ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: Imam Rauf’s Sharia Puppets: Madeleine Albright “is now pushing [my] ideas in many places, she is in constant communication with me, and on the issue of Hamas, America should really engage with them”

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The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah 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.
Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, 263.

With all the talk about “building bridges” and Imam Rauf’s books being used for Muslim Brotherhood Dawah (proselytizing for Islam), it would be good to take a look at how they understand the bridges they build.

Building on the revelations exposed in the new audio posted at Atlas Monday morning, now comes new exclusive audio of the very connected, very influential stealth Imam radical Rauf.

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9/11 was a watershed, was a major milestone, and a major catalytic
force in, in catalyzing the attention towards the issue of Islam, it’s
presence in the West, and it brought into much greater prominence our
work and the importance of our work. Imam Rauf


No we’ve created a different concept a different model, Mark. I’m the
head coach of this strategic initiative, and the President of the United
States, or the President of Malaysia, or the President of England, is
like a player you want to bring in for particular plays< Imam Rauf

So if we have strategic action plays, designed plays, in the area of
foreign policy, in the area of healing the divide, and then you unpack
and give up  Israel, and then what do you do, what are the specific
actions that you might do, because things are always moving, things are
always happening.
Imam Rauf

My blood ran cold listening to this latest audio of Imam Rauf. It is the stealth jihad, open warfare in the information battlespace, in action on a global scale. Chilling. Civilizational jihad, stealth.

Back in March 2009, I warned Atlas readers of Obama’s implementation of the here and here and here and here. Read the document here: US MUSLIM ENGAGEMENT“Changing the Course”. This is a charter, a large-scale effort by the US government to open areas of cooperation (dhimmitude) with the Islamic world in the political, cultural and economic spheres.

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project – Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Madeleine Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC; former U.S. Secretary of State ….. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is Chairman of the Cordoba Initiative,

Madeleine Albright heads the Leadership Group of the US Muslim Engagement along with Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan.

What does it mean? In real terms?  Finally, we get a peak behind the curtain. We can see, in the concrete, the left’s coalition with the Islamic Supremacists and how it is undermining American sovereignty and our national self interest — as is meticulously documented in my book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America. It’s hard for Americans to understand how to fight a shadowy enemy you can’t see.

Here it is evidenced in this post radio interview exchange with Imam Rauf from June 2006, A World of Possibilities. What follows is talk of a Machiavellian backroom power grab and the takedown of American sovereignty by Rauf’s sharia puppets in positions of enormous power. He refers to these heads of state and cabinet ministers as his “players” in a global game of …………..football.


Imam albright

Here is the interesting exchange between the interviewer and Rauf:

Imam Rauf: Thank you very much Mark, it’s my honor that you’ve had me

Interviewer:  So good luck in your work and please keep in touch with our producer if there are more things you would like to bring to our attention

Imam Rauf; I would certainly would love that, I mean are we offline now.

– Sure, the interview is over

 Imam Rauf: Okay good, I mean things have been done for example, I didn’t want to say it on your show but, you know with for example Madeleine Albright’s book when she approached me last fall and she said I’d like you to review the Islam section for any corrections and we did that and she invited me to write a blurb for her book and she is now pushing these ideas in many places, she is in constant communication with me, or continual communication with me about certain things, we have been in touch with her, with Karen Hughes, and the issue of Hamas, and how America should really engage with them and not just push them out of the picture, but bring them, make them responsible for creating positive change because if you don’t do that, you know we’ve even mapped out, what the downside would be if they didn’t do that, because you push Hamas out, and you force them into the arms of the Syrians and the Iranians, and they will be a proxy for Iran and the region, you’re creating more of a mess!

– So we’ve tried to unpack for them the chessboard or it’s like you know when football coaches when they create these circles and lines and so forth so you can see what’s happening very often we, people don’t think of the situation in a dynamic way, they tend to think of it statically.

– You don’t realize when you do something, you create a web of reactions, to your action, and with the United States you create a multi, the reaction even multiply more. You know, if you are a third rate country, or a third rate power, you’re not going to create much of a ripple. But when the United States does something there is an enormous ripple effect.

Mark Sommer: You are likening it to chess, I often feel that while much of the world plays chess, a diplomatic version of chess, the United States plays checkers.

Imam Rauf:  That’s why I use the imagery of football. Cause football is like chess in motion. You see the nice thing about football is that, is that football is a very good analogy of what is happening in the world. It is strategy in motion, and you have plays, you know you have to design your plays, and you have to design your plays knowing that the other side is not going to be passive. While you’re throwing the ball, they will try to make you fumble the ball, they will try to catch the ball from you, in fact they will try to prevent you. So part of achieving your objective is you have to be strategic, you have to do all the requisite blocking, and tackling, because there are vested interests, who are vested against your success.

– One of the things you have to do in strategic thinking is think 6 moves down the line, and many directions at once because it is such a multi-dimensional world.

– Preciously, in other words the analogy with American football is that your defense team, your offense team, and kick off team, are all on the field simultaneously.
– Uhhuh

– Its not like one team is on the field and the other team is off. They are all on the field, and the field has many sectors to it. And there are different geographies, different subject areas, so we have designed our Cordoba Initiative to be designed, in order words we have 5 major areas of our program. So we have foreign policy, is one area, you have communications is another area, you have education as the third area, for example, you have intra-Islamic issues is the fourth area, arts and culture is the fifth area. And lets say this Abrahamic pathwalk may be in the arts and culture, a blend of the arts and culture and you know maybe the religious aspect in some respect, but it’s kind of an interfaith type of activity. Now in the area of foreign policy, you have different issues, number one is the Palestinian conflict, cause if you heal that, you will have contributed a lot. If the entertainment media, the news media, was broadcasted in print, describe and speak about the issues in a different way it can help change perceptions profoundly, because it’s the media, which helps shape perceptions to a great degree. So if we have strategic action plays, designed plays, in the area of foreign policy, in the area of healing the divide, and then you unpack and give up  Israel, and then what do you do, what are the specific actions that you might do, because things are always moving, things are always happening, so you have to analyze the situation constantly, and you have to have your just like you have your offense coach, defensive coaching staff, and you have your head coach and so forth, we think of ourselves as an analogy of that. We had to have our head coaching staff, we had to have our foreign policy head coach, our Palestinian head coach etcetera, and then you design plays for that

Interestingly enough it doesn’t mean that the head coach is necessarily the President, because, of whatever country, or Prime Minister, because they may not be, they may still be, trapped by various constraints in an old game.


– No we’ve created a different concept a different model, Mark. I’m the head coach of this strategic initiative, and the President of the United States, or the President of Malaysia, or the President of England, is like a player you want to bring in for particular plays.

– They are members of the team that you want to bring in, because if we are looking at it exactly like American football, you want to gain yardage, so you just want to keep scoring first downs. So what’s the first down that we can score based upon where we are on the field, where would we like to be, what’s realistic, what can we obtain? Can we obtain 3 yards, can we obtain 10 yards, can we obtain 7 yards? Let’s try and get those 7 yards. And whom do you need to bring for that? So the the name of the game then becomes, how do you move the ball forward, and who are players you can bring in to help move that ball forward on a particular issue, at a particular moment in time.
– But the irony is that in this case, you don’t really have, I mean the other team, who’s the other team? Because if fundamentally you’re trying to bring people together, so who’s the enemy there? 1-3-15

– There are interests one has to make sure do not push back. You have to make sure you have enough power on your side to be able to push the ball forward.

– Right, but at the same time as you’ve written elsewhere, “peace requires the cooperation of your enemy,” so in a certain sense to move the ball forward, in this case, is rather paradoxical, it’s not a linear strategy. It’s actually…

– Yeah, but let me give you a very specific for instance, one very specific example is that we need to move forward on the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations process,for a finalization of borders. Now, Ehud Olmert has been pushing the notion of unilateral designation of borders by Israel. In November, of the last election he didn’t win completely, he had to develop the coalition government with other people. As of a month ago, our Palestinian expert, who is very tied into Abu Mazen and Saeb Erekat and those people told me that Saeb Erekat who is a lead negotiator on the Palestinian side, has gotten the commitment of 35 members of the Knesset, that the negotiation process should be bilateral not unilateral. Okay, that’s an important strategic thing, so to get people of the Knesset in agreement with you on certain issues, are critical for certain aspects and certain specific intermediate milestones which are important towards that particular milestone. That’s an example of being strategic, and using people who are sympathetic to your position, who have the traction and capability to bring about that particular end result that you want at this point in time on the particular issue, which is a stepping-stone to the next stepping-stone of that issue. Sounds complicated, but I think you get the idea

Mark Sommer: No, I understand, you know I wanted to ask you I did say this is off the record, and we’ll keep it all off the record if you wish. But the analogy to football is probably a useful one for a lay audience, and I wondered whether you’d allow us to use some of that

Imam Rauf: Yes, I would, because I use it all the time. Look did I use, did I use, did I say anything right now that is potentially off the record?

Mark Sommer:  Well I wouldn’t use anything I suppose about Madeleine Albright

– Yeah that part would be talking out of, I can say this in private to you
– Yes

– Um, and the fact that, I think there is a blurb by me in the back of her book. So, and she herself has publicly stated that she has benefited by her conversation with me, and Rabbi …oh my god, that’s so embarrassing, Rabbi uh…Saperstein,
– Oh yeah. David Saperstein

– David Saperstein and others from the Christian tradition as well, in helping her understand the importance of the role of religion. I mean look, we supported a Jewish state in the Middle East, why not support an Islamic State? But give it a meaning, which you can live with.

