View Full Version : Obama's Muslim Appointee Echoes Muslim Brotherhood
Warrior-Mentor
05-02-2009, 07:53
May 1, 2009
New Obama Administration Muslim Appointee Echoes Muslim Brotherhood Positions
The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report
Islam Online, the Internet news portal associated with global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, has interviewed Dalia Mogahed, one of two U.S. Muslims recently appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In the interview, Ms. Mogahed repeats claims often made by the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. When asked how she saw her role as “an adviser on Islam,” for example, Ms. Mogahed replied:
“I would not say I am an advisor on Islam. I would say that it is my role to convey the facts about what Muslims think and feel. I see my role as offering the voices of the silenced majority of Muslims in America and around the world to the council so that our deliberations are informed by their ideas and wisdom. I believe that I was chosen because the administration cares about what Muslims think and wants to listen.”
Positing various plots and conspiracies to “silence” U.S. Muslims is a standard tactic of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
When asked what she thought of “rising Islamphobia in America,” Ms. Mogahed chose to center her response around “racism” comparing the situation to 1956 when Americans disapproved of interracial marriages:
“Islamphobia in America is very real. Gallup finds that Muslims are among the most unfavorably viewed groups in the US and only a little over a third of Americans say they have no prejudice against Muslims. This presents a grave danger to America as a whole. The disease of racism, by definition, is a bias in judgment. This means that racism clouds sound judgment and leads people to make irrational decisions. It also divides a nation and prevents the full utilization of its intellectual and cultural resources. Racism is wasteful. Racism is a strategic disadvantage. I am very proud of the progress America has made in fighting this problem as it relates to the relationship between blacks and whites. In 1956 only 4% of Americans approved of a marriage between whites and blacks. The marriage that produced our president was illegal in Virginia when he was born. Today 80% of Americans approve of marriage between blacks and whites. Last year, Barack Obama became the first Democratic Presidential candidate in decades to carry Virginia. We are a stronger and smarter nation because of this growth. Our next growth spurt will be in ridding our society of anti-Muslim prejudice.”
A recent poll by Gallup, however, found that:
…when comparing percentage of “thriving” Muslim Americans with Muslims in other Western societies as well as those in predominantly Muslim countries, Muslim Americans are among the groups with the largest percentage of respondents who say they are thriving. (Of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, only Saudi Arabia’s population has a similarly high proportion of thriving individuals.)
It is telling that Ms. Mogahed chose to focus on U.S. “racism” directed against Muslims rather than the more balanced results presented by Gallup despite the fact that Ms. Mogahed heads the Gallup unit that carried out this poll. U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations and their leaders have consistently suggested that they would make the best U.S. “goodwill ambassadors” to the larger Muslim world yet often portray the U.S. treatment of Muslims in an unfavorable light.
Responding to another question on what advice she would give to President Obama about how to improve relations with U.S. and foreign Muslims, Mr.s. Mogahed invokes the notion of “legitimate grievances”:
“I would advise him to listen first and foremost. Many have claimed that terrorists have ‘hijacked Islam.’ I disagree. I think Islam is safe and thriving in the lives of Muslims around the world. What the terrorists have been allowed to take over are Muslim grievances. Muslim concerns over injustice have been largely dismissed by the previous administration leaving a vacuum exploited by extremists. This is a dangerous reality for all of us. Instead, the US must hear mainstream Muslim concerns even if America does not agree with their perceptions. These issues can no longer be ignored or left and the extremists to monopolize.”
As noted in a post discussing Muslim Brotherhood rhetorical tactics, defending the violence carried out by Islamist groups is part of the Brotherhood strategy:
Having staked out the positions that Islam is not violent and that Jihad is not connected with violence, the Brotherhood is left with the task of defending the violence carried out by Islamist groups. Since according to the Brotherhood these groups cannot, by definition, be motivated by Islamic ideology, there can be only one answer- they are fighting because of “legitimate grievances” and hence are “freedom fighters.”
In the interview, Ms. Mogahed describes her background as follows:
“I have been tremendously blessed, Alhamdulillah. I feel that mine is a uniquely American story. I grew up in an educated middle class home, but with no special connections or privilege. By excelling in school, I was able to attend a top university and helped pay my way by working during the summer as an engineering intern. My summer job was at a paper factory in a small Wisconsin town. I was only 19 years old. Managing technicians often reminded me that they’ve been working on the machine longer than I’ve been on Earth. Many also told me that I was the first Muslim they’d ever met. Very few women worked in the factory, so I was already a minority just as a female, but I was also the only hijab-wearing woman in the entire town and the only Muslim in the factory. All of this of course presented a challenge, but one that taught me a great deal. Once people got to know me I became a professional to them, not a woman in hijab. I took this experience with me to my permanent job after college and to my graduate work. These situations taught me that living according to your conscience was more important than comfortably conforming to your surroundings. I think this simple lesson of life is one that has helped me succeed and given me the courage to face the most difficult and daunting situations.”
