Recently Brigitte Gabriel was invited to attend a weekend meeting that included elected officials and leaders of organizations concerned about radical Islam.

During that time she had the opportunity to meet with the producers of a documentary entitled “Karachi Kids.” “Karachi Kids” chronicles how children from around the world, including Americans and Canadians, are being sent off to a Pakistani madrassa run by the Taliban, to be brainwashed and sent back to their home countries as jihadists.

The school claims that it has already “graduated” over 100 American children.

Please read the press release below and click on The Karachi Kids to view the trailer.

Then, click here to contact your Member of Congress and two U.S. Senators and ask them to support legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX).

McCaul’s bill, H.Res 1336, calls for an accounting of how many American children are in radical Islamic madrassas in Pakistan. H.Res 1336 encourages “the United States Secretary of State to work with the government of Pakistan to secure the return to the United States of all American children being educated in madrassas in Pakistan.”

(Atlanta, GA) – Imran Raza, the director and executive producer of the documentary “Karachi Kids” who discovered up to 80 American children in a Taliban-backed madrassa in Pakistan released the following statement regarding the return of two American children to Atlanta:
I am grateful for the safe return of the two American children from Atlanta from a Taliban- backed madrassa but the mullah claims to have up to 78 more in his institution. The headmaster comes to the United States once a year and personally recruits American children to enroll in his madrassa.
The remaining 78 children must be returned to the United States. This pipeline to jihad must be closed.
Let me be clear – these children do not learn math, or science, or liberal arts. They learn one thing – they memorize over the course of seven years every verse of the Koran coupled with the radical interpretation of their teachers.
This is just the first step in integrating these children back to American society. I am proud we did our part so we could say “Welcome Home.”
It is imperative that Members of Congress and the State Department undertake an accounting of just how many Americans are in the other 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan. Hundreds remain behind.

The Karachi Kids is a documentary about American children in the Jamia Binoria madrassa in Karachi Pakistan. A trailer of the film is available at www.karachikids.com.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center worked with the Simon Wiesenthal Center to draft a letter to Alan Casden, a USC trustee, about the “hadith of hate,” as it is often called. Disturbed that a call for genocide should be on the USC server, Casden contacted Provost Chrysostomos Nikias to express his concern. Nikias investigated the matter and sent Casden the following letter:

“…The passage you cited is truly despicable and I share your concerns about its being on the USC server. We did some investigations and I have ordered the passage removed.

“The passage in the Hadith that you brought to our attention violates the USC Principles of Community, and it has no place on a USC server.”

USC’s decision to remove the hadith from the school’s server marks the first time that an American university has acknowledged that the Muslim Student Association’s agenda involves the promotion of ethnic hatred. It is also the first time that an administrator has acted quickly to censure “despicable” material. Rabbi Aron Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center hailed Provost Nikias’ decision: “We commend USC for having the moral courage to stand up against those who hijack speech and religious freedoms and the goodwill of the campus community in order to spread hate and extremist violence.”

“This episode shows that fighting injustice can produce results,” Freedom Center President David Horowitz added. “It also shows what kind of an organization the Muslim Students Association is, which is why the Freedom Center has launched a nationwide campaign, Stop the Jihad on Campus Week, which will culminate the week of October 13.”

The goals of Stop the Jihad on Campus Week are to rally students across the country to sign a petition against the “hadith of hate” and to convince student governments to defund the Muslim Students Association.

For more information, please visit www.terrorismawareness.org.

The commentary below by Daniel Pipes illustrates the daunting challenge we in the West face in dealing with the threat of Islamist infiltration of our government and intelligence agencies.

If government officials are deemed as too aggressive in doing background checks of Muslims who seek such positions, they are met with the predictable cry of “discrimination” and “Islamophobia.”

If they are not aggressive or thorough enough in their background checks, radical Islamists slip through and gain access to classified intelligence information that could compromise critical anti-terrorism investigations – putting us at greater risk.

But the blame for this situation does not lie with Americans who are concerned about national security and demand exhaustive background checks of Muslims, and the “victims” are not Muslims who claim they are being discriminated against or treated unfairly.

The blame lies first with those millions of Muslims who are intent on waging jihad against us, whether through violent means or cultural subversion. The blame lies secondly with those Muslims who reflexively cry “discrimination” but do nothing to isolate or stop the Muslims intent on waging jihad.

And the victims are the American people, who, every time they have to take off their shoes to go through airport security…who every time they have to pay more for goods and services because of the increased costs due to the threat of terrorism…who every time they fear for the safety of loved ones who are traveling…are starkly reminded of the cost we are paying for this jihadist assault on our safety, security and values.