– Yeah within the parameters of an acceptance of other …

– Right, and this purpose exists, because they are part of our … In Islamic theology, in Islamic jurisprudence, those norms exist. You just have to extract them, and put them on the table, and say these are the valid reasons. I don’t want a demographic Islamic state, a demographic Islamic state is not part of tradition, never was, until recently. Until the mid 20th century, we were very pluralistic societies. Egypt had 4… Alexandria had 400,000 Greeks, it was a Greek town. Until 1923-24 vast tracks, of what is today modern Turkey, were Greek. Neighborhoods were Greek areas. Izmir, which is ancient Smyrna, was a Greek town. Cappadocia has large sections of Greek communities. What happened with the rise of the nation state idea, was virtually this geography had to be homogeneous. Now, that’s not apart of our assigned tradition of theology, not our tradition, not our theology, not our jurisprudence. What happened was, the 20th century, we bought into the nation state idea, we created the notion of demographic nation states. We had to be of one type, so you had massive movements, and a lot of killings between people, with the creation of the Otto-Turkish state, you had Greek-Turkish conflict existing before Israel and all of that, where as before they were all living together.

Here he says “I don’t want a demographic Islamic state” — it’s clear that he DOES want an Islamic state. And that he doesn’t have to have a Muslim majority to have one here. It’s stealth jihad.

More extreme “moderation” from Imam Rauf on what he thought when he heard the news of the attack on twin towers on 911:

Imam Rauf: …this may have been a result of what turned out to be the, the um, many decades of rising hostility between and tension between the West and the Islamic World, particularly on certain political issues and geopolitical issues.

Question: Did you find that uh, 9-1-1 dramatically shifted your efforts? Did it make them go more difficult, but also more important than ever from the point of view of, not only of, uh your own community but of the broader society.

Imam Rauf: No doubt, I mean 9/11 was a watershed, was a major milestone, and a major catalytic force in, in catalyzing the attention towards the issue of Islam, it’s presence in the West, and it brought into much greater prominence our work and the importance of our work. Initially after 9/11, you know like many Muslims, we were invited to speak at countless temples, houses of worship, synagogues,churches as well as institutions, academic, even companies who were interesting in learning about it

[…]

Question: It seems like at least initially, after September 11th, you and the American Muslim community were treated with a full amount of respect, and curiosity, rather than with contempt or suspicion. Is that right?

Imam Rauf: I think both, there were certainly an amount of suspicion and amount of fear, which has resulted in certain actions like the Patriot Act, which some of us believe, not only the Muslim community, but also the Non-Muslim community, has resulted in a certain degree of an erosion of what we might call, our right of respect of freedoms. Um, but there has also been simultaneous with that, the recognition of a need to pay adequate attention in various ways. For example, in the area of foreign policy, as the result of our work and explaining our ideas and thoughts to, in certain circles, for example, I was at an Aspen institute discussion a couple of summers ago, in which I pointed out the fact that U.S., our understanding of church state separation which results in our refusing to either factor or think about religion on our radar screen, results in an insufficiency in terms of developing coherency of our policy visa vie countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, being a broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if we do not factor the role of religion, understand it’s importance, in helping us shape our foreign policy. Now, Madeleine Albright was there, and as a result of that she took many of these ideas to heart, and it was a fact in (participating) in her latest book, The Mighty the Almighty, in which she recognizes the fact that the U.S. foreign policy by ignoring the role of religion was a mistake.

Click below for full transcript (I have the full audio):

A World of Possibilities

Interview Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,
Author of What’s Right with Islam : A New Vision for Muslims and the
West, Imam whose mosque is only 12 blocks from the World Trade Center
site

Mark Sommer:
Imam Rauf you have been, um you, you have run a mosque in New York City
just 12 blocks from the World Trade Center. Were you there, at the
mosque, at the time that the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001?

Imam Rauf: No I was actually on my way back from conducting my daughter’s wedding just outside Denver in Golden, Colorado.
– I see

– And, I couldn’t. I was shocked to hear that the flights were cancelled
and we, we saw the events unfolding on television, from our place in
Denver.

Mark Sommer: What were your first responses to the events, as you saw them unfold?

Imam Rauf: The first response was one of shock. I mean, shock and
surprise. And you know one made sort of, one brain synapses made
connections with that famous film about the fire and the, you know, the
um World Trade Center, and wondering about the, how life was depicting
fiction here, um and at the same time very rapidly thereafter the
following days, wondering who was behind it, and what it is all about,
and having an uncomfortable sense that this may have been a result of
what turned out to be the, the um, many decades of rising hostility
between and tension between the West and the Islamic World, particularly
on certain political issues and geopolitical issues.

Sommers:
:So when you saw that occur, did it immediately come to mind that this
probably was something that came from disaffected Muslims in some part
of the world?

Rauf: Oh, that was not the primary thing on my mind, although it
was certainly a possibility. I was hoping that, that would not be the
case. Uh, you know we’ve had, a couple of years before we had the
Timothy McVeigh incident in Oklahoma, and we, um we did not know at that
point, and we really would have loved it not to be any from the Muslim
source, and we were hoping that it wouldn’t be from a Muslim source.

Sommer: And when you returned to New York, um what was the scene
like for you, being just four blocks away, you must have been in some
degree involved in the aftermath

Imam Rauf: Well, uh for the first few weeks thereafter, the first two weeks you couldn’t even
approach. They had I think everything south of 14th street had been
cornered off and since I live in New Jersey we couldn’t actually come to
the mosque until I think three weeks later, which was the first time I
was able to approach the mosque. And we were, we were certainly happily
surprised by, over the period of time, by the enormous support we got
from friends and neighbors in the community, who were very much aware of
our outreach and our inter-faith activities and were very supportive of
us and concerned that we would not be targeted by any unwarranted
action on a reactive basis towards us as members of the Islamic
community

Sommer: So, you had been involved in bridge building efforts between American Muslim and Non-Muslim Americans for many years?

Rauf:  Oh yes, I mean for decades, I mean my father was very
active in inter-faith activity from the time he came here in the mid
60’s. At that time the word interfaith wasn’t used it was ecumenical
activity and was the terminology used but substantively in terms of
substantive inter-faith activity my father was involved in this and I
have continued that work and tried to reshape and to identify the
important issues facing the Muslim community as we are evolving from an
immigrant community. 2/3rds of the American Islamic demographic is um is
immigrants. And as we are shifting from an immigrant society towards an
American society, trying to frame the questions surrounding the
evolution of an American Islamic presence, not only sociologically but
in terms of Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic thinking, in terms of Islamic
institutions for many decades, now for almost four decades practically,
being very actively involved in doing that and certainly in interfaith
and outreach to other faith community as well. Um, has been a major part
of our work.

Sommer:  Did you find that uh, 9-1-1 dramatically shifted your
efforts? Did it make them go more difficult, but also more important
than ever from the point of view of, not only of, uh your own community
but of the broader society.

Rauf: No doubt, I mean 9/11 was a watershed, was a major
milestone, and a major catalytic force in, in catalyzing the attention
towards the issue of Islam, it’s presence in the West, and it brought
into much greater prominence our work and the importance of our work.
Initially after 9/11, you know like many Muslims, we were invited to
speak at countless temples, houses of worship, synagogues, churches as
well as institutions, academic, even companies who were interesting in
learning about it. And in the process of that, we answered many many
questions but were also approached by people from the other faith
communities as to what could be done. There was a recognition, that this
is an issue that has a history, and that we needed to understand the
history that has brought us to where we are today, and then how do we
move forward, and out of the invitations that I received and the
requests that we received from people as to what can be done
collectively, I founded the Cordoba Initiative in 2002. It took us a
year to design what we thought would be the formula, the algorithm that
would really achieve traction in healing the divide between the United
States and the Islamic world, and with plenty of time frame, so we’ve
given ourselves until the year 2015, at the outside to bring about what
we would call a tipping point in the relationship between the United
States and the Islamic World on all the various fronts, frontier,
boundary lines, where the West in general and the Islamic World in
general intersect. By boundary lines I mean the, there are foreign
policy issues which are a major factor of shaping perceptions in an
exacerbating way that has exacerbated the relationship between the
United States and the Islamic World and the issues of media,
communications. There are issues of education and there are also some,
um considering those 3 broad areas, areas in which work needs to be done
to reframe the way we look at these questions and the way we think
about them has been an important part of our work.

Sommer:  It seems like at least initially, after September 11th,
you and the American Muslim community were treated with a full amount of
respect, and curiosity, rather than with contempt or suspicion. Is that
right?

Rauf: I think both, there were certainly an amount of suspicion
and amount of fear, which has resulted in certain actions like the
Patriot Act, which some of us believe, not only the Muslim community,
but also the Non-Muslim community, has resulted in a certain degree of
an erosion of what we might call, our right of respect of freedoms. Um,
but there has also been simultaneous with that, the recognition of a
need to pay adequate attention in various ways. For example, in the area
of foreign policy, as the result of our work and explaining our ideas
and thoughts to, in certain circles, for example, I was at an Aspen
institute discussion a couple of summers ago, in which I pointed out the
fact that U.S., our understanding of church state separation which
results in our refusing to either factor or think about religion on our
radar screen, results in an insufficiency in terms of developing
coherency of our policy visa vie countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan,
Iran, being a broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if we do not
factor the role of religion, understand it’s importance, in helping us
shape our foreign policy. Now, Madeline Albright was there, and as a
result of that she took many of these ideas to heart, and it was a fact
in (participating) in her latest book, The Mighty the Almighty, in which
she recognizing the fact that the U.S. foreign policy in ignoring
religion was a mistake.
10:18

Sommer: You have written in a new book that you call, What’s
Right With Islam, which indicates I would imagine, that you think that
many people have been saying what’s wrong with Islam, why do they hate
us so much sort of question. But you see in the book, the ______ to
substantively an Islamic country, what do you mean by that.