However, Ms. Mogahed makes no mention of the part of her background suggesting strong ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood. Ms. Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and lived in the U.S. since the age of 5, is the daughter of Elsayed Mogahed, an Egyptian immigrant who is a former engineering scientist at the University of Wisconsin and director of the Islamic Center of Madison (ICM). The website of the ICM links mainly to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations and Souheil Ghannouchi, the President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), was ICM Imam and President for several years. The MAS is part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and closest to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood . In 2003, Ms. Mogahed was identified in 2003 as the Outreach Coordinator for the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh (ICP) whose co-founder recently lost a DOE security clearance and whose Imam will probably be deported on immigration violations.
Ms. Mogahed is currently the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies that also includes Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito and she also co-authored a book with Dr. Esposito suggesting that majority of the world’s Muslims support some form of democracy. Dr. Esposito, in turn, is a long-time supporter of the global Muslim Brotherhood , has espoused views consistent with Brotherhood doctrine, and has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations. Also part of the Gallup Center is Ahmed Younis, previously a National Director for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
Printed with permission by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.
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Curious that Ms. Mogahed decries the 'racism' directed toward Muslims. What race are Muslims? Of course, she is not the only Jihadi apologist attempting to change the dialogue and equate any criticism of Muslims as racism. It is another tactic in their attempts to silence honest discussion of Islam and its followers.
redleg99
05-02-2009, 12:32
I agree that Mogahed’s use of the word racism is probably incorrect. I think the phenomenon she is trying to describe is conflation of all Muslims with Jihadis, and the assumption that therefore Jihadis can speak for all Muslims.
I think that few Americans would believe that the Black Panther Party or the Nation of Islam speak for all African-Americans, or that adherents of the Christian Identity movement represent all Christians. And yet, there does seem to be an assumption here in the U.S. that Jihadis do speak for all Muslims.*
This belief is abetted by the fact that many pubic statements made by Muslims in the English-language news media concerning Jihadis are apologetic. While, I haven’t quite nailed down the reasons for this, the answers seem to lie certain aspects of Sunni religious tradition (the idea that Muslims are one ‘Ummah, and thus differences are plastered over), and Arab Culture (a seeming unwillingness to air dirty laundry in public.)**
However, there is some evidence that Muslims seem to be having a different conversation among themselves than the one that is apparent in the Western media. Fawaz A. Gerges’ Journey of the Jihadist highlights many disagreements among Muslims and Jihadis over violence wrought in the name of Islam.***
So why do I think any of this is important? Inevitably, how we think of our enemy will determine how we fight. If we believe that all Muslims are really Jihadis, it becomes difficult to conceive that strategies such as the Awakening movement / Tribal reconciliation / Sons of Iraq will have much effect, since we are asking Muslims to fight other Muslims.**** On the other hand, if we can see the differences among Muslims, then a strategy of separating the reconcilable from the irreconcilable seems possible, and while this isn’t the only possibility open to us, I think it makes some sense try it where we can.
* For example, see Robert Spencer’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades. Believe it or not, this was one of the first books specifically on Islam that I ever read.
** These are personal observations, but I think some support for them can be found in Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind
*** Two other potential sources for this are Faisal Devji’s Landscapes of the Jihad and John L. Esposito’s Who Speaks For Islam? I say potential, because I have only skimmed them so far.
**** As someone who was involved in a small way in one of these projects, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of the Iraqis involved would identify themselves as Muslims, and more than a few of those could be classified as devout.
Perhaps this is too nuanced for me to understand, but it appears that an adviser to the President (Dalia Mogahed) is advocating replacing our constitution with Sharia.
Obama's Muslim adviser says Sharia "misunderstood"
Yes, all that hand-chopping and stoning really isn't all that bad, if you look at it from the right perspective. Dalia Mogahed, you may recall, along with John Esposito cooked the data from a global survey of Muslim attitudes in order to increase the number of Muslim "moderates" -- classifying people as "moderate" who hate America, want to impose Sharia, and support suicide bombing. "Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood," by Andrew Gilligan and Alex Spillius in the Telegraph, October 8 (thanks to Andrew Bostom):
President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.
Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".
Here's some gender justice straight out of the Koran. The Koran likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).
The Koran also declares that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282).
It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).
It rules that a son's inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11).
Worst of all, the Koran tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them" (4:34).
It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures "shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated" (65:4).
