Sharia

Egypt's longtime banned Muslim Brotherhood—the parent organization of nearly every subsequent Islamist movement, including al-Qaeda—has just won the nation's presidency, in the name of its candidate, Muhammad Morsi. That apathy reigns in the international community, when once such news would have been deemed devastating, is due to the successful efforts of subversive Muslim apologists in the West who portray the Brotherhood as "moderate Islamists"—forgetting that such a formulation is oxymoronic, since to be "Islamist," to be a supporter of draconian Sharia, is by definition to be immoderate. Obama administration officials naturally took it a step further, portraying the Brotherhood as "largely secular" and "pluralistic."

Back in the real world, evidence that the Brotherhood is just another hostile Islamist group bent on achieving world domination through any means possible is overwhelming. Here are just three examples that recently surfaced, all missed by the Western media, and all exposing the Brotherhood as hostile to "infidels" (non-Muslims) in general, hostile to the Christians in their midst (the Copts) in particular, and on record calling on Muslims to lie and cheat during elections to empower Sharia:

Anti-Infidel: At a major conference supporting Muhammad Morsi—standing on a platform with a big picture of Morsi smiling behind him and with any number of leading Brotherhood figures, including Khairat el-Shater, sitting alongside—a sheikh went on a harangue, quoting Koran 9:12, a favorite of all jihadis, and calling all those Egyptians who do not vote for Morsi—the other half of Egypt, the secularists and Copts who voted for Shafiq—"resisters of the Sharia of Allah," and "infidel leaders" whom true Muslims must "fight" and subjugate.

The video of this sheikh was shown on the talk show of Egyptian commentator Hala Sarhan, who proceeded to exclaim "This is unbelievable! How is this talk related to the campaign of Morsi?!" A guest on her show correctly elaborated: "Note his [the sheikh's] use of the word 'fight'—'fight the infidel leaders' [Koran 9:12]; this is open incitement to commit violence against anyone who disagrees with them…. how can such a radical sheikh speak such words, even as [Brotherhood leaders like] Khairat el-Shater just sits there?" Nor did the Brotherhood denounce or distance itself from this sheikh's calls to jihad.

Anti-Christian: It is precisely because of these sporadic outbursts of anti-infidel rhetoric that it is not farfetched to believe that Morsi himself, as some maintain, earlier boasted that he would "achieve the Islamic conquest (fath) of Egypt for the second time, and make all Christians convert to Islam, or else pay the jizya."

Speaking of Christians, specifically the minority Copts of Egypt, in an article titled "The Muslim Brotherhood Asks Why Christians Fear Them?!" secularist writer Khaled Montasser, examining the Brotherhood's own official documents and fatwas, shows exactly why. According to Montasser, in the Brotherhood publication "The Call [da'wa]," issue #56 published in December 1980, prominent Brotherhood figure Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah al-Khatib decreed several anti-Christian measures, including the destruction of churches and the prevention of burying unclean Christian "infidels" anywhere near Muslim graves. Once again, this view was never retracted by the Brotherhood. As Montasser concludes, "After such fatwas, Dr. Morsi and his Brotherhood colleagues ask and wonder—"Why are the Copts afraid?!"

Lying, Stealing, and Cheating to Victory: In a recent article titled "The Islamist Group's Hidden Intentions," appearing in Watani, the author Youssef Sidhom exposes a document "which carries the logos of both the Muslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party." Written by the Deputy to the Supreme Guide, Khairat el-Shater and addressed "to all the Brotherhood branches in the governorates," the memo calls on Muslims to cheat, block votes, and "resort to any method that can change the vote" to ensure that Morsi wins, which, of course, he just did—amidst many accusations of electoral fraud. El-Shater concluded his memo by saying, "You must understand, brothers, that our interest lies wherever there is the Sharia of Allah, and this can only be by preserving the [MB] group and preserving Islam."

In short, the Muslim Brotherhood has not changed; only Western opinion of it has. As it was since its founding in 1928, the group is committed to empowering and spreading Sharia law—a law that preaches hate for non-Muslim "infidels," especially Islam's historic nemesis, Christianity, and allows anything, from lying to cheating, to make Islam supreme. Now that the Brotherhood has finally achieved power, the world can prepare to see such aspects on a grand scale.

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Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

This article appeared originally on the Investigative Project on Terrorism

German authorities have launched a major crackdown on radical Islamists suspected of plotting against the state.

The move reflects mounting concern in Germany over the growing assertiveness of Salafist Muslims, who openly state that they want to establish Islamic Sharia law in the country and across Europe.

In nation-wide raids on June 14, over 1,000 German police searched about 70 Salafist homes, apartments, mosques and meeting places in seven of Germany's 16 states in search of evidence that would enable the German government to outlaw some of the dozens of Islamist groups operating in the country.