Rauf:  What I mean by that is that the foundational societal
contract, it seems that the existential world view on which the American
Declaration of Independence is based is something which is
fundamentally Islamic and more broadly Abrahamic. I speak about a theme
of what the Abrahamic faith religions did, what was novel about the
Abrahamic faith religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which share
the fundamental, two fundamental components of loving God, and loving
thy neighbor, which means developing the best relationship with our
creator and developing the best relationship with our fellow human
beings, based upon the concept of the equality of the human race. There
is, and based upon the monotheistic idea, the principal, that the
creator is only one, was what differentiated the Abrahamic ethic and
their religions, from the rest of the religious spectrum. In the other
religious traditions, pre-Islamic, uh pre-Abrahamically or the other
faiths traditions of the Far East and so forth, there was a sense of a
different class structure, whether it’s a royal class or a priestly
class, a merchant class, there were classes. And human beings were
locked into their particular, what they were born into. Whether you were
in the priestly class, the untouchable class, etcetera. But the
Abrahamic ethic is one which fundamentally _______ the idea that all
human beings are created equal, and we say this in our declaration. We
hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal.
Endowed by the creator with certain unalienable rights. They are
unalienable because they inhere in the nature of being human. Because
they are given to us by the creator, not by the Constitution, like the
French Constitution which grants its citizens rights. Our rights are
given to us by the creator. They cannot be taken away from us, by any
human agency, any government agency. Among which are the rights of to
life, liberty, property, and then property was edited by Jefferson’s
pursuit of happiness. Well that particular existential worldview point
is fundamentally an Islamic view point. The notion that we have rights
given to us by the creator, that there are, that we, and then the
Declaration goes on to speak about the laws of nature, and of nature’s
God. All of Islamic Law, what we call The Shariya, is based upon, all
the laws of the Shariya, are intended to further… to protect and for the
five matter objectives of the law. This was written 5 centuries or more
before Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence. And these 5
matters objectives of Islamic law, are the protection and furtherance of
the right to life, religion, to property, to family, and to the
intellect. And we can see here, residences already between life and
property are like specifically the rights to be enjoyed and protected in
both world view points, and one can argue, uh the fact that religion,
family, and pursuance of intellectual expansion and so forth, is part of
the pursuit of happiness. So we can see residences here between the
fundamental core viewpoint and values of the Declaration of Independence
and the Islamic worldview.

Sommer; At the same time, you’ve written that America has
historically acted in a way that gives a strong impression that it seeks
to deprive Muslims of their unalienable right.

Rauf: Correct

Sommer: Well. Um, in other words, there is a certain shared
almost sacred sense of commitment to unalienable rights. But in practice
you say American policy was, has been to deny these unalienable rights
in the case of Muslims.

Rauf: Yes, in fact this is, up until World War II, America was
very popular in the Muslim world. In fact, many countries in the Arab
Muslim world, had developed in the first half of the 20th century,
movements towards democracy. In fact, in Egypt, which is the country of
my parentage, my parents were Egyptian and I was born and raised over
seas, um the first initial movement to establish a political party and
move towards democratic lines began in the late 19th century, and
evolved through the beginning half of the 20th century. We had the Wafd
Party, which was quite active in the mid, nineteen, nineteen teens, you
know, through the 1940’s until Abdel Nasser came and just outlawed all
political parties. And established the dictatorship basically. Um, so
what has happened is the, the Cold War, after the end of World War II,
the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as the two global
super powers, and the conflict, the Cold War basically reframed the
geopolitical scene. And both the United States and the Soviet Union
through much of the Cold War period preferred to have strong armed
dictators in many countries of the world, the third world, and um, and
actually worked towards that end. So the um, the coup that was conducted
in Iran, for instance, like Mosaddegh in 1953, which was instigated by
the British and the CIA, and the Americans actually cooperated in that
event to bring about the Shah, resulted in, in a reversal of the
democratic process in Iran and the United States was not really very
proactive in encouraging democratic, the principles of democracy and the
unground culture for democracy which the people themselves wanted in
much of the Islamic world. Now into the point, when Islamic parties have
won, like Hamas for instance, is the latest example, and the previous
one was in Algeria in the early 1990’s where a legitimate election was
held and the party came to power rather than engaging with them and
holding them responsible for delivering life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness, which the people want, and ensuring that the process would
take route, the West actually elected to push them out of power, which
created the perception in the Arab Muslim world, that while the United
States speaks about democracy, they do not really support it.

Sommer:  So, um, and since 9-1-1 has that sense of estrangement
from American policy, not American values, but American policy
intensified in the Muslim world?

Rauf:  It still is there, in fact, uh just this last February I
was at the Brookings Institution, has been having an annual conference,
for the last 3-4 years now in Delhi, hosted by the Brookings
Institution, and a number of the people who are Democratic activists in
the Arab World were there, and ___ Ibrahim who is a well known figure in
Egypt and actually well known even in the United States, among those
who are actively involved in the those issues said that you know the
thing that most Democratic activists in the Arab world fear about the
United States is the betrayal of the United States towards the
Democratic Activists. So the concern, is still there that you know U.S.
foreign policy, might give lip service to Democratic movements, but does
not really uh committed to that direction.

Sommer: And do you think this carries over from one American
administration to another, in the sense, so that it is really not to be
depended upon, as an ally in democratizing the Arab world?

Rauf: Well, I think that there is a sense of ambivalence at this
point and time. I think that going back a couple of years, this Bush
administration post 9/11 became rather proactively activist in trying to
promote democracy but there’s a sense that perception that interests
have triumphed that. That geopolitical interests, economic interests,
which tend to prefer stability and are concerned about the, the chaos
which may come about from pushing democracy may have resulted in a
revisiting of that thinking on the part of this administration. However,
having said that, the concern, the perception which many of us who are
knowledgeable about the region and about the aspirations of the United
States in terms of reshaping a New World Order in that region is that
they went about it the wrong way. And if you want to bring about change,
and you want to bring about change in a positive way, one has to be
strategic about it, one has to frame the issues in a way that people in
the region can accept and swallow and can act upon at any given point in
time. Um, and the perceptions is that the United States have not been
as strategic as they possible could have been. And I think that’s the
weak link in the chain that we’ll need to strengthen that link, I think
the movement to democratize the region can actually get some better
traction.

Sommer:  You said that the unfinished business of America and of the
Muslim world, are two sides of the same coin, and that the unfinished
business of the United States is religious and the unfinished business
of the Muslim world is how to introduce democratic capitalism in the
constitutional framework. Can you explain that statement

Rauf: Oh sure, if you look at what happened in Europe, the
Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and all of that was kick started in
Europe, as a result of Europe escaping the clutches of the church and of
religious dogma, and the notion, and the introduction of the concept of
secularism as it was articulated in the Western world. That
understanding of secular…wait let me just say another thing, that’s the
experience of the West and particularly Europe. Now the experience of
the Islamic world is that our enlightenment literally peaked between the
years 800-1200 of the common era, were really kick started as a result
of religion and of Islam. Now Islam was the factor, which resulted in
our glorious civilization so to speak. So the rise of reason, and the
application of reason in the pursuit of secular knowledge was very much a
religious mandate. When the prophet, in some of his teachings, he urged
his followers to seek knowledge even if you go as far as China. Seek
knowledge from the cradle to the grave. The ink of the martyr is holier
than the … The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the
martyr: are among the prophets teachings. So Islamic scholars
interpreted these teachings to mean not only to underline the importance
and preciousness of knowledge which is why the intellect is one of the
five objectives, but also they interpreted the prophets teachings to
seek knowledge, even if your in China, as not meaning you know religious
knowledge, you know knowledge of the interpretation of the Qur’an, and
his teachings and Arabic grammar, but rather to learn what we call
secular knowledge, math, geography, science, astrology, and so forth.
And a result of that was that the notion of pursuing secular knowledge
in and of its own right in accordance with its own principles in the
development of the scientific method was something, which the Muslims
did. So the Muslim experience of civilization embraced within it the
concept of secularism understood that way in terms of the scientific
method and so forth. So the, what people regard today as the conflict
between seculars and the religion is not really a coherent metaphysical
conflict It really comes out of the experience, the historical
experience, of each side. And less to do with the real substantive issue
of the issues involved. Now, the United States, what the United States
did, interestingly enough in crafting its Constitution, in crafting its
Declaration of Independence, costly or not, it actually took from both
sides. What the United States did was, it took the, it regarded itself
as inheriting from Europe important aspects of the Enlightenment, and
what we did in the United States was we developed a societal contract
which embodied aspects of the Islamic principle, a nation of under God,
the belief in a creator as part of our foundational principles. It took
the values of Christianity, Islam and Judaism stripped it of its
liturgical investments, took its ethical principles, it took the mandate
of the second commandment in a certain sense and developed a
governmental construct. So the United States has a very interesting, did
a very interesting thing. It created a society where all religions
could thrive, it endorsed the notion of religiosity and of religion, but
ensured that the powers of the state would not be utilized to further
any particular ideology. Um, and this is what is important to the United
States. Now, in the process the United States also developed the notion
of democracy that way, the notion of the separation of powers, it
developed a notion of what we would call democratic capitalism, which to
me, in fact one of the points that I mention in my book, is that in my
opinion, is really an extension, of the corporate concept, the notion of
the corporation, which really, what happened was, America established a
country on the basis of a corporation, and in a corporation you have
shareholders who own a corporation, you have a president, a vice
president, you have the people who run the company and you have
shareholders. What the United States did, was it basically extended the
concept of the corporation to the United States, so the President of the
United States, Vice President and people who ran the government of the
Untied States, and the shareholders are people who own the land. Land
was the shares that one held in the corporation. And of course the
notion of democracy, evolved from that and the right of the shareholders
to determine who their presidency was and so forth. So it developed
democracy, it developed capitalism, the notion of capital markets, and
what we have seen is that these notions have done what we called
democratic capitalism, which came out of the removal of the ideological
hold the church had upon Europe, freed the society to develop these
things. So the United States took the best of both sides so to speak. So
the unfinished business of the Untied States, is to bequeath to Europe,
the understanding of the importance of religion in society, number one,
and to the Muslim world, and to help the Muslim World within the
contracts, the contracts, of Islamic thinking, or it’s not jurisprudence
how to develop democratic capitalism within the vocabulary and norms of
Islamic thought. And that is how you bridge, an important part of
bridging the, what is perceived to be the barriers between the west and
these Islamic world.