And here is some gender justice from the Hadith:
Muhammad said: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning." -- Bukhari 4.54.460
And: "By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel's saddle." -- Ibn Majah 1854
The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.
The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.
Should an adviser to the President of the United States really have given her sanction to such a group? Apparently she has no problem with its goal:
Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.
[I]During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".
They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".
Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.
She said: "I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.
"The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.
"The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases."...
Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with "maximum criminal punishments" and "laws that... to many people seem unequal to women," but added: "Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood."
Yes, and unfortunately, the chief misunderstanders of Islam are all those Muslims who somehow keep getting the crazy idea that their religion obliges them to wage war against unbelievers. But of course Mogahed didn't mean them -- rather, she meant those irritating non-Muslims who keep noticing that all these misunderstanders of Islam keep invoking Islamic texts to justify violence and supremacism.
The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir's website.
Miss Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and moved to America at the age of five, is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. Her appointment was seen as a sign of the Obama administration's determination to reach out to the Muslim world.
She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a project which aims to scientifically sample public opinion in the Muslim world.
During this week's broadcast, she described her White House role as "to convey... to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want."
Not what America might want from Muslims -- i.e., respect for Constitutional pluralism and republican government.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/obamas-muslim-adviser-says-sharia-misunderstood.html
Link (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6274387/Obama-adviser-says-Sharia-Law-is-misunderstood.html) to article in the Telegraph.
Warrior-Mentor
10-08-2009, 23:28
Here's the actual video so you can watch for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlN6zCXX9Sk
Obama's Advisor defends Sharia Law in the video at 13:28.
You can pick up at 3:15 where the host is describing Dahlia's credentials...
which includes being co-author of a book called "Who Speaks for Islam."
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Speaks-Islam-Billion-Muslims/dp/1595620176/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255066303&sr=8-1
You'll note that her co-author, John Esposito, is a highlighted in an report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism here:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/1443/john-esposito-reputation-vs-reality
At best John is a Muslim apologist. At worst, he's an intellectual prostitute who has sold out our country and should be tried for treason.
Read the report and decide for yourself.
Thanks for posting the link to the video.
Perhaps this is too nuanced for me to understand, but it appears that an adviser to the President (Dalia Mogahed) is advocating replacing our constitution with Sharia.
Link (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6274387/Obama-adviser-says-Sharia-Law-is-misunderstood.html) to article in the Telegraph.
Who in the hell does the vetting for this man?????
Who in the hell does the vetting for this man?????
Oh, I think he knows exactly what he's doing when he picks his people.
Does Sharia Law Promote Women’s Rights? – by Cinnamon Stillwell
Posted By Cinnamon Stillwell On October 20, 2009 @ 12:13 am In FrontPage | 6 Comments
In thinking about women’s rights, sharia law, or Islamic law, doesn’t typically come to mind.
Yet, according to a survey conducted by Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst [1] of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and appointee [2] to President Obama’s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships [3], the two are closely intertwined. Her survey alleges [4] that a majority of Muslim women believe sharia law should either be the primary source or one source of legislation in their countries, while viewing Western personal freedoms as harmful to women.
The survey’s findings appear in the book, Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, co-authored by Mogahed and John Esposito, Georgetown University professor and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, named for its Saudi royal benefactor [5]. While Esposito is well-known [6] as one of the foremost academic apologists for radical Islam [7], Mogahed is making her name as a shill for sharia law. Mogahed employs the Gallup poll, which has been criticized by knowledgeable authorities as misleading [8] and unscientific [9], to portray sharia law as what Muslims women want.
She spoke last month by phone to the UK-based Islam Channel [10] women’s television program “Muslimah Dilemma [11].” Hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the Islamist organization Hizb ut Tahrir [12] (Party of Liberation), and featuring national women’s media representative for Hizb ut Tahrir, Nazreen Nawaz, the interview (view here [13]; complete transcript here [14]) presented a biased, pro-Islamist platform for discussing Muslim women’s rights. Hizb ut Tahrir’s self-described [15] objective is “to resume the Islamic way of life by establishing an Islamic State that executes the systems of Islam and carries its call to the world.”
So it was with ostensible credibility that Mogahed could utter such preposterous statements as:
…we found that the majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance whereas only a small fraction associated oppression of women with compliance with the sharia.
And:
The perception of sharia and the portrayal of sharia has been oversimplified in many cases, even among Muslims. It is usually associated with maximum criminal punishment and laws that are hard for people to understand holistically, around family law, that to many people seem unequal for women. So I think that part of the reason is that there is this perception of sharia is that sharia in not well understood and in fact, Islam as a faith is not well understood.
And, ominously:
Well, I think what my role is, is very clear to me: to convey to the advisory council and through the advisory council to the president and to other public officials what it is Muslims want.