German authorities believe the Salafists, who trace their roots to Saudi Arabia, want to create a Sunni Islamic Caliphate (Islamic Empire) opposed to Western democracy; and that some within the group support martyrdom and the use of violence, and are also fuelling militancy among German's socially alienated Muslim youth.

Announcing the crackdown, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said he had banned a Salafist group called Millatu Ibrahim, based in the western city of Solingen. "The Millatu Ibrahim group works against our constitutional order," he said, "and against understanding between peoples." Among other things, Millatu Ibrahim teaches its followers to reject German law and to follow Islamic Sharia law, and that "the unbelievers are the enemy."

Friedrich also said that the raids in Bavaria, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia, among other locations, may unearth evidence that would allow outlawing two other Salafist groups, the DawaFFM and "Die Wahre Religion" [DRW, "The True Religion"].

Friedrich said a "comprehensive collection of evidence" had been seized, including cell phones, laptop computers, videos and other items. "All these things will be evaluated over the coming days, and we shall see to what extent the evidence is sufficient to ban the two organizations being investigated."

Among the homes targeted in the raids was one belonging to Ibrahim Abou-Nagie, a Palestinian-born, Rheinland-based Salafist hate preacher who runs the DRW Salafist group.

Abou-Nagie is the orchestrator behind an unprecedented nationwide campaign to distribute 25 million copies of the Koran, translated into the German language, with the goal of placing one Koran into every household in Germany, free of charge.

The mass proselytization campaign -- called Project "READ!" -- is being implemented by hundreds of Salafists in cities and towns throughout Germany, as well as in Austria and in Switzerland. More than 100 Salafist "information booths" have already been set up in dozens of German cities, particularly in the regions of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hessen and Hamburg.

In September 2011, German public prosecutors launched an investigation into Abou-Nagie after he called for violence against non-believers in videos posted on the Internet. In his sermons, Abou-Nagie glamorizes Islamic martyrdom and says that Islamic Sharia law is above the German Constitution. He outspokenly believes that music should be prohibited, that homosexuals should be executed, and that adulterers should be stoned.

Abou-Nagie has tens of thousands of followers across Germany. Among them are two German Muslim converts-turned-terror suspects trained by Abou-Nagie and recently arrested in Dover, England, after British border police searched their luggage and found a document entitled "How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom," an article from the English-language online magazine "Inspire" produced by Al-Qaida in Yemen.

In one video, Abou-Nagie tells his audience that "whoever follows the Christian Bible or the Jewish Torah instead of the Islamic Koran will go to Hell for eternity." Abou-Nagie says he sees it as his calling to save the German people from the wrath of Allah by converting them to Islam.

During the extended Christian Easter weekend from April 5-9, Abou-Nagie's Project "READ!" entered into a new phase. According to the Berlin-based newspaper Die Welt, the Salafists launched a "frontal assault" against people of other faiths and "unbelievers."

On April 7 Project "READ!" organized a nationwide campaign to distribute the Koran in 35 German cities, including Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover, Heidelberg, Konstanz, Munich and Osnabrück.

According to Die Welt, German authorities view the Koran project as a "most worrisome" recruiting campaign for radical Islam. Security analysts say the campaign is also a public-relations gimmick intended to persuade Germans that the Salafists are transparent and "citizen friendly."

In an effort to improve their image, the Salafists have removed from their "information booths" all literature about the role of women in Islam or the supremacy of Islamic Sharia law over democracy.

Moreover, the German translation of the Koran has edited out many of the verses which call on Muslims to make war on non-believers. According to the German domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the German version of the Koran is "rather non-controversial."

The BfV believes there are an estimated 29 Islamist groups active in Germany with around 35,000 members or supporters who want to establish a "Koran-state" in Germany because they believe Islamic Sharia law is a divine ordinance that is supposed to replace all other legal systems. The BfV says the Salafists, who are estimated to be about 4,000 in number, are the fastest growing Islamic group in Germany, which has a total Muslim population of 4.3 million.

German authorities have been stepping up their monitoring of Salafist groups after a series of violent clashes with police.

In May, for example, more than 500 Salafists attacked German police with bottles, clubs, stones and other weapons in the city of Bonn, to protest cartoons they said were "offensive."

The clashes erupted when around 30 supporters of a conservative political party, PRO NRW, which is opposed to the further spread of Islam in Germany, participated in a campaign rally ahead of regional elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).

Following the fights (in which 29 police officers were injured, two of them seriously), a video surfaced on the Internet by a known terrorist, the German-born Yassin Chouka, a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

In the German-language video, Chouka calls for members of PRO NRW and German media to be killed. He also urges the Salafists to move away from street confrontations, where the risk of being arrested is great, and instead to target PRO NRW members in their homes and workplaces.