So let us never forget. We are in this war against Islamic terrorism, in all its manifestations, because Islamists have declared jihad against us. They are the aggressors, and we have every right to do what we must to protect and defend ourselves, and to do so without apology. And that includes keeping a keen and watchful eye on Muslims who seek positions in our government and intelligence agencies.

By Daniel Pipes http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.

Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-Qaeda sympathizers or operatives have sought to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.

Such a well-placed infiltrator can wreck great damage explains a former CIA chief of counterintelligence, Michael Sulick: “In the war on terrorism, intelligence has replaced the Cold War’s tanks and fighter planes as the primary weapon against an unseen enemy.” Islamist moles, he argues, “could inflict far more damage to national security than Soviet spies,” for the U.S. and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, whereas now, “our nation is at war.”

Here are some American cases of attempted infiltration since 2001 that have been made public:

• The Air Force discharged Sadeq Naji Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, when his superiors learned of his pro-Al-Qaeda statements. Ahmed subsequently became a baggage screener at Detroit’s Metro Airport, which terminated him for hiding his earlier discharge from the Air Force. He was convicted of making false statements and sentenced to eighteen months in jail.
• The Chicago Police Department fired Patricia Eng-Hussain just three days into her training on learning that her husband, Mohammad Azam Hussain, was arrested for being an active member of Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), a Pakistani terrorist group.
• The Chicago Police Department also fired Arif Sulejmanovski, a supervising janitor at its 25^th District station after it learned his name was on a federal terrorist watch list of international terrorism suspects.
• Mohammad Alavi, an engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, was arrested as he arrived on a flight from Iran, accused of taking computer access codes and software to Iran that provide details on the plant’s control rooms and plant layout. He subsequently pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property.
• Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who worked for both the FBI and CIA, pleadedguilty to charges of: fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and engaging in conspiracy to defraud the United States.
• Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist position with theEnvironmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and was deported. World Net Daily explains that “investigators suspect espionage is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as it relates to public water systems.”
• Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation.
• Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origins, was charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New York State databases, including at least one person on the FBI’s terrorist watch list.

Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Christian Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage screener because lyrics on his music CD, Terror Alert, applaud the 9/11 attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz “showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior,” according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami Al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian immigrant, former U.S. Navy commander, and special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his outlook.

Other Western countries too – Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom – have been subject to infiltration efforts. (For details, see my weblog entry, “Islamists Penetrate Western Security.”)

This record prompts one to wonder what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have banished the words “Islam” and “jihad,” seriously confront their internal threat?

Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and “Kamil Pasha” who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my 2003 statement that “There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism.”

Brigitte Gabriel’s second book They Must Be Stopped devotes an entire chapter to the Muslim Brotherhood’s project for North America. Many focus attention on beheadings, mutilations, atrocities against women and etc. While these should not be ignored, an even greater threat of radical Islam goes well beyond physical terrorism to include cultural jihad, the infiltration and subversion of our society to destroy us from within. Read M. Zuhdi Jasser’s piece to understand the reality of this threat!

M. Zuhdi Jasser (Part I of II)

While we in the West sleep, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB),       Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, is whispering in Arabic to hundreds of millions of Muslims         how to establish Islamic states. In July he wrote two extensive columns (on July         13th and July 22nd) on the subject of the Islamic state in Arabic. Some Islamist         apologists who remain ignorant of the threat of the Islamic state argue that the         ascendancy of political Islam in the Muslim world is the better of “other evils” that     could arise. Many Muslims and non-Muslims alike across the world, however,           believe that it is self-evident that the ascendancy of political Islam will remain a       significant security threat to the United States and to the West for decades to           come as it has been so obviously so for anti-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims       alike in the Middle East.

This security threat is manifold. The attempt to create “Islamic” states which derive their laws from the theological interpretations of Islam and Sharia by clerics will always give rise to variant forms of internal and transnational movements which are supremacist in their worldview and thus justify various forms of terrorism against non-Muslims. Many in the state department believe that somehow Muslims are sentenced to live under the Islamist rule and rather governments which are pluralistic and are blind to a single religion are not possible under Muslims majority governments. Many of us would beg to differ. While this may be the line which the Muslim Brotherhood would like us to accept without debate, the reality is that a plurality if not a majority of Muslims refuse to subscribe to the religio-political collectivism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the now archaic concept of the Islamic state.