In delivering these outlandish pronouncements, Mogahed was soft-spoken and careful to confine her commentary to the results of her study. Not so with fellow guest Nazreen Nawaz, who took up the bulk of the interview expounding didactically on the benefits to be bestowed upon humankind by the revival of a Khilafah state, or caliphate. The caliphate envisioned by Nawaz is a mythical one, hearkening back to the so-called “golden age of Islam,” where, according to the party line, all was progress and advancement [16] and everyone lived in harmony [17]. If we could only return to the halcyon days, she urged, all the considerable problems [18] of the Muslim world would be solved. As she put it: “Islam came to solve human problems.” These utopian beliefs reflect those Marxists who insist that “real communism” has not yet been implemented, Stalinism or totalitarianism is an aberration, and that the solution lies in implementing a “true” Socialist state.
Claiming that the brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the mullahs in Iran are distortions of sharia law rather than examples of its true implementation, Nawaz promised that under the proposed caliphate, rulers would be democratically elected and accountable to the people, while women’s rights would be protected.
Demonstrating the utter delusion of a fanatic, Nawaz alleged that:
We know that sharia pioneered rights for women. This idea that women have the same rights of citizenship to a man, this was unheard of in empires or civilizations of the past. And we know that Islam brought this.
Nonetheless, Nawaz conceded that “there is evidence from Islam that says the Muslim woman cannot be the ruler of a state. This is from the Islamic text,” but managed to justify this exclusion by pointing to recent Muslim women leaders such as the late Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan who, she claimed, have “brought very little in terms of the lives and the standard of living of women in these countries.”
She also defended Islam’s “strict regulations in terms of social laws” and expressed admiration for precisely those features of Islamic law that most oppress women:
…men and women cannot socialize, they cannot be alone together…in terms of lowering the gaze, all of these things, the dress code, they’re all there to insure that there’s a healthy cooperation so that men and women can focus at the job at hand.
In contrast, Nawaz condemned the West for allowing women too much personal freedom, citing the breakdown of the family and promiscuity as the results:
I think living in the West we see some of the fruits of this idea of liberty and this idea of freedom, where people are free to have any relationship they want to. I believe that it’s caused a lot of problems in the social structure, you have adultery, you have problems of teenage pregnancies….
These are indeed dire consequences, just not, as Nawaz believes, of personal liberty. Rather, they result from the dissolution of the moral framework that supports liberty itself. The struggle to maintain the family structure and women’s dignity amidst growing libertinism is alive and well in the West. But when given the choice, who would trade liberty for the opposite outcome: totalitarianism?
saudi-women-outragedSharia-compliant feminism: Dalia Mogahed claims that Islamic law protects women’s rights.
Furthermore, Nawaz demonstrated a lack of understanding about how women’s rights, and indeed human rights, have been achieved historically in the West:
Women have made a lot of progress in the West in terms of economic, political rights, education, and so on. But I would reject the claim that these values of secularism, and liberal values, and even in terms of democracy have, that they can claim victory for this progress. Because if we remember history, women actually had to fight against these values in order to secure their rights….And women even today have to fight in secular democracies against discrimination of these levels.
In the face of this vigorous defense of sharia law and strident condemnation of secular democracy, Washington insider Mogahed said not a word. Only when prompted to comment directly on one of Nawaz’s diatribes on the fictional caliphate did Mogahed finally speak, and then she restated the results of the Gallup poll in such a way as to provide backhanded support for Nawaz’s Islamist views. As she put it:
What Muslims around the world tell us they believe is that the key to progress is attachment to their spiritual and moral values. They really do see, many of them, that Islam offers a solution for their problems and they see Islam as their society’s greatest asset. When we asked people what they admired most about the Muslim world, what they tell us is their attachment to Islam, Islamic values, value of hospitality, the value of family. So I think that whereas people around the world do feel that the problems are diverse, many of them do mention Islam as a part of that solution, and when we ask people what can Muslims do to help themselves, one of the most frequent responses is for them to unify and another is for them to follow Islam and make it a greater and more authentic part of their lives.
If making Islam a “greater and more authentic part” of Muslim’s lives results in the implementation of sharia law, based not in mythology but in contemporary practice, the predictable outcome is the furtherance of backwardness, repression, intolerance, and inequality afflicting the Muslim world today. Is this really, as Mogahed would have it, what Muslims want?
More to the point, is it really what Americans, looking to President Obama’s choice of Mogahed as his advisor on Muslim affairs, want?
Now that’s a subject for a poll.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch [19], a project of the Middle East Forum [20]. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org [21].