In a June 8 interview with the newspaper Die Welt, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said: "Radical Salafism is like a hard drug. All of those who succumb to her become violent."

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Friedrich also said the recent Salafist attacks on German police show "that the threshold for violence has decreased in an alarming way. There can be only one answer: The government must make it clear with all the force of the law that our democracy is fortified. Salafists fight the liberal-democratic legal system and in its place want to introduce their radical ideology in Germany. But we will not let that happen. We will defend our freedom and our security with all our might."

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Though our efforts compelled the Meadows Club to back out of hosting Hizb ut-Tahrir’s anti-American, anti-democracy Khilafah Conference, the group had just enough time to find another venue. On Saturday night, just hours before the event, the Chicago Daily Herald reported that the Lexington House of Hickory Hills, Illinois, had agreed to host Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Related article: Media Reports Shut Down of Caliphate Conference

Hizb ut-Tahrir tried to stream the event online from noon to 4 PM on Sunday, June 17, along with a post-event press conference. The streaming was sporadic and had very poor audio, so at about 1:30 I called the Lexington House and asked to speak to the manager. The woman who answered confirmed that it was hosting the conference and I asked if she was aware of what Hizb ut-Tahrir is. She said that the event was booked about a week ago under a person’s name and she only learned about the group yesterday. When I asked what she thought of Hizb ut-Tahrir, she said “no comment” and hung up.

I called back, thinking that my cell phone signal may have dropped. “No. I hung up on you. I don’t have anything else to say,” she said as she again hung up on me.

At around 2 PM, I sent the Lexington House an email with a link to our article about HUT, offering one more chance for a comment and, if they wanted to, an apology or explanation. I have not heard back thus far.

Another person who called the Lexington House said the same thing happened. The woman confirmed she was the one who agreed to host the extremist group and hung up after saying, “No, I am not concerned and no, I will not talk to you anymore.”

If you wish to contact the Lexington House and let them know how you feel and, if you are a nearby resident, how it’ll affect your business with them, you can email them at info@lexingtonhousebanquets.com or call them at 708-598-4150. We suggest mentioning our well-researched article.

It was very difficult to understand what the conference speakers were saying as the streaming often failed and had poor audio, but I listened carefully and virtually the entire conference was dedicated to condemning the U.S., democracy and capitalism and telling Muslims that a war is being waged on Islam and it is being led by America. As far as I could tell, there was not a single positive thing stated about the U.S.

There was no explicit call to violence except for in defense of Muslims in Syria but it is easy to see why HUT’s ideology would trigger violent jihad. Later in the conference, a speaker said Islam must be spread non-violently, but as we reported, HUT is officially non-violent as an organization even though it has endorsed violent jihad in Muslim lands and Israel.

One of the first things I noticed when the streaming came online was how the U.S. is damned by HUT no matter what it does. The first speaker I saw slammed the U.S. for supporting the Saudi Royal Family, the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and Bashar Assad. A significant amount of time was spent portraying Assad as an ally of the U.S. even though he has been one of America’s worst enemies, even helping to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Even Iran was described as a “tool” of the U.S. during the question-and-answer period at the end.

The fact that the U.S. abandoned the Shah, overthrew Saddam Hussein, publicly called on Mubarak to resign and is demanding that Assad leave power and is backing the Syrian rebels makes absolutely no difference to HUT, who sees these actions as part of an American imperialist scheme. The U.S. is condemned if it does nothing and is condemned if it does anything.

HUT used the conference to preach that the Arab Spring, referred to by one speaker as the “Islamic Upheaval,” is an Islamist revolution to bring about Sharia-based governance that was sparked by U.S.-backed oppression. The speaker also mentioned poverty as a cause of the “Islamic Upheaval” and preached that the West’s economic troubles prove the failures of capitalism and the failure of any system not based solely on Islam as HUT sees it.

He also gleefully mentioned Islamist victories in elections in Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Palestine. HUT criticizes the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas for participating in elections but still looks kindly upon their election victories. Their extremism, including their terrorism, as far as I could tell with poor audio, was not condemned even once. On the other hand, it seemed like barely a minute went by without the U.S. being condemned.

HUT’s immediate objective is mobilizing support for the fight against Bashar Assad in Syria. The speaker discussing this topic warned that the U.S. had laid a three-part trap for the rebels based on the “Yemeni solution:” Sell out the leadership, control the rebels and betray the revolution. HUT teaches that the U.S. wants to sideline Assad but keep the current regime in place and only supports the rebels so it can control them. The speaker told the Muslim armies that they are obliged to “intervene militarily” and it is not enough to just provide humanitarian assistance.

