools are in a hostile learning environment. At the meeting, St. Cloud schools designated a point person for CAIR to contact with further complaints.

If indeed the reports turn out to be false, this would not be the first time that CAIR called for an investigation into discrimination against Muslim students which turned out to have never occurred. In October 2008 CAIR sent out a press release calling on law enforcement to investigate an alleged assault on a Muslim student by a gunman in Illinois. One week later, it was determined that the college student fabricated the incident and was charged with filing a false police report.

Terrorism vs. Citizenship

In the wake of Faisal Shahzad's arrest in the attempted Times Square car bombing, there is renewed interest in the integrity of the immigration and naturalization process. This includes U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman proposed legislation allowing terror suspects to be stripped of their U.S. citizenship. Lieberman's proposal essentially enhances an existing, but virtually unused, federal statute under Title 8, Section 1481 of the U.S. Code. While there are plenty of cases of revoking someone's citizenship, most of them follow convictions for other crimes.

The law, however, provides for a civil court revocation process without a criminal conviction if the evidence shows the naturalization was illegally or fraudulently procured. What Lieberman and his supporters want to do is enhance that to revoke the citizenship of those who are shown to be involved in terrorism..

There are other Shahzads out there, and we don't want them staying here after it's clear they tried to do us harm. While Lieberman's proposal may be contentious, the existing naturalization system long has suffered for a lack of viable quality control.

Naturalization cases are processed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CIS took over that function from the now defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 2003. But its policies and procedures have evolved little from the mismanaged days of the INS. A number of watchdog studies, to include those conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), indicate quality control suffers in favor of backlog reduction at CIS. That allows people like Shahzad to slip through the cracks.

One possible solution may be to look to the past. Since the 1980s, the naturalization system has essentially been a paper chase. Applicants submit required forms and supporting documents, are fingerprinted and checked for criminal histories. All of that is reviewed by naturalization examiners, who also conduct an interview with the would-be citizen.

Those examiners are civilians trained specifically for their duties (though that training has not always been appropriate). The number of cases, however, is overwhelming and backlog reduction has been a mainstay problem for the agency for many years. CIS has national security and fraud detection units, but they are sorely understaffed, have a focus on identifying macro trends vs. individual cases, and their cadre are not primarily Special Agents (Criminal Investigators) who can independently launch, pursue and complete investigations.

Until the mid 1980s, the naturalization system worked comparatively well with a fraction of the 20,000 employees the INS had when it was merged into DHS in 2003. Naturalization examiners were attorneys who were skilled interviewers and experts in immigration and nationality law. Naturalization applicants were required to bring two witnesses with them to their interviews to attest, under oath, to the applicant's good moral character. If the examiners had any suspicions about the applicant or their support witnesses, they referred the matter to the Investigations Division for inquiry. The issue of acquiring US citizenship was considered a very serious matter.

Sometimes investigations triggered by those suspicions discovered that an applicant abused their spouse or kids, habitually used drugs, had a criminal record they didn't report that didn't show up on the checks, was married to someone else and didn't claim it or was a member of a terrorist or subversive group in their home country.

Those cases resulted in denials and sometimes in larger investigations, prosecution and deportation. That changed in the mid-1980s when the agency sought to streamline the system and make it faster. The field background investigation process was essentially shelved in favor of shuffling paper and conducting record checks from a desk.

Surely the workload has increased substantially over the years, but so have resources. Perhaps even more resources are necessary, and Congress and the Administration should look at that. But, how much of this is reflective of management, or more properly mismanagement? Study after study and audit after audit always seem to say the same thing in this regard - that our immigration agencies are sorely mismanaged at the senior levels. Who is listening? You can bet al-Qaeda, the Taliban and many others are.

Arrests in Shahzad Case – Following the Money

FBI agents arrested three men Thursday as they pursued new leads in the Times Square Bombing case and conducted a number of raids across the Northeast. Media reports indicate that the arrests are focused on "cash couriers" potentially involved in the Pakistani Taliban's funding of the terrorist attempt.

The raids targeted homes and businesses in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. Warrants were executed at a Mobile gas station (Harvard Street) in Brookline, Massachusetts and a home in Watertown, Massachusetts. Additional warrants were served at Prompt Printing, a printing shop in Camden N.J.; a home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and two locations on Eastern Long Island in Suffolk County, New York.

Two of the suspects arrested were from Massachusetts and a third from Maine. All were detained on immigration violations, including one "visa overstay." CNN reports that the initial two suspects may have been "collateral" arrests, without direct knowledge or input in the attempted bombing.

The raids are part of the government's attempt to use intelligence collected from Faisal Shahzad, who has already admitted his involvement in the case as a lone bomber. Attorney General Eric Holder told a House committee hearing:

"These searches are the product of evidence that has been gathered in the investigation since the attempted Times Square bombing and do not relate to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot against the United States… I share that information just to indicate that this is an ongoing investigation and that we are actively pursuing all those who were involved in it."

While Shahzad is believed to have acted alone in trying to explode a car bomb in Times Square May 3, investigators have wondered where he got the money to travel to Pakistan, to buy materials for the bomb or buy the Nissan Pathfinder he hid it in.

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