Link (http://frontpagemag.com/2009/10/20/does-sharia-law-promote-women%E2%80%99s-rights-by-cinnamon-stillwell/)
Warrior-Mentor
10-24-2009, 19:01
White House volunteer 'misled' about talk show
Panel had members of anti-Western group under U.S. scrutiny
Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 24, 2009
A Muslim member of President Obama's faith council says she was misled about the nature of a British TV talk show on which she was recently interviewed. It was hosted by a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which the State Department has condemned for an anti-Semitic, anti-Western ideology that officials said might indirectly generate support for terrorism.
Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, did a phone interview on the Oct. 8 show. It was hosted by a member of the group, Ibtihal Bsis Ismail, and featured as another guest the group's women's media representative, Nazreen Nawaz.
Mogahed said Friday that she did not know about the affiliation of Nawaz until Nawaz was introduced on air, and only learned later about Ismail's association with Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Emancipation).
She said that she would not have agreed to the interview had she known of their affiliation beforehand and that she believed that Ismail "misled us" to score propaganda points for an ideological movement.
"I don't regret anything I said," she said. "My regret is that I went on the show."
Mogahed is one of 25 faith representatives who sit on a volunteer council that advises the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on policy issues.
[QUESTION: WHO ELSE IS ON THE COUNCIL?]
Mogahed said she thought that Gallup's public relations department booked her appearance on the show to discuss her data on Muslim women. Mogahed has directed several studies of Muslims, including an analysis of the attitudes of Muslim women in 2005, and she is the co-author of the 2009 book "Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
During the 45-minute discussion on the show "Muslimah Dilemma," which is broadcast on a small British network, Nawaz, Ismail and callers variously condemned democracy, praised sharia law and advocated the restoration of the caliphate -- government inspired by Islamic law.
Mogahed said she grew uncomfortable with the discussion and considered hanging up. "I didn't because I didn't want to create a story by doing anything dramatic. I just wanted to get through it and say what I could about my research like I had 100 times before and just never go on this show again."
On the show, Mogahed described the results of her research into the attitudes and beliefs of Muslims worldwide.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, a 55-year-old organization that started in Jerusalem and spread to 40 countries, has been under U.S. government scrutiny for years. The State Department has included it for the last decade in its worldwide report on terrorism.
In its latest annual report, "Country Reports on Terrorism," the State Department said that although it has no evidence that Hizb ut-Tahrir has committed acts of international terrorism, the group has publicly called on Muslims to travel to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight coalition forces.
Staff writer Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303136.html
LongWire
10-25-2009, 23:32
What a Shocker!!!! :rolleyes:
You play with the snake you may end up getting bit.
Who the hell appoints these clueless people? Who in their right mind thinks that sharia is blazing a trail for women's freedom?
I'm betting that if you take a few of those women out of the hive and let them speak freely, you will get a different story.
Warrior-Mentor
12-07-2009, 16:10
Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood
President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.
By Andrew Gilligan and Alex Spillius
Washington
08 Oct 2009
Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".
The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.
The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.
Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.
During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".
They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".
Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.
She said: "I think the reason so many women support Sharia is because they have a very different understanding of sharia than the common perception in Western media.
"The majority of women around the world associate gender justice, or justice for women, with sharia compliance.
"The portrayal of Sharia has been oversimplified in many cases."
Sharia in its broadest sense is a religious code for living, which decrees such matters as fasting and dressing modestly. However, it has also been interpreted as requiring the separation of men and women.
It [sharia] also includes the controversial "Hadd offences", crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft.
Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with "maximum criminal punishments" and "laws that... to many people seem unequal to women," but added: "Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood."
The video of the broadcast has now been prominently posted on the front page of Hizb ut Tahrir's website.
Miss Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and moved to America at the age of five, is the first veiled Muslim woman to serve in the White House. Her appointment was seen as a sign of the Obama administration's determination to reach out to the Muslim world.
She is also the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a project which aims to scientifically sample public opinion in the Muslim world.
During this week's broadcast, she described her White House role as "to convey... to the President and other public officials what it is Muslims want."
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said Miss Mogahed was “downplaying” Sharia Law.
“There is a reason sharia has got a bad name and it is how it has been exercised. Regrettably in the US there have been acts of injustice perpetrated against women that are driven by the Sharia-type mindset that women are objects not human beings,” she said.
She cited the example of Muzzammil Hassan, a Buffalo man who ran a cable channel aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes and was charged earlier this year with beheading his wife after she filed for divorce.
“Americans understand by example, it’s not as if we are an ignorant mass of people. Just as we don’t broad brush all Muslims, so should Dalia not downplay the serious nature of sharia law.”