Up to this point, we have done very little in the public space to expose and engage the real ideological motives of the Muslim Brotherhood. The discourse over political Islam continues to grow but without reviewing source material and their discourse in Arabic we will make little headway. Some have been doing this but real time debate among Muslims is sparse to nonexistent over the subject of political Islam.

The English discourse over issues related to political Islam by the MB is hypocritically filtered for the Western audience. One need just review the MB’s English website and compare it to their Arabic website. They are not simple translations of one another. Same organization, same ultimate mission, very different messaging for very different fronts in the same conflict. A real debate over political Islam will only occur when we engage the ideas they present to their Arabic audience, as well. The English version of their message plays a mere peripheral cosmetic  role based out of London. The Arabic version stems from deep within their soul and reflects their home base of operations. The major difference between them reflects their dissimulation and hypocrisy.  Thus, true anti-Islamist activity must center on their deeply engrained ideologies which are expressed in Arabic.

This requires a “Counter-Project” to refute and confront “the ongoing Project of the Muslim Brotherhood” and it will certainly take some time in its development. MB and current day political Islam took over a century to develop. I pray our response can be developed much more quickly. Just as the MB early on devised a plan as outlined in their project and effectuated at numerous meetings such as the 1993 Philadelphia meeting, so too should anti-Islamist Muslims begin to meet in the West and in Arabic countries and devise mechanisms of exposing and countering the ideologies of Islamist movements most notable of which is the MB. This is our mission at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

While the origins of the MB derive from the writings of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna, today’s spiritual leader of the MB remains Yusef Al-Qaradawi. He is the master of Islamist doublespeak. Yet, anyone with an iota of energy to search a few of his political commentaries will find a plethora of radical commentaries and outright militancy when speaking to Muslim and Arabic audiences. He has endorsed terrorist acts, suicide bombings against Israelis in Israel and against Americans in Iraq to name a few. He has stated in April 2001 on suicide operations that “these are not suicide operations but are heroic martyrdom operations.” He has endorsed spousal abuse, death for apostates, a forward Jihad, and the reestablishment of the Islamic Caliphate as summarized by the Investigative Project.

In English he contributes to the Qatar-based IslamOnline providing fatwas (religious opinions) read by millions of Muslims like this one permitting women to perform suicide operations in Israel. He appears regularly on AlJazeera, also out of Qatar which is viewed by over 80 million daily spewing the same vacillation between militancy and his hypocritical “Middle Way” (Wasatiya) making himself appear moderate when he is in fact a radical.

Al-Qaradawi’s site in Arabic lately seems to be trying to lay the groundwork for the latest iteration and foundations of political Islam. On July 22, 2008 he published a lead Arabic article explaining at length how the “Islamic State is in line with the essence of democracy.” And before that he also published a major piece at his website on July 13, 2008 stating that, “the Islamic state is a civil state which derives its authority from Islam.” (translation provided by AIFD)

Let’s look at these columns and begin to dissect some possible Muslim responses to his Islamist worldview. Both of his columns seem to be laying out the strategy of how to counter the secularist argument being made for freedom by some Muslims. He feigns advancement in his writing claiming to be building upon his own MB ideological forefathers in Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat Al-Islamayia in Pakistan, and his own mentor Sayyid Qutb from Egypt. Make no mistake: while some MB leadership try to marginalize Qaradawi’s influence, he is the present day “Godfather” of MB philosophy. To quote from an MB site posting of an IslamOnline article from just a few weeks ago on July 18, 2008:

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is a pure product of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement. His only activist and ideological affiliation is to the Muslim Brotherhood and he has never frankly opposed it. Al Qaradawi has been defined by the Muslim Brotherhood Movement perhaps as much it is defined by him. They have been related in all stages of his life.

And earlier in 2006 he stated, “the MB asked me to be a chairman, but I preferred to be a spiritual guide for the entire nation”

Click here to continue reading this article

by David J. Rusin
American Thinker
August 3, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1966

Persuading Western Muslim leaders to repudiate Shari’a-sanctioned violence against apostates can be a frustrating exercise, as Prince Charles discovered in 2004. Troubled by the treatment of Muslims who convert to Christianity in Islamic nations, the prince convened a summit of senior figures from both religious communities. It ended in disappointment. The Islamic representatives failed to issue a declaration condemning the practice, which the Christians had requested; they also cautioned non-Muslims not to discuss such matters in public, arguing that moderates would be more likely to make progress if the debate were kept internal.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, the outspoken Anglican prelate of Rochester, attended the meeting but rejected their advice. While continuing to highlight the perils faced by those who leave Islam in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, he now has turned his focus to the harassment of apostates in the West. Last year the bishop warned that a convert could die in Britain unless prominent Muslims affirm the right of all people to change their faith. There have been few takers, despite the dire need for this message: a poll indicates that 36% of younger British Muslims believe death to be an appropriate punishment for renouncing Islam.