Sommer: Let’s go back for a moment to the common root of the
three major religious traditions in the Middle East, the Abraham. As I
understand it, Abraham who himself has been viewed a diety, or he is a
human being..

Rauf: Yeah

Sommer:  It’s interesting that he, that a human being would be
the father of all three religions. He’s not some divine figure, and that
he was in a certain sense, a man who kept running all his life, and
what can we learn from Abraham, take a closer look at Abraham perhaps,
that might enable us to be as ecumenical as you say or as accepting of
both the differences and the similarities between them

Rauf: Yeah, well the Qur’an, which from the Muslim point of view, is God
speaking to human kind, is God speaking to man, depicts, let us speak
about different religions per se, it speaks about right religion versus
wrong religion, and the Qur’anic picture or the story of the narrative
of religions throughout human history is that God sent messengers, human
beings, to every community on Earth, to teach them the principles of
right religion, and of course in each society was packaged to the
prophet that will speak the language of the community, and the specific
liturgy or forms of worship, they were all basically the same,
celebration of the creator, etcetera, and some similarities as you know
being, you know fasting and so forth, and some pilgrimage to various
sites. These are the common liturgical aspects, the religion may have
been different, times of prayer, frequence of prayer may have been
different, but then on the ethical side, you have the same principles.
So they are not different religions, in other words Abraham did not come
to start a different religion, Moses did not come to start a different
religion, Jesus did not come to start a different religion, they all
came to basically finish the job that was sent by many different
messengers of God. All teaching the same principles. But if one looks at
it through that prism, one gets an idea then of what the story of
Abraham is within the Islamic narrative, and the difference however is
between the religion, the right religion which comes from God and false
religion which is the creation of human beings. Now according to the
program or the ethical program, or the man to man interactive program
shared by the Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as we call them today, is
a very important thing which are those two major commandments that I
mentioned earlier, that is to worship, to love God, with all of your
heart mind body and strength, strength of soul and strength, and to love
thy neighbor as yourself, or to not do to your neighbor, that you would
not want done upon you, which is the negative way of you know,
eliminating the negative rather than ______ the positive, but they are
both the same thing. And upon all, I mean Jesus Christ, said and you
know this is in Deuteronomy, that upon these two commandments hang all
of the laws and all of the prophets, and Islamic Law builds upon those
commandments (32). Love of God means how do you worship God, how do you
pray to God, and the laws go into specifics of that but these are kind
of like, the laws are like a manual, on how to love God so to speak. And
the laws regarding human beings, which are laws of criminal laws, and
personal status laws and etcetera, are really laws of how not to hurt
your fellow beings, how to be just because being just and not hurting
people is part of loving your neighbor. This is the broad picture,
worldview. And what was common about the Abrahamic faith traditions as I
said is the equality of men that there’s no such thing as a priestly
class that is more elevated, there’s no Brahmin class that is more pure
by birth. It is by your actions, it is said “by their fruits you shall
know them.” It is the ethics of an individual human being that
determines his value or his nobility in the eyes of God. The Qur’an says
that, all people we are created from one male and one female, and we
fashioned into varieties of nations and tribes so that you might
celebrate our differences, you might get to know each other. The most
noble of you in the eyes of God are those who are most ethical, those
who are most God fearing, which all implies that idea of loving God and
loving your fellow human being

Sommer:  The Abrahamic tradition is also referred often to as a
family, as we also know that families can, are not necessarily,
harmonious, and to use the modern term, many of them are dysfunctional
and even going back into the Old Testament, you’ll find many of the
bitterest quarrels occurring within families, brother against brother,
various parts of families warring against other parts of the families.
Civil wars, religious wars, they often seen to be fiercest between, a
sort of intra-communal rather than inter-communal. So does the fact that
they come from the same family and the same root necessarily mean that
they will find their higher harmony with one another

Rauf:  Well, when it comes to certain ideas, that are common,
that is the basis of commonality, the reason why people who are closer
then to have more conflict is because the sources of conflict are
structured that way. Conflict occurs when you have two parties or more,
competing for a shared asset. They are competing claims for the same
asset. The asset can be of economic value, such as land, money,
inheritance, like Johnson vs. Johnson, you know where the granddaughter
Johnson, heiress, sued for her right of the, of what she believed was
her right. It can be about power, which is where people fight over a
shared claim to power, which is the basis of the conflict in Ireland
between Catholics and Protestants, it has nothing to do with
Christianity, nothing to do so much with Protestant thought versus
Catholic thought, but the fact that groups calling themselves Catholics
and Protestants are those who are Catholic Irish do not believe they
have an equitable share in power and economics as their Protestant
brethren. And that, so if, it doesn’t matter what the identifying
differentiating factor is, it can be, if you take the Israelis versus
Arabs, again or the conflict in the Middle East, it’s basically a
conflict about land, about that particular asset, that people are
fighting over, but how it was obtain and how it was won and of course
that the differentiating line between the parties that are fighting
around that asset, once it has, the defining difference is of a religion
nature, then over a period of time that religious nature, becomes the
basis on which the conflict exists. So let’s say two people fight on a
particular issue, when let’s say you know you were young kids and the
kid brother is being beat up, if it was your older brother you would
fight, you would take the side of your brother not because of the
justice of your conflict but you felt a certain obligation to protect
your brother right or wrong. That’s the basis of nationalism, and many
things, and very quickly the conflict expands, very often people forget
the source of the conflict, and think that the conflict has to do with
the familial difference, or with the religious difference, where in
reality the conflict had another source, in a shared competition for a
particular item.

Sommer: It does seem that one aspect of the competition
that makes it especially fierce, is that it is over something in some
ways even larger than material things, its over the very definition
between God and faith, and who has the one true faith, in relation to
the father. In other words who is the one true descendent, of the father
Abraham.

Rauf: Well, if people, if differences of belief, um in
other words, you know you can think the sky is red and I think the sky
is blue, there are many many differences we have over issues of belief.
It’s when that belief translates, into something which has to do with
positions of power, which is why it is dangerous, the wisdom of making
sure that the institutions of political power, the police and so froth,
the army, are not deployed to enforce a particular ideology. Unless that
ideology is threatening to the position of those who hold it, and
that’s what has happened in many countries of the world, where if a
particular, it can happen in an organization, it can happen in a
company, can happen in a country, where those who hold a certain belief,
differently from those who are in power, are deemed to be a threat, or
are perceived to be a threat. Then they begin to deploy the positions of
power to deem them heretic and to deem them as enemies of the state
that is when you begin to have a conflict. So what is important is to
recognize, is to create a society, not only a national society as we
have in the United States, and Western Europe, and many other parts of
the world but a global society in which we create a space of people to
have different beliefs and yet can exist, in a societal state
harmoniously. Not to make the differences in our items of belief, a
reason for us to fight, against each other

Sommer: here are of course, a great many initiatives, these days
in the wake of 9-1-1 to try to knit back together the Muslim world with
the West, and more broadly to bring three Abrahamic traditions back
together. One such initiative is attempting to, is putting together a
pilgrimage, essentially a path that runs through 6 nations, from
trekking through Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and it’s based on the
notion that if people begin to walk together, and also that around that
develop not just a sense of commonality and opportunities for
connection, but a shared economy of tourism along the route that will
begin to create a tangible reason to cooperate in the same way perhaps
that Europe after World War II, and after indeed centuries of war
developed a community that today has become essentially a federated
Europe

Rauf: Right

Sommer: Do you see any potential in that sort of initiative to
get at the, to begin to draw back together the three great traditions of
Abraham?

Rauf: Certainly, I mean initiatives, again as I mentioned to you,
we thought a lot about what we would do if we had the resources
available to deal the divide between Islam and the other faith
traditions in the West, and the initiatives that we’ve analyzed fall
into two categories, one which I call the enhancement of the positives
and those that deal with the elimination of the negatives. It’s like
having a football team you need to have both an offensive and a
defensive team. And this would call very strongly into the category
called the offensive type of actions, which mean the enhancement of the
positives. It’s very important to engage in things like this, which
bring people physically together, which creates the bonding, which
happens when you bring people together, it allows for serendipitous
things to occur. It allows for people to not only recognize what they
share in common, but it creates the space for people to then become more
proactive in furthering the impulse to build permanent bridges between
the different communities. Therefore it is actually very very useful.

Sommer: You’ve stated, you’ve mentioned, in your writings one
particularly interesting insight it says that the Qur’an states that God
does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves

Rauf: Yes

Sommer: What do you mean by that?

Rauf: Well, I mean that is what the Qur’an literally says, and
the uh, I think this ties into the fact that human beings share with
God, God has granted human beings the freedom of will, and freedom of
will in the domain of actions which we deem to be of an ethical nature,
and therefore as Jews sometime say, we are co-creators with God in what
we do. Therefore, in other words, there are other words in the Qur’an,
which say if God, although God has the power to force a human being to
believe in him, he does not enforce that. You have to chose, and if you
chose to believe in God, then God will help you and give you the faith,
but you, its _____ enforcers, our ethical actions, our decisions, are
based upon the fact that we, we have to be proactive. What happens in
life, is the vector sum, if you will, of our will and the divine will,
and therefore if you want to change a situation, we have to be proactive
and engage, and then God will walk with us and God will help us to open
doors for us, and create what we believe to be serendipitous but
nothing is serendipitous from the point of view of an all knowing
creator.