At one point, President Obama was the subject of HUT’s ire. The speaker said that he failed on the issues of Palestine and engagement with the Muslim world, citing his collapsing approval ratings in the Arab world. He also mentioned polls showing Muslim opposition to the War on Terror and cooperation with the U.S.

A common theme was that the “so-called ‘democratic process’” is collapsing. The audience cheered when one speaker talked about the final triumph of Islam over democracy and capitalism.

The Lexington House may argue that HUT is exercising its right to free speech but in calling attention to this issue, we are using our own right to free speech to stand against the group’s ideology. And those in the area are likewise free to use their liberties as a consumer to reflect where they do and do not conduct business. 

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Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security Analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

Quietly, behind the scenes, the Muslim Brotherhood is enforcing censorship of all U.S. government training about Islam and the forces of Islamic jihad. Under the co-opted direction of National Security Council official, Quintan Wiktorowicz, key Cabinet Departments, including Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State are purging their curriculum materials of any references about Islam that their Muslim Brotherhood advisors find objectionable. In effect, the national security policy of the U.S. government is being brought into compliance with Islamic law on slander.

Under Islamic law (sharia), “slander” means “to mention anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike.” Telling the whole truth about Islamic doctrine, law and scriptures—especially the Muslim obligation to conduct warfare against non-Muslims, subjugate them and force them to live under Islamic law—would reveal the very essence of sharia Islam. For obvious reasons, it’s not the part of Islam that its Brotherhood vanguard wants Americans to know about.

It’s much easier to conquer an adversary who’s been anesthetized, cowed, infiltrated and lulled into ignorant passivity than one who’s alert and on the defensive. That, in a nutshell, is why there is a campaign called “Islamophobia,” designed and promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood to silence those who would speak truth about Islam. And it is why the Brotherhood coup that has just achieved the capitulation of the top levels of the U.S. government is so dangerous to the future of the Republic and America’s Constitutional rights.

Farah Pandith is the Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the U.S. Department of State. In that official capacity, she repeatedly has associated with groups and individuals that are known affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood and its equally jihadist off-shoot, HAMAS. In an interview with the Gulf Times at the conclusion of the May 2012 9^th U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Qatar, Pandith confirmed that it has been the policy of the Obama administration since its inception “to put the priority of engaging with one fourth of humanity [Islam] front and centre.”

“What is very clear,” she said, “is that President Obama, from the very beginning, on the steps of the Capitol, spoke very clearly in his inauguration address to Muslims and said that he wanted to begin again … to create a new opportunity to build relationships. That’s historic, that’s never happened before, that a president would use that moment to do that.”

She’s right: There’s never before been an American president who so unashamedly and deliberately has sought to empower those who’ve openly and repeatedly declared themselves the sworn enemies of this country. It will be recalled that Muhammad Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, effectively declared war on the U.S. in October 2010, about nine months before the Obama administration granted formal diplomatic recognition to the jihadist group. 

What is now unfolding across the vast bureaucracy of the U.S. government has been planned carefully over a period of years. But it is only with the Obama presidency that the deep Brotherhood penetration of U.S. national security leadership is moving unafraid into the open, at last confident of its acceptance and backing. The Brotherhood putsch to gain control over U.S. policy and training about America’s jihadist adversaries began to come into clear view with a September 2011 series of hit pieces on an obscure blog named “Danger Room” that belongs to “Wired Magazine.”

The previously unremarkable young writer, Spencer Ackerman, claimed breathlessly that the FBI was teaching material offensive to jihadis, something he (just like the Muslim Brotherhood) apparently thought was inappropriate.

The following month, on October 19, 2011, an op-ed piece, written by Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) President Salam al-Marayati, was published in the Los Angeles Times and threatened the FBI that the Muslim community would withhold cooperation against terrorism if the Justice Department (DoJ) didn’t purge its training materials “immediately.”

Justice must have gotten the message very quickly, immediately in fact, because that very afternoon, Thomas E. Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, represented the Department at a George Washington University summit in Washington, D.C. to confirm its capitulation to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In attendance to accept the surrender was Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Imam at the ADAMS (All Dulles Area Muslim Society) Center; DoJ earlier named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.

In fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared to anticipate the al-Marayati blackmail piece when he appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence earlier on October 6, 2011, to offer his mea culpa for FBI training material that, among other things, taught accurately that “Jihad is motivated by the strategic themes and drivers in Islam.”

By February 15, 2012, the FBI was announcing that it would be taking its curriculum purge and revision advice from a panel that apparently includes Muslim Brotherhood associates ISNA and MPAC (although the FBI refuses to say for sure). Under the watchful eyes of its jihadist mentors, the FBI subsequently pulled over 700 documents and 300 presentations from its training materials.   

Also in October 2011, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its Training Guidance & Best Practices for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), a term that deliberately erases any hint that Islamic terrorism derives its motivation from the doctrine, law and scriptures of Islam.