SOURCE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6274387/Obama-adviser-says-Sharia-Law-is-misunderstood.html
Sunday, 18 April 2010 04:26 Steve Emerson
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Dalia Mogahed, radical Islamists' implant in the White House, is directing American policy toward Muslims and the Islamic world. It's a time of utmost worry when the White House has itself become the pleasureground from Islamists, who want nothing less than destruction of what America and the West stand for....
Few American Islamists receive the kind of glowing media coverage given to Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, who is sometimes described as the "most influential person" shaping the Obama Administration's Middle East message.
Mogahed, who claims to have played an important role in the drafting of President Obama's historic Cairo speech to the Muslim world, was appointed to serve on the President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The council released its final recommendations last month.
When European Islamist Tariq Ramadan kicked off his U.S. tour last week at Cooper Union in New York City, Mogahed and two journalists joined him for a panel discussion. Her remarks emphasized polling data showing that Muslim Americans are more affluent and socially content than their European counterparts.
Muslim Americans are no more likely to support political violence than the rest of the nation, Mogahed said. The minority of Muslim Americans who do support attacks on civilians base this position on politics, not religion.
It's a message that Mogahed attempts to drive home at every opportunity.
She routinely is depicted as a scholarly analyst monitoring public opinion on subjects like anti-Muslim prejudice in the United States or global Muslim attitudes toward America. On other occasions, she is treated as a pioneering Muslim celebrity or portrayed as a victim of anti-Muslim "smears."
But the reality is much more complicated. Mogahed is not some apolitical social scientist chronicling political trends in the manner of George Gallup, founder of the parent organization for her polling center. While Gallup strived to maintain his objectivity, Mogahed has followed a very different course. As we will explain in more detail below, she works behind the scenes with radical Islamist groups to enhance their standing in the presidential council's activities.
Mogahed is a protégé of John Esposito, executive director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin-Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and a longstanding apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood. The pair have worked together at the Gallup Center, and co-authored the book Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think in 2007, which was subsequently turned into a film. Read the State Department website's coverage of the film premiere here.
Mogahed has been a tenacious defender of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), both of which are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. During a September 2008 appearance at the Religion Newswriters Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., she was asked about links between the two organizations and Islamic radicals. Mogahed replied that it would be unfair to have those groups "disenfranchised" because of "misinformation." Without offering evidence, she claimed "there is a concerted effort to silence, you know, institution building among Muslims. And the way to do it is [to] malign these groups. And it's kind of a witch hunt."
In CAIR's case, that "witch hunt" is rooted in the halls of the same government Mogahed now advises. It is the FBI's judgment, based upon evidence admitted in court in a Hamas-financing trial, that CAIR is a Hamas front and not "an appropriate liaison partner." Those Hamas connections appear to be the focus of an ongoing grand jury investigation into CAIR.
ISNA, like CAIR, was an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial. Exhibits from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) trial showed that the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA subsidiary, paid $30,000 to senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk and his wife, along with another $30,000 to the Islamic University of Gaza, a school long known to be controlled by Hamas. Five former HLF officials were found guilty of illegally routing more than $12 million to Hamas.
When the White House announced Mogahed's appointment in April, her selection was warmly welcomed by CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad:
"Congratulations to Ms. Mogahed on this well-deserved appointment. Her knowledge and expertise will be an asset to this important council. The American Muslim community can feel confident that she will be a balanced and valuable resource on the vital issues the council must address."
Outreach to Islamists from White House
Since joining the White House council, Mogahed has worked quietly to ensure that CAIR and ISNA are active participants in its work. And she has reached out to radical Muslim groups like the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) as well.
Viewed in isolation, these efforts may seem innocuous. But that line of reasoning ignores the harm that stems from such policies, which permit radical Islamist groups to ensconce themselves as the sole representatives of the larger Muslim community – to the exclusion of Muslims with alternative views.
Zuhdi Jasser, head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), says Mogahed's collaboration with CAIR, ISNA and other like-minded groups is harmful to Muslims seeking to provide a non-radical alternative for their co-religionists.
"The damage is immeasurable," he told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Muslims "are going to say, 'Why bother?' "The government has chosen sides in the conflict."
Last May, Mogahed addressed the 34th convention of ICNA, an organization with long history of glorifying jihadist terror and radicalism. The conference was cosponsored by MAS, an organization founded as the U.S. chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has provided the ideological underpinnings for virtually all modern Islamic terrorist groups.
In early July, Mogahed worked behind the scenes before ISNA's 2009 convention to tape promotional videos for the White House faith-based initiative. She sent a letter to ISNA officials urging them to pass on "My informational letter to the Muslim American Community about the President's summer of service initiative," along with "The one pager from the White House about the initiative."