Their views are grounded in Shari’a law. All major schools of Islamic jurisprudence stipulate that a sane adult male must be put to death for abandoning Islam, though varying interpretations persist on whether females should be killed or merely imprisoned. Many Islamic states outlaw apostasy and seven list it as a capital offense. However, freelancers such as angry relatives present the greatest danger to ex-Muslims, as Sunni and Shiite scholars largely agree that Shari’a empowers individuals to punish converts. This tradition has followed Muslims to the Western world.

Salman Rushdie, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and other high-profile apostates have brought needed attention to the risks that ex-Muslims encounter, even in liberal democracies. Pope Benedict XVI recently underscored the plight of this vulnerable population by baptizing the Italian journalist and former Mulsim Magdi Allam on the most public of stages: Easter Vigil mass at the Vatican. Having suffered threats for opposing Islamic fundamentalism, Allam now speculates that he will endure “another death sentence for apostasy.”

Ordinary Muslim apostates face similar fears, which were palpable when Christian converts from Islam met in Virginia four years ago at the first Muslim Background Believers Convention. One woman admitted that she had not yet told her family about embracing a new faith. “I know they’re going to disown me,” she said, “if they don’t kill me.” Another relayed that her brothers were not speaking to her because she had married an American. “Can you imagine what they would do if they found out I was a Christian?”

For other ex-Muslims, the intimidation is far more concrete. Khaled emigrated from Iraq to the Netherlands, hoping to freely practice his new religion; instead he receives death threats from Islamists. Sofia was beaten and told by her father that she deserves to die; she ultimately was thrown out of their London house. Hannah the daughter of a British imam, has changed residences forty-plus times since converting to Christianity; she went underground in 1994 when her home was attacked by a horde of men that included her father, whom she describes as “shouting through the letter box, ‘I’m going to kill you.’” In April Dutch politician Ehsan Jami announced that he is closing down his Central Committee for Ex-Muslims  after less than a year of operation because people are too scared to join.

Aiding apostates begins with acknowledging what endangers them: the prescription of death under Shari’a law. Yet Islamist lobby groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations labor to obscure the facts. During the diplomatic crisis that centered on Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity who faced capital, “We haven’t dealt with that issue.” Once media interest in the story had made silence untenable, CAIR released a statement claiming that “Islamic scholars say the original rulings on apostasy were similar to those for treasonous acts in legal systems worldwide and do not apply to an individual’s choice of religion.”

Other leading Western Muslims justify, or even promote, the punishment of apostates. For example, Syed Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, argues that freedom of religion implies the ability to be governed by one’s religious laws. From this he concludes that, in the spirit of “tolerance,” Canada must allow Muslims to discipline people who abandon the faith. He does grant that these penalties would not necessarily include death, but one may wonder whether his position is just a matter of expediency. After all, he surely recognizes that multiculturalism has its limits.

Given the prevailing climate, Bishop Nazir-Ali has called for governments to do more to protect former Muslims. However, it is clear that many officials are too swayed by political correctness to comprehend the dangers associated with leaving Islam. This sad reality is demonstrated by the case of Nissar Hussein, a British citizen and Christian convert. When he reported to police that locals had threatened to burn down his home, he says he was told to “stop being a crusader and move to another place.”

Intimidation of ex-Muslims has not succeeded in dissuading Christian missionaries from going about their usual business, even when they themselves face bullying in Islamist-heavy neighborhoods. Nazir-Ali recently stirred controversy by chiding the Church of England for its oversensitivity toward Muslims. He recommends more proselytization instead. At the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem on June 24, he observed that “just as Muslims have a right to invite others to join Islam, Christians have a right to invite others to Jesus.”

His statement reflects the thriving marketplace of religious ideas that has characterized the West for several centuries. Yet the perils suffered by Muslim apostates offer a powerful reminder that upholding such freedoms demands vigilance. How our societies respond to this challenge will help set the parameters of freedom in the twenty-first century by determining whether fundamental rights truly are guaranteed for all.

David J. Rusin <http://davidjrusin.blogspot.com/>  is a  research associate at Islamist Watch and a Philadelphia-based editor for  Pajamas Media. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University  of Pennsylvania. Please feel free to contact him at rusin@meforum.org.