It’s no surprise that DHS Secretary Napolitano’s CVE Working Group includes the Obama administration’s favorite Imam, Mohamed Magid (of ISNA and Muslim Brotherhood association), plus Dalia Mogahed, who sports her own jihadist leanings, and one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s all-time favorite law enforcement officials, the LAPD’s Deputy Chief, Michael Downing.

In an announcement made on Oct. 25, 2011, MPAC crowed that its 2010 “Building Bridges to Strengthen America” policy paper had been cited by DHS as one of its “best practices” resources for DHS training guidelines (which predictably omits any words or references like “jihad” that would actually inform law enforcement officers about what they’re up against). It’s unlikely that DHS leadership knows what Sayyed Qutb, the Brotherhood’s foremost ideologue, said about “building bridges:”

The chasm between Islam and jahiliyyah [ignoranance] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.          – Qutb, “Milestones”

The final bastion of America’s defense against Islamic jihad and sharia, the Pentagon, fell to the enemy in April 2012, with the issuance of a letter from General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, re-issuing his earlier order that all Department of Defense (DoD) course content be scrubbed to ensure no lingering remnant of disrespect to Islam.

All U.S. military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau and Joint Staff are under Dempsey’s Muslim Brotherhood-dictated orders to ensure that henceforth no U.S. military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive (or just too informative). To all intents and purposes, DoD Secretary Leon E. Panetta likewise has acquiesced to a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of U.S. military education.

The Great Purge represents a huge victory for the jihadist enemy, who told us in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Explanatory Memorandum more than 20 yrs. ago of its plan for “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands….[i.e., our hands]”

Without the willing assistance of America’s most senior leadership figures—at DHS, DoD, DoJ, the State Department and White House—this enemy triumph could never have happened. Reversing the disastrous effects of the Great Purge before the Republic slips further under the censorship of the Muslim Brotherhood is the critical task before us now.

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Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at RadicalIslam.org and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez began her career as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A new dark age is descending across much of the Middle East as the forces of Sharia Islam, enabled by official U.S. government policy, again demand strict enforcement of Islamic law. Parliamentary elections in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia already have brought the sharia-adherent Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) to positions of unprecedented power in each legislature; elections in Libya, where an Al Qa’eda-led, NATO-assisted revolution toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, have been “postponed.”

Brotherhood leadership figures increasingly speak out frankly about their intent to implement sharia. Mohamed Mursi in Egypt openly declared his intent to enforce sharia in Egypt; Abdelilah Benkiran, Morocco’s Brotherhood Prime Minister, openly snubbed Annemie Turtelboom, the Belgian Minister of Justice, during an April 2012 visit by refusing to speak with her (because she is a woman); and, in Tunisia, the Enahda (Brotherhood) party leader, Hamadi Jbeli, talked of instituting the “Sixth Caliphate” after November 2011 elections there.

The common denominator in each of these places across North Africa is regression to an historical period in which Islamic law dominated society, destroyed individual liberty and sent women into the chattel status of a sexual object, possessed by men from birth to death. The steady progress of Muslim Brotherhood penetration into the U.S. government, legal system and society, accompanied by an increasingly oppressive official prohibition against speaking openly about Islam, jihad, or shariah should sound a warning that the same fate could befall America, too, unless the threat of sharia is acknowledged and confronted.

Women in particular stand to lose precious, hard-won legal protections whenever and wherever sharia extends its terrifying tentacles. Rights taken for granted under U.S. Constitutional law include the freedom of assembly, belief and speech. Equality before the law for all citizens is the foundation of the American system and is grounded in the belief that all people are created equal and therefore free. Inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are based on Judeo-Christian concepts of natural law.

Unfortunately, every bit of this is anathema to Islamic law. Under sharia, women are held to be inferior to men: Their testimony is worth one-half that of a man in court of law (Q 2:282); she inherits one-half what a man inherits (Q 4:11); her father has the legal right to mutilate her genitals (al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveler, Chapter o4.3), and marry her off to anyone he chooses, even if she is still a child (Q 65:4); and the husband has the Qur’anic right to beat (Q 4:34) and rape his wife (Q 2:233), marry other women (Q 4:3), acquire concubines (Q 4:3), divorce her upon a whim, take custody of the children and turn her out with no means of support.

Free people of the Judeo-Christian tradition often have trouble understanding how such things could possibly be the law under a system that presents itself as a “religion.” We are horrified that human beings, especially in the 21^st century, could treat one another like this. Yet, even a brief study of Islam and Islamic law will reveal that Islam is not merely a faith like any other of devotion to one’s deity but rather a complete “way of life” governed by an all-encompassing, smothering system of laws called “sharia.”