MPAC, which has a long record of engaging in hate speech and defending terrorists, posted a letter from Mogahed to Muslim "leaders" on its website urging them to participate in United We Serve by "telling the world what you've done." In September, MPAC boasted that it was invited to a Pentagon iftar (fast-breaking dinner) keynoted by Mogahed. Islamic Relief USA, a charitable organization backed by CAIR and other radical groups, boasted that Mogahed attended its community iftar along with officials from Agriculture Department, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Institute of Peace. Also in attendance were representatives of CAIR, ISNA, MAS and MPAC.
Muslimserve's final report contains on its second page an introductory message from Mogahed thanking CAIR, MPAC, ISNA and Islamic Relief among others for their work on the project.
Page three shows the logos of those groups, along with ICNA, the Muslim Students Association, Life for Relief & Development and the Mosque Foundation, a Bridgeview, Illinois mosque with a long history of support for radical Islamists.
Page four consists of a letter from President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama touting the administration's efforts to encourage volunteerism.
The remaining 48 pages consist of free publicity for these organizations – articles, charts and pictures explaining various projects carried out by these and other groups under Muslimserve's auspices. In October, Awad announced that Mogahed and Imam Siraj Wahhaj would be featured speakers at CAIR's 15th annual banquet. After a brief firestorm of controversy, Mogahed withdrew from the CAIR banquet on grounds that speaking there would violate "longstanding" Gallup policy against speaking to advocacy organizations.
Rationalizing Jihad, Covering for Islamists
When it comes to Muslims and jihad, Mogahed has two major themes: that only a small percentage of Muslims are radicalized, and that any radicalism that does exist results from perceptions that the West is "hostile" to Muslims, as demonstrated by support for Israel, the war in Iraq, or a tough stance against Iran's nuclear weapons efforts.
In her July 4, 2009 speech to the ISNA convention, Mogahed cited polling data from Who Speaks for Islam? In the book, Esposito and Mogahed claimed that just 7 percent of Muslims worldwide were "politically radicalized." In her ISNA speech, Mogahed defined this 7 percent as Muslims "who said 9/11 was completely justified..."
...Her polling found that many of the Muslims who condemned 9/11 said their moral objection was "rooted… in their religious beliefs," she said. But none of the 7 percent who said the attacks were justified "quoted the Quran to justify that view." Mogahed said "this empirical evidence completely turns on its head the common assumptions that were driving our interventions and our policies that meant to secure our country" may have "actually made things worse rather than better."
Mogahed portrayed the supporters of suicide terror as frustrated seekers of freedom and democracy who felt culturally and militarily "threatened" by the West. She said her polling data showed that those "who sympathize with terrorism don't hate our freedom; they actually want our freedom."
What distinguishes this group from other Muslims is "their sense of threat." These supporters of terror "believe more than do the mainstream that their society, their faith and their way of life is threatened, militarily threatened and in some ways even culturally threatened by the West," she continued. "They're more likely to believe that there is a war against their faith. They are also more likely to say that moving toward greater democracy will help Muslims' progress."
"Aren't you glad that Dalia is advising the President of the United States?" effused moderator Aakif Ahmad at the conclusion of Mogahed's remarks. Ahmad informed the ISNA audience that Esposito "personally" gave a copy of the book to President Obama when he spoke in Turkey and asked him to look at it prior to his June speech in Cairo.
"So, [Obama] is well aware of the information that's in this book," Ahmad said. "And that's amazing to know where we've come in the last few years."
Semantic Games and Questionable Numbers
Mogahed denies any connection between radical Islam and terrorism. Speaking to the Religion Newswriters Association in September 2008, she said that "'Islamic terrorism' is really a contradiction in terms" to mainstream Muslims "because terrorism is not Islamic by definition." As for the countless terrorist attacks that are committed in the name of Islam, Mogahed suggested that the linkage was ridiculous: "My response to that is, you know, Cuba calls itself a democracy, but that's not what we call it."
Mogahed told the journalists that the very act of mentioning jihadist violence is "counterproductive" and a "gift" to terrorists. By even raising role of Islam, she said, we permit terrorists to be seen as "legitimate" and "as moral freedom fighters."
In a 2007 speech in Aspen, Colorado, Mogahed said terrorists seek "to exploit broadly felt legitimate grievances" to win new recruits. She also appeared to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood might be a peaceful alternative to jihadists. (This idea is questionable in view of the organization's longstanding ties with the terrorist organization Hamas. Read more here and here.)
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, "wrote a very important book" criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt for "trying to make change through political means by being inside a corrupt system," Mogahed said.
She suggested the jihadists are trying "to give people hope in a non-diplomatic, nonpolitical way to change things" like forcing the United States out of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. "The only way that I think you can combat this is to empower people who are trying to make the same changes" by "nonviolent means and to show the world that this is possible."