Sommer: But to change yourself, does that mean to, the first
thing you need to change, when your in a conflict is your own attitude
about it

Rauf: That is the mystical interpretation of it, that if you want
to change your relationships, with the outer world, changing yourself
is the fastest route. So if you have a bad relationship with someone for
example, the most expeditious way and a very important part of doing it
is to work on yourself because there is something within yourself that
is creating the energy field or the kinds of stimuli that cause people
to react to you in a certain way, so if we act in ourselves and make
sure we are the best possible type of human being and if we express the
values that the prophets came to, that they embodied, and we express the
prophets and the saintly people who reflect the highest ethical
evolution of what it means to be human that you will find people react
to you differently and when we act that way as an individual, as a
community, as a nation, the world itself will change its attitude
towards us

Sommer:  But when you feel that you are being victimized and that
someone else or some other group is unfairly attacking you, isn’t it
very difficult to turn back on yourself and say what am I doing wrong or
maybe you don’t ask yourself what are you doing wrong but what can I do
without blame to change the situation?

Rauf: Right, this is why it is never just a one sided thing, but
it is part, this is one side of the equation. The other side of the
equation we also have to look at the other side and seeing what they are
doing wrong. And help them correct their erroneous ways, and we have to
do this in a way that is firm but also as helps, in a wisest of
possible ways. Now, it’s like when a couple comes to me for marital
counseling, for example, and you know you tell the husband when you say
this your wife hears something else, and we’ve all had these situations
where you know, a young man is dating a girl and he says something, she
smacks him, he doesn’t know why, and he asks his sister, and she says
you said that, it’s no wonder she smacked you, and he’s totally ____, as
to why he offended her. So part of the role that we have to play, as
mediators, is to explain to each side, to use that kind of language,
even when we’re the ones that have been wronged, to say you when you say
the following, you know I hear this, or I experience this, or I respond
or feel inclined angerously, because it comes across this way, and
people say what we didn’t mean it this way, I know you didn’t mean it
this way but this is how it’s heard. It’s okay if it’s one on one, it’s
an easier thing to handle, but when we are talking about relationships
between communities, relationships between nations, then it is important
for those of us who are mediators to understand what it is like to be
an American from the inside, to be a Muslim from the inside, to be a Jew
from the inside, that how certain things are heard across communities,
and to teach our respective spokespeople be the political leaders, the
community leaders, etcetera, or even media leaders, that when you say
certain things certain ways you create those realities. I mean, as many
people have said, when you identify a criminal with religion, when you
say a Muslim terrorist, when you say a Muslim this, like the eleven guys
who were caught in Canada for example, if the media constantly
identifies them as Muslim, it tends to create and further that reality.
Whereas we don’t say they are a Christian criminal or a Jewish criminal,
or a Hindu criminal, let’s just change the nature of our description
because the way you describe someone the way you frame them will tend to
create a paradigm of thinking in people’s minds that very often
furthers the reality that you want to eliminate.

Sommer: So, uh, there seems to be at the heart of this Abrahamic
family quarrel you might call it is an oddly shared sense of
victimization. That is many Jews feel there is decades of ostracism of
them within the Middle East and indeed thousands of years of
Anti-Semitism where they have been the victims. Muslims feel the same
way in relation to Christianity ever since the Crusades and certainly in
more recent decades as you said with certain policies coming from the
West. And even indeed Americans who’ve had a rather more fortunate
history until now, after 9-1-1 many of them feel like they are the
victims as well. In this family quarrel does there need to be a letting
go of the psychology of the victim.

Rauf:  Yeah, I personally don’t like the victim psychology
although I understand it, but I think the victim psychology I try very
hard not to and not to use that approach because that tends to make us
focus on what’s wrong with each other, and that’s why if you look at my
book its called What’s Right With Islam. And there’s another chapter
that’s What’s Right With America. If we look to what is best in each
other, if I look across the bar and said look this is what is important
about me and what’s best about Christianity is the following, what’s
best about Judaism is the following, I want my Christian bothers and
sisters to be, to embody the best of what it means to be Christian,
because if we embody the best and highest meaning, and each of us knows
that we want to be the best we can possible be, so we also
simultaneously, there is also a gap, between our aspirations and our
reality. But if we engage in helping each other, and say look, I want to
be the best possible Muslim I can be and I know that I’m not a perfect
Muslim, I know you want to be a perfect Christian, but I know that you
know that you’re not a perfect Christian or you would like to be, so if
our approach and the nature of our discourse, is not one of look how bad
a Christian you are, or you are not a good Christian, or Christianity
is bad because your reality represents your ideals, is to understand our
respective ideals, and say it is in my interest as a human being that
you be the best possible Christian you can be, and that so and so
becomes the best possible Jew that they can be, and that you be the best
possible secular humanist you can be, if you happen to be an atheist
you believe in secular humanism. And you’re the best possible Hindu,
etcetera. And then we have the basis of not only a wonderful sense of
discourse, but also of having a harmonious society, and building a
society where we are encouraging each other to be the best we can
possible be, recognizing our ideals not defining the truth of the other
on their reality and how they fall short of their ideals and help them
to achieve it. And athat’s the nature of the discourse that we would
like to further, and see being furthered. So that even at a foreign
policy level for instance, or the media, the communications media is not
where terrorists equal Islam, therefore Islam equals terrorism, but
Muslims are people who are ethical and we in the United States in our
foreign policy those who want to have an Islamic state, an Islamic
party, that’s fine but has to achieve the perfection of the ideals of
what it means to be Muslim. (53) And many of us in the Islamic community
both domestically and overseas want to part and would be glad to
establish to help flesh out the principles of what it means to be in an
Islamic society, because it is not that different from a Christian
society, a Jewish society, a secular society, or the American society.
The ethical principles are at their core, identical.

Sommer:, One final question, and this is built in what you just
said, is there any unique and special rule for American Muslims in
helping to heal the breach between the Muslim World and the Western
World

Rauf: Yes, absolutely. If you look at what happened in American
history, the past as it evolved from being a protestant society, to a
Judeo-Christian society, with the Judeo-Christian ethic, came about
because of a critical mass of American Catholics and American Jews who,
over a period of time as they gained their American legs, played a very
important role in mediating between, on important issues, between the
Untied States and their respective communities back home, beginning with
the protestants for that matter, but the America Catholic bishops for
example were instrumental in bridging important divides between the
United States and the Vatican. It is also to me, very evident, that the
American Muslims who appreciate America, and appreciate Islam who
understand the issues domestically in both the United States and in the
Muslim world are therefore the ones who are best qualified to play the
role of interlockers, mediators, of those who help reframe the issues
that each side wants to commit to the other and therefore identifying
those of us who understand these issues and who are able to play a role
in these issues is important and that’s exactly part of what the Cordoba
Initiative is positioning and has positioned itself to do, and have
already begun to do and to make an important penetrations along these
lines

Sommer:  Thank you very much, for taking this time to speak to us I gained a great deal from the conversation

Rauf: Thank you very much Mark, it’s my honor that you’ve had me

Sommer:  So good luck in your work and please keep in touch with
our producer if there are more things you would like to bring to our
attention

Rauf: I would certainly would love that, I mean are we offline now.

Sommer: Sure, the interview is over

Rauf: Okay good, I mean things have been done for example, I
didn’t want to say it on your show but, you know with for example
Madeline Albright’s book when she approached me last fall and she said
I’d like you to review the Islam section for any corrections and we did
that and she invited me to write a blurb for her book and she is now
pushing these ideas in many places, she is in constant communication
with me, or continual communication with me about certain things, we
have been in touch with her, with Karen Hughes, and the issue of Hamas,
and how America should really engage with them and not just push them
out of the picture, but bring them, make them responsible for creating
positive change because if you don’t do that, you know we’ve even mapped
out, what the downside would be if they didn’t do that, because you
push Hamas out, and you force them into the arms of the Syrians and the
Iranians, and they will be a proxy for Iran and the region, you’re
creating more of a mess!

Sommer: MmHmm

Rauf: So we’ve tried to unpack for them the chessboard or it’s
like you know when football coaches when they create these circles and
lines and so forth so you can see what’s happening very often we, people
don’t think of the situation in a dynamic way, they tend to think of it
statically.

Sommer:  MmHmm

Rauf:  You don’t realize when you do something, you create a web
of reactions, to your action, and with the United States you create a
multi, the reaction even multiply more. You know, if you are a third
rate country, or a third rate power, you’re not going to create much of a
ripple. But when the United States does something there is an enormous
ripple effect.

Sommer: You are likening it to chess, I often feel that while
much of the world plays chess, a diplomatic version of chess, the United
States plays checkers.

Rauf: That’s why I use the imagery of football. Cause football is
like chess in motion. You see the nice thing about football is that, is
that football is a very good analogy of what is happening in the world.
It is strategy in motion, and you have plays, you know you have to
design your plays, and you have to design your plays knowing that the
other side is not going to be passive. While you’re throwing the ball,
they will try to make you fumble the ball, they will try to catch the
ball from you, in fact they will try to prevent you. So part of
achieving your objective is you have to be strategic, you have to do all
the requisite blocking, and tackling, because there are vested
interests, who are vested against your success.

Sommer:  One of the things you have to do in strategic thinking
is think 6 moves down the line, and many directions at once because it
is such a multi-dimensional world.

Rauf:  Preciously, in other words the analogy with American
football is that your defense team, your offense team, and kick off
team, are all on the field simultaneously.