A creed of macho supremacism that must be imposed globally by warfare (jihad) sets Islam apart from every other faith-based belief system. Because of Islam’s command to jihad, Muslim men are called to dedicate their lives to fighting, according to the Qur’an:

Fighting is prescribed for you, and ye dislike it. But it is possible that ye dislike a thing which is good for you, and that ye love a thing which is bad for you. But God knoweth, and ye know not. (Q 2:216)

But as the intrepid Nonie Darwish (left) reminds us, women are the givers and protectors of life, which makes them an obstruction to the culture of jihad and “martyrdom” required for the forcible expansion of Islam. Falling in love and wanting to care for wives and children could tempt men to remain at home, instead of heading out to conquer kuffar (non-believers).

It is for this reason that Islamic law (sharia) is so harsh in its treatment of women: They must be controlled so that men can dedicate their lives to jihad. Offspring obviously are required for Islamic conquest to succeed, and so women are necessary to procreation, but equally must be restrained for one paramount reason—to ensure that all her offspring are her husband’s (or those of whichever jihadi captured or kidnapped her) and no one else’s. It’s also about ensuring the purity and proliferation of the bloodline because, according to Islamic law, all children born of a Muslim father are Muslim.

With this understanding of how sharia wages war not just on infidels, but on women both Muslim and non-Muslim, many of Islam’s horrific human rights abuses against women become clear. Clitoridectomies (Female Genital Mutilation or FGM) ensure women will never find (or seek) sexual fulfillment outside of submission to the desires of their Muslim masters. Suffocating, effacing, enveloping garments that obscure a woman’s face, form, hair and very identity are meant to keep other men from coveting female property that does not belong to them.

Flogging and stoning for adultery and fornication are to deter illicit sex (and illicit off-spring who just might not be Muslim). Denial of rights to initiate divorce, receive alimony or retain custody of children after divorce forces women to think twice about escaping the abusive bonds of a loveless, but Muslim, marriage. Everything about women in sharia is geared to maximizing output of Muslim off-spring and inhibiting the birth of non-Muslim children.

Recall that the 56 member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) (plus the Palestinian Authority) opted out of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights with their 1990 Cairo Declaration and have declared that according to Islam, the only human rights are those granted under sharia. These are the concepts of “the right path” now descending upon the people of Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.

These are the concepts embraced by the Muslim Brotherhood, whether in North Africa or the White House and Cabinet Departments in Washington, D.C. These are the concepts of female submission displayed to the world when American women officials abroad allow themselves to be bullied or gulled into donning the hijab. Such behavior has nothing in common with the U.S. Constitution or modern concepts of free personal expression that are embraced by millions of Muslims as well as non-Muslims the world over.

Only by reminding ourselves this Memorial Day that women as well as men have the right to live in dignity and individual liberty will the sacrifice of all who have fallen in their defense find its meaning and fulfillment.

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Clare Lopez is a senior fellow at the Clarion Fund and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. Lopez began her career as an operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Egyptians will go into voting booths on May 23-24 to choose their next president, a critical moment in the struggle between secularists and Islamists for the future of Egypt. If no single candidate gets a majority of the vote, as will probably be the case, the top two vote-getters will compete in a final contest on June 16-17. The latest polls show secular candidates taking the lead ahead of the election.

The most recent poll by the Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies shows that two secularists are in first and second place: Former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa (31.7%) (shown left) and former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq (22.6%).

Moussa's support fell by about 8% over the past week, attributable to his gaffe during a debate where he said that Iran is an Arab country. Shafiq's support grew by about 2.6%. Some of Moussa's support went to Hamdeen Sabahi, a ferociously anti-American secularist, who came in fifth place in the poll. His support grew by about 5%, bringing him to just below 12%.

However, two polls show Shafiq (right) in the lead. The Information and Decision Support Center, which is run by the government, has him at 12% and Moussa at 11%. The poll is substantiated by another one done by the Baseera Center of the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. It has Shafiq at 19.3% and Moussa at 14.6%.

Amr Moussa is the long-time frontrunner. He was a Foreign Minister under President Mubarak, an ally of the U.S. He believes that Sharia Law should only provide a loose template for governance. In his debate with Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, an Islamist, he emphasized that his rival wants to enforce Sharia rules, while he only wants to apply "general principles" of Sharia in accordance with the current Mubarak-era constitution.

Moussa is hostile to Israel but in his debate with Aboul-Fotouh, he only described it as an "adversary," while his opponent called Israel an "enemy." A cable released by Wikileaks reveals that U.S. officials feel that he downplays the threat from Iran, though he has condemned the Iranian regime's interference in internal Arab affairs. Iran condemned him after he predicted that the Arab Spring would spark a revolution against the regime.