Another recurring theme in Mogahed's narrative is that Muslims feel a profound sense of "humiliation." A "sense of humiliation" is "something felt very strongly among Muslims as a whole," she said in Aspen.
Perhaps her most controversial argument has been that the public in majority-Muslim nations around the world is no more likely to support terrorism than the American public. In her September 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed claimed that polling data shows that "in every society there's a certain percentage of people that thinks targeting civilians is a great idea."
Six percent of the U.S. population, compared with 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, and 2 percent each in Iran and Lebanon and favor "targeting civilians," Mogahed said. "So, it's not sort of a Muslim anomaly, this idea of sympathizing with terrorism. In fact, Muslims are no more likely than anyone to hold this view - in some cases, slightly less likely."
But critics say the Mogahed/Esposito data is flawed – in particular by massively undercounting the percentage of Muslims who endorse terror.
In Who Speaks for Islam? , the pair claim that approximately 91 million people, or 7 percent of Muslims worldwide (the percentage who believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified), can be referred to as "politically radicalized."
One huge problem, as Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy observed in May 2008, is that Mogahed and Esposito appear to have arrived at the 7 percent figure by understating by almost half the percentage of those who believe 9/11 was completely justified. And the pair completely ignored the additional 23.5 percent who believe 9/11 was partially justified.
When Satloff looked at their numbers more closely, he found that the percentage justifying 9/11 was closer to 36 percent, or more than 450 million people. That's about a third of the world's Muslim population.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed Muslims in the Palestinian territories and 15 countries, asking whether they viewed suicide bombings as "often or sometimes justified." The numbers varied widely - from lows of 8 percent in Egypt and 9 percent in Pakistan to 70 percent in the Palestinian territories. According to the survey, an average of 23.5 percent of Muslims supported suicide bombings in 2007.
Downplaying Brutality of Sharia
Mogahed has repeatedly sought to downplay the often brutal, coercive nature of Islamic law, or sharia. In a 2007 appearance on Link Television (an independent station based in San Francisco), Mogahed said that in virtually every country polled by Gallup, Muslims believe sharia should be "at least a source of legislation."
Interviewer Ray Suarez asked her about the fact that sharia often involves harsh punishments such as stonings, canings and cutting off hands. Mogahed replied that more Muslims associate sharia with "a more just society," "protection of human rights" and "rule of law" than with harsh punishments.
Muslims "primarily" believe sharia is "law that is going to make society more just, and that cannot be co-opted or thrown out at the whim of a despotic leader," she said.
During an October 2009 television interview in Great Britain, Mogahed joined a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) in touting the purported benefits of sharia to women. HT is an extreme fundamentalist movement that seeks to establish a global Islamic state and expresses support for terrorism.
The program host noted that "the media" raises "issues of oppression, injustice" and "second-class citizenship" regarding sharia. "Why then do you feel that so many women in your survey specifically support sharia as the source of legislation for their countries in the Muslim world?" she asked Mogahed.
Mogahed replied that many Muslim women "associate…gender justice or justice for women with sharia compliance" When the host asked why sharia barred women from becoming heads of state, Nawaz defended the ban by belittling the record of Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, who was murdered by jihadists. Mogahed failed to rebut this comment.
Mogahed later said she would not have agreed to the interview if she had been aware of Hizb ut-Tahrir's role in the program. She suggested that another member of Hizb ut-Tahrir had "misled us" to score propaganda points.
"I don't regret anything I said" on the broadcast, Mogahed stated. "My regret is that I went on the show."
Some reform-minded Muslims are troubled by Mogahed's perceived influence with President Obama. Yemeni feminist Elham Mane'a objected to the fact that in his June 5 Cairo speech, Obama stated that the United States has litigated cases "to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and punish those who would deny it."
Attributing Obama's statement to Mogahed's influence, Mane'a contended that the wearing of the hijab outside of a Muslim country is a sign of coercion rather than free expression.
Mogahed has not responded to Mane'a's concerns. But judging from her dismissive reaction to criticisms expressed by Aayan Hirsi Ali, Mogahed does not appear terribly sympathetic to women who are oppressed by Islamists.
Ali, a native of Somalia, obtained political asylum in the Netherlands and was elected to Parliament. She renounced Islam and later wrote the screenplay for Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh's film "Submission." After Van Gogh was murdered in 2004, Ali received death threats and went into hiding. She later migrated to the United States.
In her 2008 speech to the Religion Newswriters Association, Mogahed referred to Ali as "everyone's favorite pissed-off victim" and suggested she was part of a "vocal fringe" who believe that "adopting Western values will help their progress."
Link (http://www.islam-watch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=404:dalia-mogahed-the-islamists-white-house-pipeline&catid=89:other-authors&Itemid=58)