Sommer:  Uhhuh

Rauf:  Its not like one team is on the field and the other team
is off. They are all on the field, and the field has many sectors to it.
And there are different geographies, different subject areas, so we
have designed our Cordoba Initiative to be designed, in order words we
have 5 major areas of our program. So we have foreign policy, is one
area, you have communications is another area, you have education as the
third area, for example, you have intra-Islamic issues is the fourth
area, arts and culture is the fifth area. And lets say this Abrahamic
pathwalk may be in the arts and culture, a blend of the arts and culture
and you know maybe the religious aspect in some respect, but it’s kind
of an interfaith type of activity. Now in the area of foreign policy,
you have different issues, number one is the Palestinian conflict, cause
if you heal that, you will have contributed a lot. If the entertainment
media, the news media, was broadcasted in print, describe and speak
about the issues in a different way it can help change perceptions
profoundly, because it’s the media, which helps shape perceptions to a
great degree. So if we have strategic action plays, designed plays, in
the area of foreign policy, in the area of healing the divide, and then
you unpack and give up Israel, and then what do you do, what are the
specific actions that you might do, because things are always moving,
things are always happening, so you have to analyze the situation
constantly, and you have to have your just like you have your offense
coach, defensive coaching staff, and you have your head coach and so
forth, we think of ourselves as an analogy of that. We had to have our
head coaching staff, we had to have our foreign policy head coach, our
Palestinian head coach etcetera, and then you design plays for that

Sommer:  Interestingly enough it doesn’t mean that the head coach
is necessarily the President, because, of whatever country, or Prime
Minister, because they may not be, they may still be, trapped by various
constraints in an old game.

Rauf: No we’ve created a different concept a different model,
Mark. I’m the head coach of this strategic initiative, and the President
of the United States, or the President of Malaysia, or the President of
England, is like a player you want to bring in for particular plays.

Sommer: Uhhuh!

Rauf: They are members of the team that you want to bring in,
because if we are looking at it exactly like American football, you want
to gain yardage, so you just want to keep scoring first downs. So
what’s the first down that we can score based upon where we are on the
field, where would we like to be, what’s realistic, what can we obtain?
Can we obtain 3 yards, can we obtain 10 yards, can we obtain 7 yards?
Let’s try and get those 7 yards. And whom do you need to bring for that?
So the the name of the game then becomes, how do you move the ball
forward, and who are players you can bring in to help move that ball
forward on a particular issue, at a particular moment in time.

Sommer: But the irony is that in this case, you don’t really
have, I mean the other team, who’s the other team? Because if
fundamentally you’re trying to bring people together, so who’s the enemy
there? 1-3-15

Rauf: There are interests one has to make sure do not push back.
You have to make sure you have enough power on your side to be able to
push the ball forward.

Sommer: Right, but at the same time as you’ve written elsewhere,
“peace requires the cooperation of your enemy,” so in a certain sense to
move the ball forward, in this case, is rather paradoxical, it’s not a
linear strategy. It’s actually…

Rauf: Yeah, but let me give you a very specific for instance, one
very specific example is that we need to move forward on the
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations process,for a finalization of borders.
Now, Ehud Olmert has been pushing the notion of unilateral designation
of borders by Israel. In November, of the last election he didn’t win
completely, he had to develop the coalition government with other
people. As of a month ago, our Palestinian expert, who is very tied into
Abumazen and Sayeb Erekat and those people told me that Sayeb Erekat
who is a lead negotiator on the Palestinian side, has gotten the
commitment of 35 members of the Knesset, that the negotiation process
should be bilateral not unilateral. Okay, that’s an important strategic
thing, so to get people of the Knesset in agreement with you on certain
issues, are critical for certain aspects and certain specific
intermediate milestones which are important towards that particular
milestone. That’s an example of being strategic, and using people who
are sympathetic to your position, who have the traction and capability
to bring about that particular end result that you want at this point in
time on the particular issue, which is a stepping-stone to the next
stepping-stone of that issue. Sounds complicated, but I think you get
the idea

Sommer: No, I understand, you know I wanted to ask you I did say
this is off the record, and we’ll keep it all off the record if you
wish. But the analogy to football is probably a useful one for a lay
audience, and I wondered whether you’d allow us to use some of that

Rauf:  Yes, I would, because I use it all the time. Look did I
use, did I use, did I say anything right now that is potentially off the
record?

Sommer: Well I wouldn’t use anything I suppose about Madeline Albright

Rauf: Yeah that part would be talking out of, I can say this in private to you

Sommer: Yes

Rauf: Um, and the fact that, I think there is a blurb by me in
the back of her book. So, and she herself has publicly stated that she
has benefited by her conversation with me, and Rabbi …oh my god, that’s
so embarrassing, Rabbi uh…Saperstein,

Sommer: Oh yeah. David Saperstein

Rauf:  David Saperstein and others from the Christian tradition
as well, in helping her understand the importance of the role of
religion. I mean look, we supported a Jewish state in the Middle East,
why not support an Islamic State? But give it a meaning, which you can
live with.

Sommer: Yeah within the parameters of an acceptance of other …

Rauf: Right, and this purpose exists, because they are part of
our … In Islamic theology, in Islamic jurisprudence, those norms exist.
You just have to extract them, and put them on the table, and say these
are the valid reasons. I don’t want a demographic Islamic state, a
demographic Islamic state is not part of tradition, never was, until
recently. Until the mid 20th century, we were very pluralistic
societies. Egypt had 4… Alexandria had 400,000 Greeks, it was a Greek
town. Until 1923-24 vast tracks, of what is today modern Turkey, were
Greek. Neighborhoods were Greek areas. Ismear, which is ancient Smyrna,
was a Greek town. Cappadocia has large sections of Greek communities.
What happened with the rise of the nation state idea, was virtually this
geography had to be homogeneous. Now, that’s not apart of our assigned
tradition of theology, not our tradition, not our theology, not our
jurisprudence. What happened was, the 20th century, we bought into the
nation state idea, we created the notion of demographic nation states.
We had to be of one type, so you had massive movements, and a lot of
killings between people, with the creation of the Otto-Turkish state,
you had Greek-Turkish conflict existing before Israel and all of that,
where as before they were all living together.

______________________________________________________________

Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement

The Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement drives the project.The Leadership Group includes a former Secretary of State and a former Deputy
Secretary of State, former members of Congress, a former U.S. envoy on the
Middle East peace process, and leaders and experts from business, faith
communities, foreign policy, social sciences and related fields. One third of
the group is Muslim-American. The participating leaders have been drawn together
by their collective recognition of the issue’s urgency and the need to create
wise, broadly supportable solutions. In four plenary meetings and numerous
exchanges since January 2007, they have reached an extraordinary convergence of
views and have committed to see the project through to completion.

Leadership Group Members

Organizational affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

Madeleine
Albright
, Principal, The Albright Group LLC; former U.S. Secretary of State

Richard
Armitage
, President, Armitage International; former U.S. Deputy
Secretary of State

Ziad
Asali
, President and Founder, American Task Force on Palestine

Steve
Bartlett
, President and Chief Executive Officer, Financial Services
Roundtable; former U.S. Representative; former Mayor of Dallas, Texas

Paul
Brest
, President, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Red
Cavaney
, President and Chief Executive Officer, America Petroleum Institute

Daniel
Christman
, Lt. General (ret.), U.S. Army; Senior Vice President for
International Affairs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Stephen
Covey
, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman, FranklinCovey; writer, speaker, and
academic

Thomas
Dine
, Principal, The Dine Group; former Executive Director, American Israel
Public Affairs Committee

Marc
Gopin
, James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict
Resolution; Director, Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict
Resolution, Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason
University

Stephen
Heintz
, President, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Shamil
Idriss
, Chairman of the Board, Soliya

Daisy Khan, Executive Director, American Society for
Muslim Advancement

Derek
Kirkland
, Advisory Director, Investment Banking Division, Morgan Stanley

Richard
Land
, President, The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Southern
Baptist Convention; Member, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

Robert
Jay Lifton
, Lecturer on Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; author of
Superpower Syndrome

Denis
J. Madden
, Auxiliary Bishop of Baltimore; former Associate

John
Marks
, President and Founder, Search for Common Ground

Susan
Collin Marks
, Senior Vice President, Search for Common Ground; author of
Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution during South Africa’s Transition to
Democracy

Ingrid
Mattson
, President, The Islamic Society of North America; Professor of
Islamic Studies and Director of Islamic Chaplaincy, and Director, Duncan Black
Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Hartford
Seminary

Sayyeda
Mirza-Jafri
, Strategic Philanthropy Consultant

Dalia
Mogahed
, Executive Director, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies; co-author
with John Esposito of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really
Think

Vali
Nasr
, Professor of International Politics, The Fletcher School, Tufts
University; Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign
Relations

Feisal Abdul Rauf, Imam, Masjid al-Farah in New York City;
Founder and Chairman, Cordoba Initiative; author of What’s Right with Islam
Is What’s Right with America

Rob
Rehg
, President, Washington, DC office, Edelman

Dennis
Ross
, Consultant, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; former U.S.
Special Middle East Envoy and Negotiator

S.
Abdallah Schleifer
, Distinguished Professor of Journalism, American
University in Cairo; former Washington Bureau Chief, Al Arabiya news channel;
former NBC News Cairo bureau chief

Jessica
Stern
, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Mustapha
Tlili
, Director, Center for Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West, New York
University

William
Ury
, Co-Founder, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School; co-author of
Getting to Yes

Vin
Weber
, Managing Partner, Clark and Weinstock; Chairman, National Endowment
for Democracy; former U.S. Representative

Daniel
Yankelovich
, Founder and Chairman, Public Agenda; author

Ahmed
Younis
, Senior Analyst, Gallup Center for Muslim Studies; former National
Director, Muslim Public Affairs Committee

Dov
S. Zakheim
, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton; former U.S. Under Secretary
of Defense (Comptroller)

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dented
dented
13 years ago

People like Rauf and Khan et al are dangerous – but what makes them very dangerous to each and everyone of us, is the plethora of (idiots) people who give them the power to make them dangerous. We have to be constantly on our guard. Sleep with one eye open. Never trust these types, Islamic do-gooders – they will always have an agenda – as most on here are aware, their end goal is Caliphate – the bloodless war.
Yeah, well, over my dead body!

rae4palin
rae4palin
13 years ago

Great job, Pamela. Imam Rauf is the very face of evil. You have clearly exposed him.

dented
dented
13 years ago

Oh, how can I forget, of course, the destruction of Israel comes before the Caliphate.
The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. You can bet our sorry arses that there is another, just steps behind Rauf to take his place – this fight isn’t going to end anytime soon, we’ll only have intermissions until we root them all out, one by one.

scrubjay
scrubjay
13 years ago

Pam, you are awesome. Keep driving your semi through the political left.
Poll: Most Say “Ground Zero Mosque” Is Inappropriate
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014737-503544.html
Nearly three of four Americans — 71 percent — say building a mosque so close to the site is not appropriate while just 22 percent say it is appropriate.