There is less information available about the views of Shafiq, He was Prime Minister from January until March 2011 and has a long military career. Shafiq, (shown right), is courting the persecuted Coptic Christian minority, even suggesting that he'd choose a female Christian as his deputy if he wins. He has been endorsed by American Copts and the Coptic Solidarity Organization.

The secularists have benefited from a sharp fall in Islamist popularity. In February, 43% of Egyptians supported the Muslim Brotherhood, 40% supported the Salafist Nour Party and 62% felt that it is positive to have a strong Brotherhood presence in parliament. A Gallup poll in April found that the statistics fell to 26%, 30% and 47% respectively.

It is unclear if Moussa or Shafiq is the frontrunner, but several polls show them as the top two candidates. If the vote on May 23-24 reflects these polls, then Egypt will have a run-off on June 16-17 between two secularists, shutting out the Islamists from the presidency. It will be extremely interesting to see how Islamists react to that choice if that should happen.

The two major Islamist candidates, former Muslim Brotherhood official Aboul-Fotouh (shown left) and the Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, are tied for third and fourth place in the Al-Ahram poll. Morsi's support increased from 9.4% last week to 14.8%, while Aboul-Fotouh's collapsed from 24.5% to 14.6%.  Two other polls contradict these results, though. The Baseera Center poll has Aboul-Fotouh at 12.4% and Morsi in fifth place at 9%. In this poll, the Muslim Brotherhood is even behind Sabahi, who had 9.5%. The Information and Decision Center also has Aboul-Fotouh ahead.

Aboul-Fotouh argues that he is the consensus candidate that can bridge the gaps between the secularists and the Islamists. He is the most complicated candidate. He used to be a member of the al-Gamaat al-Islamiyah terrorist group but left and rejects the group. He served in the Muslim Brotherhood for a long time but was kicked out when he announced his candidacy because, at the time, the Brotherhood said it would not field a candidate.

On the positive side, he advocates some liberal Islamic viewpoints. He feels that women and Christians should be allowed to run for president. He is against punishing Muslims who leave the faith and banning pro-atheism books and alcohol. He states that the Islamic Caliphate is a stage of history that has passed and need not be revived. He also pledged to require that the Brotherhood declare its sources of financing and register as a religious organization and not a political party.

On the other hand, he called Israel an "enemy" in his debate with Moussa. His platform is based on "the application of Sharia Law as a comprehensive concept for achieving the fundamental interests of the people." He did not leave the Muslim Brotherhood because of theological differences. "I still belong to the Muslim Brotherhood school of thought," he said. He also stated, "Contrary to fear-mongering reports, the West and the Muslim Brotherhood are not enemies."

He is endorsed by the Salafist ultraconservatives and in April 2004, he justified attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Israeli soldiers because, "When a Muslim land is occupied, jihad becomes an individual duty for every man and woman, boy and girl." When asked about the 9/11 attacks, he answers, "I don't believe it was jihadists" and that "it's part of a conspiracy." He condemned the killing of Osama Bin Laden as a "gang-like political assassination" that "makes us doubt whether there is a thing as Al-Qaeda or Bin Laden to begin with."

The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, (shown right), reacted to Aboul-Fotouh's stance as a moderate by moving in a more hardline direction. At one of his rallies, a cleric named Safwat Higazy told the crowd that "We are seeing the dream of the Islamic Caliphate come true at the hands of Mohammed Morsi" and "the capital of the caliphate and the United Arab States is Jerusalem." Morsi declared at another event, "We will not accept any alternative to Sharia. The Quran is our constitution and it will always be." This rhetoric may be helping him take away some of Aboul-Fotouh's Salafist supporters. The Muslim Brotherhood also published a fatwa forbidding Muslims from voting for Moussa or Shafiq.

The voting preferences of Egyptians living outside of the country appear to strongly differ from those living inside. A preliminary count of these votes gives Aboul-Fotouh the lead, followed by Hamdeen Sabahi. Moussa and Morsi are in a close battle for third place. However, only 1.13% of eligible voters live outside of Egypt, so this shouldn't be seen as a foreshadowing of what will happen later in the week.

The presidential race has fluctuated wildly and there's a huge amount of undecided voters. The Information and Decision Support Center says that 38% have still not made up their mind. The Baseera Center puts it at 33%. Another key factor is turnout. The Islamists have a powerful political machine and turnout operation. It is encouraging to see the secularists in first and second place, but the race is far too fluid. It's still either side's game.

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Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

This article was sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

Inasmuch as the recent death of Coptic Pope Shenouda III exposed the humanity of some Muslims, it also exposed the inhumanity of Islamic teachings.