Shawna
Shawna
13 years ago

Pamela, PLEASE PUT HIS QUOTE “and then you unpack and give up Israel” in RED. To me, that was the most shocking statement of all (although it’s all bone-chilling). He is using the football analogy to strategically move the ball forward to meet that end goal, AND to bring about global islamic domination with Presidents of different nations under “his” direction (coaching). THIS is BIG. No telling whate else this guy says behind closed doors (off record).
What really alarms me (as if it can get any worse) is that this is the kind of vetting the government should be doing, and if they have missed THIS, or even worse, they KNEW about it and they are in AGREEMENT (if we are adopting new policies), We The People have a right to know.

Shawna
Shawna
13 years ago

*what

Shawna
Shawna
13 years ago

Oh, and AMAZING work btw. You are a Patriot.

sean
sean
13 years ago

This sedition and subversion of government is proceeding at a frightening pace. The Marxists talk of the ‘long march through the institutions’, but the Muslims are sprinting through…
http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/01/muslim-subversion-sedition-and-social.html

Stealthie
Stealthie
13 years ago

Found this Time magazine interview of Albright. Imagine, she was the Secretary of State. The quote below Albright says in so many words, that it is difficult to agree on what is good or evil. Personally, I don’t find that a difficult proposition. She also appears to be of the opinion America is responsible for making it impossible for “tolerant people to agree with what our policy is. ” Evidently, for the former Secretary, the words of “tolerant people” are easier to understand than the difference between good and evil. No wonder U.S. foreign policy is…
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1188130,00.html
Do you think it’s a mistake to frame the war on terrorism as a struggle between good and evil?
Madeleine Albright_ “I do. I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better — but absolute good is a little harder to define. By making it a Manichean choice between good and evil we make it difficult for tolerant people to agree with what our policy is.”

a
a
13 years ago

sinister. what people have to see today is that the insidious, sinister face of evil presents a
very “liberal friendly” countenance. this is taquiya, islamic lies for the sake of dawa, promoting islam.
what we see here is a glimpse into a very well organized globalized plan for world take-over.
and, to quote the old film, cool hand luke, “what we have here is a failure to communicate”.
the liberal leftards need to be very clearly, consistently communicated to so hopefully they will begin to see the evil they are complicit in…in the name of peace.
pamela is doing excellent journalism here. and, thankfully, due to the mosque controversey, she is getting much more attention. hopefully her readership is up significantly.
keep exposing the filth to the light!

annie
annie
13 years ago

I hope Hannity and Rush play portions of this interview for as long need be, necessary. Rauf is indeed an unofficial State Dept agent who has been used to negotiate the islamic agenda for years now. Is this mosque at GZ a gift or prize bestowed on him though the government? What happened to separation of church and state?
I wonder how much Bush knew about all this promoting islam all over the place, or if the State Dept kept a lot of info from him. I can’t imagine Bush would have been happy about all of this.

Shawna
Shawna
13 years ago

Oh geez, give me a break. Man, you ARE reaching. Why don’t you reach out to the media and give THAT defense and see how far it gets ya.

knightemplar2
knightemplar2
13 years ago

“The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah is great..”
Indeed it is, but in what way? Jahiliyyah means “ignorance”…who’s ignorance?
Take a quick look at this video and you’ll see for yourself.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/06/testing-muhammad-tester-mahomet.html

dented
dented
13 years ago

Obviously a village is missing it’s idiot – Jon Baker.
What is wrong with you? Are you stupid or just plain biased. You said: “The outrage about the “ground zero mosque” has turned very ugly, as this video of this recent protest shows. People are calling Mohammed a pig. A New York City cab driverwas stabbed today after his passenger asked him if he was Muslim”
Before you make stupid remarks, try some reading first, huh?
Blumenthal Busted!
http://b1ff5939f6.nxcli.net/blumenthal-busted-
Set Up to Lynch Ground Zero Opposition: Muslim Cab Slasher Worked for Cordoba/Park 51
http://b1ff5939f6.nxcli.net/set-up-to-lynch-ground-zero-opposition-muslim-cab-slasher-worked-for-cordobapark-51
Now please, push off, sling ya tainted hook elsewhere.

Mackie
Mackie
13 years ago

Iman Rauf has no doubt spent decades cultivating his influence in America, and in particular, influential elites. We have heard him speak to groups who accept his misleading analogies at face value out of shear ignorance of what Islam is really all about. He always finds no problem stating that “fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam”. The incredulity of that statement simply defies what is so clearly written in the Qu’ran. Of course he depends on a majority of Americans refusing to open up that book.
When you have someone who can come out and make statements like this in regards to the culpability on 9-11 ; Iman Rauf “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”[And when Rauf was asked how he considered the U.S. to be an accessory? he replied, “because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
Clearly “While Iman Rauf cannot quite bring himself to blame the terrorist groups like Hamas for being terrorists,he conveniently ignores the actions of Hamas and its murderous antisemitic 36 articles while at the same time he finds it quite easy to blame the United States for being a victim of terrorism by being a creator of terrorism, he said; “the U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end”. He clearly reflects sympathies towards Islam since he focuses on America and ignores any complicity of Muslim atrocities.
He also rings out with the words we have heard in the past by leftwingers like Ward Churchill, Rauf said “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets”. Once again another outrageous and non factual statement, Muslims are in fact murdering innocent people all over the world as I write this, do we have to be reminded of the nearly 16,000 terrorist attacks and counting since 9-11,do we have to be reminded that thousands of those that are being murdered everyday are even fellow Muslims? But he like those on the left can somehow almost in one felled swoop manage to completely ignore or sweep the horrible history of WWII under the rug. A war of countless fronts that was causing the deaths of millions both in Germany,Europe,Italy,Russia,and sicily,under Nacism. And in the Asian theater where the Japanese where slaughtering the Chinese and the Philippines among others along with the Americans under the fanaticism of Imperial Japan.
You can also note that he referred to those who attacked Hiroshima, and Dresden as Christians rather than Americans which speaks volumes in that he sees everything as being controlled by religion which of course defines what Islam is all about with its totalitarian ideology under sharia.

Atikva
Atikva
13 years ago

The point of the article is the invasion of America NOW, TODAY by the islamo-socialist coalition – try to stay on track. And regarding the so-called attack against a cab driver, it is yet another provocation from the same coalition which the piece you were supposed to comment on has exposed. Here is an extract of next article which apparently you haven’t read:
“The apparent anti-Muslim assault on a New York city cabbie by a man shouting “Assalamu Alaikum… The alleged assailant, Michael Enright, is – according to his Facebook profile and the website of the left-leaning media organization Intersections International – a student at the School of Visual Arts and a volunteer for Intersections, which recently produced a statement of support for the Park51 project, and is funded by the mainstream, liberal Collegiate Church of New York…Since then it was discovered that the perpetrator is a liberal who actually was working for Park51”

aprilnovember811
aprilnovember811
13 years ago

MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S MIDDLE EAST BUSINESS INTERESTS
http://clarionadvisory.com/?p=6987
IT’S HIS BLOOD MONEY!

Grayzel
Grayzel
13 years ago

Thank you, for your excellent article. Keep us updated.

Gail
Gail
13 years ago

It’s time to quit using the term “Stealth” Jihad. It’s very clear, there is nothing stealth about it any more.

Mackie
Mackie
13 years ago

The deleted comments by John Baker certainly had no place in this discussion, the inhumanity of slavery has been dealt with over the centuries in America. His statistics where completely wrong and yes slavery is an ugly chapter in America and in New York. Slavery was done away with completely in 1840 in New York as well as many other Northern states, which is a full 20 years before the Civil war. Much of the slave action in New York actually occurred before America even became a nation in 1776.
The left has always had this strange propensity for the insane argument that if we did something wrong in our history, no matter how far back, then we somehow should not deserve the right to preserve or protect ourselves from threats foreign or domestic—yes of course such analogies make no sense whatsoever!

Tadcf
Tadcf
13 years ago

In this article, the editor tells you what to believe Rauf means by his comments. If you would read them with an open mind, you would understand a different story.

whatdemocracy,sweden
whatdemocracy,sweden
13 years ago

so rauf is the top chess player, chief of the football team,representing islam. whom is he playing against? us–the free people of western democracy.who are his chessmen and football players?he is drawing them from our western democratic nations and pitting them against our democracies–against us.rauf is influencing influential players in our democratic team,using them to play against us–using our own people, not to mention our own ideology, to destroy us. so rauf has been building up his tactics for years…where is our tactition??! we need to stop going into orgies of outrage and start thinking tactically.while stopping the mosque is the first battle,it wont be the last one.

Mentat
Mentat
13 years ago

And, of course, who does Mark Sommer work for?
The Progressive Radio Network!
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/mark-sommer/

Biff Henderson
Biff Henderson
13 years ago

Coach Rauf’s Official Sideline Gear-
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4097/4929158603_0792ed6b73.jpg

Dagny Taggart
Dagny Taggart
13 years ago

It’s sad to admit but although President Bush did much to make us feel safer, he was an appeaser. Instead of pandering (akin to trying to make a schoolyard bully like you) he should have learned about(or been briefed) and been honest about the history of violence and conquest that is Islam. I don’t believe he was duped.

Biff Henderson
Biff Henderson
13 years ago

Is that from Coach Rauf’s playbook? I thought he used X’s and O’s.

Cate
Cate
13 years ago

GREAT job, Pamela! This info needs to go viral. It needs to be reported on Fox, in a BIG way. I’m hoping that Hannity will have you on, pronto, to talk about this information. The imam and his wife are the epitomy of evil. They MUST be exposed for what they are. We cannot allow them to continue. We must DEMAND an end to this nonsense, and now. The gloves have to come off, and the American people need to know what these charlatans have in store. As an article noted recently (can’t remember which one), this isn’t about bridge building, it’s about carpetbagging.
I learned all I care to know about Islam on 9/11,
Cate

Cate
Cate
13 years ago

Callin’ a spade a spade here. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…well, you know the rest. And if you don’t like it, you can shove it. These people will be exposed for the evil they are perpetrating. We’re not getting played like a deck of cards, anymore. Thank God America is waking up to islamic supremacism. America is getting it, and we’re not having any of the smooth-talking imam and his whiny wife, who loves to play the victim card. Thank God for Pamela and Robert Spencer who are putting their lives on the line to expose the TRUTH about Islam, and get America to wake up and protect herself against insidious evil.

Cate
Cate
13 years ago

Oh, and one more thing…
I learned all I care to know about Islam on 9/11,
Cate

calendoor
calendoor
13 years ago

Several months before the announcement of Codoba Mosque, the American public was being strategically prodded in hopes that they would be provoked (as Rauf clearly stated – strategy has been key) into reacting violently – their “play” failed, so they had to resort to getting one of their own to act out violently because the public wasn’t. A miscalculation took place – erroneously it was believed that Americans would react with the same hair trigger sensitivity as Islam to insult and provocation – free speech is highly valued so that is what they attacked, and continue to attack. Don’t be fooled.

Sarai
Sarai
13 years ago

Yes, “9/11 was the watershed in catalyzing attention to the issue of Islam”. We read, we researched, we heard testaments, and what we found is something so evil, so entrenched, so hellbent on conquering the world by any means possible that we must all stand against it, now and forever, if we are remain free.
I too would like to know what the term “unpacking Israel” means. He’s always careful to word his deepest intentions in the most odd verbiage. It would appear to me that means making Israel pack up and go away.

Atikva
Atikva
13 years ago

You don’t miss any of the stale, ridiculous and vacuous arguments used by the islamo-socialist coalition, do you? Well, in case you haven’t realized it yet, we have “decided” a long time ago already and your BS is not going to turn anyone here into a member of the islamo-socialist coalition – ever.

jane
jane
13 years ago

Baker, the stabber was a lib setup, as PG reveals here, Politico proved that Enright works for Park51.
Bottom line: The lib pro-female-slavery types were so adamant to make progress they slashed an innocent muslim man’s face for a media point. Unfortunately for them, the cabbie trapped the attacker and he was identified, as were his associations.

Mike
Mike
13 years ago

Bullshit, and you’re a coward to level such slander behind a veil of anonymity.

Shawna
Shawna
13 years ago

lol, That’s awesome. Obama would be on the sidelines screaming “Put me in coach, put me in!!”

Dahveed
Dahveed
13 years ago

Pamela,
this is dahveed. The youtube vid has apparently been ditched. I was going to watch, “internal server 500 error” came up each time. Might want to place this multiple places, maybe more youtube, too, but you know the weasels that they often are. By the way, great work on this, truly. My eldest daughter (11 going on 38) thinks you’re the bomb. She’s right.

Biff Henderson
Biff Henderson
13 years ago

Next Coach Rauf will be telling us that Touchdown Jesus will one day step out of the mural at Notre Dame Stadium and toss the mother of all Hail Mary passes against the infidel.

kurt
kurt
13 years ago

Who benefited from the US-Iraq invasion? Saudi Arabia. Who financed the Jihad movement? Saudi Arabia. Where is the center of the Islam? In the Saudi cities of Mekka and Medina. Who is responsible for the islamic fundamentalist renaissance? Donors from Saudi Arabia. What was the nationality of the leading 9/11 attackers? Arab. We have to draw a strict line between muslims and arabs. What the Imam says about 9/11 is interesting, maybe he didn’t notice that 9/11 the Battle of Vienna took place and 9/11 Eugen de Savoy crushed the Osmans in Zenta. Osmans and Arabs are not necessarily friends. The arabs play on both sides of the battle, and now arabs build a Triumph Mosque for 9/11. Arabs are the rather aggressive core of the muslim world, they originally spread the Islamic war cult by force. The Islam is a business model for Arabia. All muslims are forced to pilgrime to Mekka to worship a stone and the direction of their prayers is always Mekka. Spreading muslim belief makes Arabs even more powerful.

lettherebelight
lettherebelight
13 years ago

Rauf is the Islamist TELE-TRAITOR. He is obama’s, Clinton’s, Bloomberg’s and now, Albright’s CREEPY sharia tactician. Rauf bragged in Arabic that he had much to do with obama’s Cairo speech and possibly even wrote it. See American Thinker today.. No wonder it was full of “holy and revealed” garbage about Islam. The US apology to Islam that Rauf suggested was there too, remember? AND Obama said it was his duty AS PRESIDENT to defend Islam. That can be seen in Rauf’s statement about using various presidents in his plays to “move the ball forward.” What crapweasals!! ZAKAT AND BURKAS! Yeah. I believe he wrote the Cairo speech. It was all da’wa.
What we have here is insurrection and treason by a Muslim traitor and the president of the United States. Let’s call this game!! I give Rauf a 3000 YARD PENALTY!! Let’s PULL OUT EVERY RED FLAG WE HAVE ON HIS PLAY. THROW HIM OUT OF THE GAME. HE CANNOT PLAY HERE!! HIS ARROGANCE ABOUT USING OUR LOVE OF FOOTBALL TO ADVANCE HIS CORDOBA INSTITUTE IS AS SLIMEY AS ANYONE CAN GET. THROW THE BUM OUT!!! What an ingrate!!

auntie izlam
auntie izlam
13 years ago

Don’t kid yourself, Robert knew what he was talking about when he coined the term “stealth jihad”. It’s happening everywhere & there’s still a lot of it we haven’t figured out yet. In fact most of the country is deaf, dumb & blind to the majority of it.

lettherebelight
lettherebelight
13 years ago

And Daisy Khan is actually Daisy Con! They both deserve the biggest bum’s rush of all time. Stop the GZ mega-we likey to hug you to death-mosque.

Jorge Banner
Jorge Banner
13 years ago

There is only one way to deal with pisslamists.
It’s either that or decent people move to another planet because the Earth will be theirs and their opponents will be dead. As dead as the people who chose to jump from the WTC on 9/11.

Wishbone
Wishbone
13 years ago

Scottish media has reported on controversy surrounding links between the Scottish Islamic Foundation and the Scottish National Party. According to a report posted on a Scottish news portal:
The Scottish Government’s links with the Scottish Islamic Foundation have come under renewed scrutiny by opposition politicians. The Scottish Conservative Party have called into question the links between the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF) and the SNP Scottish Parliament. In a statement released on 9 August 2010, Murdo Fraser MSP was quoted as saying “We…need full disclosure from the SNP Government and Party about any links it has, cash or otherwise, with the SIF.” The statement also caled for a ‘full investigation’ into allegations made by the Quilliam foundation, an anti-extremism think tank which claims to stand “for religious freedom, human rights, democracy and developing a Muslim identity at home in, and with, the West.”
“According to both his Facebook page and to the organization’s website, Saeed is a member of the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, an organization jointly sponsored by two organizations headed by “Ground Zero Mosque” project head Fesial Rauf and funded by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who has funded numerous projects tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood.”
http://globalmbreport.com/?p=3401

Cate
Cate
13 years ago

Thanks for that article, Wishbone!!

SendingOutAnSOS
SendingOutAnSOS
13 years ago

I heard Hannity say that now Daisy Con is traveling to the middle east on the American taxpayer dime. WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH? We are allowing all of this to happen because everyone is waiting for someone else to come to the rescue. The problem is we have always been the rescuer. We allowed this to happen…are allowing this to happen! And the worst part is they believe we don’t have the courage or the organization to rise up and stop this travesty.

Kieran, UK
Kieran, UK
13 years ago

I’ve just started reading the comments underneath this post and I’ve noticed quite a few have been deleted.
So there are comments responding to comments that we can’t read anymore.
Why were they deleted out of interest? Does anyone know what they said? Did they constitute slander?

Grimcargo
Grimcargo
13 years ago

It was stealth until Obama was elected. Now they can operate freely.

Linda Rivera
Linda Rivera
13 years ago

I voted republican. I did NOT vote this supremacist Ground Zero Mosque Imam to be President of the United States. Why is this Hamas Terrorist organization supporter running our country?

Mackie
Mackie
13 years ago

John Baker:
What happened nearly 160 to well over 200 years ago is being thoughtfully addressed, but that is another issue. There is no question that one can find areas in every place on the planet where as well as America there where terrible inhuman actions taken without question, history is replete with events like that in another time. You and I where not there, it was another time as this is. You have made your point but with do respect let us please address a contemporary issue that is at hand please.

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Thanks for sharing!