Consider some examples of Muslim sympathy following his death: Egypt’s Al Akhbar newspaper called the Pope’s burial “the funeral of the century,” reporting that a million Egyptians—likely more Muslims than Christians—came out to mourn him; “His death is a tragedy and a great loss for Egypt and its people, Muslims and Christians,” declared Egypt’s Grand Mufti; a recent episode of Al Dalil, famous for criticizing Islam, gave several more examples of Egyptian Muslims mourning and sympathizing with their Christian counterparts—including one Muslim who had tried to give his kidney to the ailing Pope.

In short, human nature took over.  Some of Egypt’s Muslims saw in Pope Shenouda a beloved national figure—much to the chagrin of Islam’s clerics, like Khaled Abdullah, who, in amazement, said, “I can’t believe it—what I saw today [the Pope’s funeral], I can’t believe it.  If a Companion [of Muhammad, among Islam’s most revered people] died we wouldn’t do this for him,” adding that Muslim participation and mourning in the funeral was “hurtful to the feelings of 80 million Muslims.”

Accordingly, Islam’s clerics rushed in, pointing out Sharia law’s teachings concerning the death of an infidel, or non-Muslim, like Pope Shenouda.  Fatwas appeared, many saying it is forbidden to offer condolences to the Copts, others saying it is permissible—but through carefully crafted words, and in the hopes of attracting Copts to Islam (reminding one of Sheikh Muhammad Hassan’s assertion that smiling to non-Muslims is permissible, but only as a way to attract them to Islam).  Salafi leader, Yassir al-Burhami, permitted minor condolences—mostly by way of tawriya, using words that console, but that have a generic or pro-Islam meaning—while insisting it is forbidden to pray for deceased infidels (since all non-Muslims are destined and deserving of hell, Koran 9: 113).

The most vicious condemnations came from Sheikh Wagdi Ghoneim, formerly a Californian mosque prayer-leader, who, a day after Pope Shenouda’s death, referred to him as an “accursed criminal” and praised Allah for his death: “Yesterday [March 17], thanks be to Allah, the head of infidelity and polytheism, this so-called Shenouda, died—may Allah be avenged on him.  He perished, and all were relieved of him—people, worshippers, trees, and animals; Egypt is relieved of him, for he initiated sectarian strife.”

While Ghoneim engaged in the usual lies and projections—saying the Pope wanted to create a Coptic state and “set Egypt ablaze”—there is no denying that Ghoneim’s position on condemning dead infidels is grounded in Islam: the remainder of the cleric’s “eulogy” is riddled with quotes from Islam’s core texts, the Koran, Hadith, and scholarly [ulema] consensus.

For instance, he quoted Caliph Omar’s famous ejaculation upon learning that a Muslim had hired a Christian scribe: “What is wrong with you—may Allah curse you?!  Have you not heard Allah’s words: ‘O you who believe: do not take the Jews and the Christians as friends and allies; they are friends and allies of each other’ [Koran 5:51]?  Why did you not employ a hanif [a Muslim]?  The man replied, “I profit from his [the Christian’s] writing, and his religion is his own affair,” to which the pious Omar rebounded, “I will not honor them, when Allah has humiliated them, nor will I be close to them, when Allah has cast them away.”

Incidentally, Omar is the same “righteous caliph” who gave the contradictory commandment to “Humiliate them [Christians] but do not wrong them”—as if humiliating people does not also “wrong” them.  (For more Islamic quotes, see this fatwa.)

All this hate is in keeping with doctrines that command Muslims to have enmity for infidels; Koran 60:4 has the famous Muslim position concerning non-Muslims: “Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us—till you believe in Allah alone.” Indeed, according to other fatwas, even cursing dead infidels, as Ghoneim the Pope, is legitimate—with the caveat that the curse should only be made public if not detrimental to Muslims (in increasingly Islamist Egypt, Ghoneim must have concluded his maledictions for the beloved leader of some 15 million Copts would have no negative repercussions for Muslims).

When it comes to how Muslims should feel about Pope Shenouda’s death, the question is, who is right—the Muslim clerics, learned in Sharia, or the many nominal Muslims?  As Wahid of Al Dalil concluded, “Inasmuch as many Egyptian Muslims were kind and sympathetic to us Christians, there is no doubt that the clerics, like Ghoneim, have Islam’s teachings on their side.”

Which leads to the great irony of Islam: while it boasts that it is the religion of fitra, of “nature,” which is why all humans are supposedly born Muslims, its teachings—from “adult breastfeeding” to “death-sex”—often contradict the most natural human impulses.  Worse, while many religions try to ennoble humanity, by making them strive to a higher level, here is yet another example of Islam forcing people downwards, to tribalism and egoism, to rancor and hatred.

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Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, he is best known for his book,  The Al Qaeda Reader .  Mr. Ibrahim's dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Egyptian parents —has provided him with unique advantages to understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets.

This article appeared originally on FrontPageMag.com