Two days ago, Obama hosted his annual Ramadan Iftar dinner, inviting Muslim politicians and others from his administration. At 5:10 of this White House video, Obama singles out Huma Abedin for special recognition.
Two-thirds of a billion Muslims expect the Mahdi – the last Islamic imam they believe will come and rule the world – to arrive in their lifetimes, according to a new poll.
The survey by Pew Research notes that in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, “half or more Muslims believe they will live to see the return of the Mahdi. This expectation is most widespread in Afghanistan (83 percent), Iraq (72 percent), Tunisia (67 percent) and Malaysia (62 percent).
The survey said that belief drops to about four-in-10 across Central Asia, except for Turkey, where 68 percent expect to witness his return. It drops slightly further across southern and eastern Europe.
“In some countries with sizable Sunni and Shi’a populations, views on the Mahdi’s return differ by sect. In Iraq, for example, Shi’as are more likely than Sunnis to expect the Mahdi to return in their lifetime, by an 88 percent to 55 percent margin. In Azerbaijan, the difference between the two groups is also large (25 percentage points),” the report said. “Differences between Shi’as and Sunnis on this issue may reflect the more central role that the Mahdi’s return plays in Shi’a Islam.”
The result? An estimated 672 million Muslims expect to witness the Mahdi’s return.
Read more from this story HERE.
This video is worth watching as the local Fox News commentator clearly isn’t spewing the typical “Obama talking points.” Instead, he questions, “Who exactly is the US supporting in Syria?”
Photo credit: fotosinteresantes
U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.
The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.
During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.
Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.
Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity. Read more from this story HERE.
If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video. [warning: explicit content]
Warning: explicit content. Watch rebels viciously machine gun four Assad loyalists in Syria while the surrounding crown shouts “Allahu Akbar.” Although there is no evidence that these reckless executioners were members of Obama’s favored Muslim Brotherhood, there is no doubt that Obama’s policies in the Middle East has encouraged the rise of these type of Islamic fundamentalists (read more on Obama’s efforts after the video below):
Reuters just reported today that
President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.
Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.
Read more from this story HERE.
“Which Side Are You On?/They say in Harlan County/There are no neutrals there./You’ll either be a union man/Or a thug for J. H. Blair.” –Florence Reece, “Which Side are You On?” 1931
The interesting news was not that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pelted with stuff while visiting Cair, the important issue was who was doing the pelting. Once upon a time, anti-American radicals threw things at U.S. leaders. But now….
Reportedly, the hurlers of objects were people from the Free Egyptians Party and other Egyptian liberals. At the same time, leading Christians, including Naguib Sawiris who is the man behind that party and perhaps the most outspoken anti-Islamist figure in Egypt today, refused to meet with Hillary. (For Sawiris’ critique of Obama, see here.)
Why? Because these people see the Obama Administration as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood. That might sound far-fetched to the mainstream media (though not to you, dear readers) but it is taken for granted in much of the Middle East. Oh and they also remember that the Obama Administration cut the financial support to liberal groups granted by its predecessor.
In the articles of liberal Arabs; the statements of Persian Gulf Arab establishment figures; the conversations of Syrian, Turkish, Iranian, and Lebanese oppositionists, the idea that the U.S. government is now helping the Islamists is taken for granted.
Let me repeat that: It is taken for granted.
So it is the liberals, the democrats, the moderates who now view America as their enemy. Yet supposedly the U.S. policy is promoting moderation and democracy, right?
These critics have a strong case. Obama’s Cairo speech was precisely about encouraging Middle Easterners to redefine their identity from a national one—principally Arab—to an Islamic one. Obama invited the Brotherhood to sit in the front row. And when the upsurge in Egypt began and the State Department wanted to support continuity along with reform, the Obama Administration demanded the end of the regime.
Next, without anyone asking him, Obama said the United States wouldn’t mind if the Brotherhood became the government of Egypt. And more recently, of course, he has supported the Brotherhood against the army, demanding that the military turn over power right away, or else.
And in Syria, the Obama Administration backed a Brotherhood-dominated leadership in the Syrian National Council. Islamist Turkey was the ideal country from the White House standpoint, with Obama lavishing praise and almost never criticizing it for becoming pro-Hizballah, pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-Islamist in Syria, and fanatically anti-Israel. And in Bahrain, the Obama Administration was ready to back a revolution putting (Shia) Islamists in power until the State Department stopped it.
“I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt,” says Clinton, “of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which, of course, we cannot.”
Wrong! While of course Islamists won elections in Egypt and Tunisia (but maybe lost in Libya), the Obama Administration has been working to pick the winners and losers. The winners: revolutionary, antisemitic Islamists; the losers: old regimes and liberal oppositionists.
Is it really the West’s duty to help push a radical Islamist government into power in Egypt as fast as possible? True, the Brotherhood won the parliamentary election but the election was invalidated. By who? Ah, one might expect a leading American newspaper to know that fact. Here’s the Los Angeles Times editorial on the subject:
“To some extent, the military’s power — along with economic realities — may have inclined [Egyptian President Muhammad al-] Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to a more pluralist and moderate course. But if the generals overplay their hand, they will lose popular support and antagonize Egypt’s allies, including the United States, which provides the military with $1.3 billion a year in assistance. Both Congress and the Obama administration have put the generals on notice that those funds are in jeopardy if the transition to democracy is thwarted. An attempt to shut down a reconvened parliament would be interpreted inside and outside Egypt as just such an obstruction.”
Let’s list the points made here:
–The Muslim Brotherhood has become more pluralist and moderate. Why? Because of the military’s power and economic realities. How is this logical? You mean that the military’s pressure on the Brotherhood has made it more moderate? So by that argument if the military ceased its pressure and turned over government to the Brotherhood then the Brotherhood would be more radical. Yet that is precisely what the Los Angeles Times and much of the media and the Obama Administration is advocating!
How has the economic situation made the Brotherhood more moderate? Presumably because it needs to be so in order to keep Western aid and investment flowing. But both of these factors will be insufficient to help Egypt avoid a crack-up. Then comes the time for demagoguery. Moreover, the bottom line here is to claim that the Brotherhood can be bought off. Like Iran’s regime, Syria’s regime, Saddam Hussein, and others were bought off?
–If the generals try to limit or keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of power they will become less popular. Well, maybe that is so. But popularity isn’t the most important thing in the region. That’s an American obsession, not one from Arab politics.
–The United States doesn’t like the military’s policy and will punish the army (cutting off aid?) if it doesn’t surrender. That’s a terrible policy. Talk about empowering your enemies and bashing your friends! Why should the United States be the new patron of the most dangerously anti-American group in the world? I know. Because the Obama Administration believes that will make the Brotherhood more moderate. Yet even the Obama Administration has seen that this tactic didn’t work with Iran, Syria, Hamas, or Hizballah. Why should it work this time?
Then there are two extremely important points the editorial doesn’t tell you, and you won’t see in many places:
First, let’s remember that the parliamentary election was not invalidated by the army but by the Egyptian courts. Judges have been among the most courageous dissidents in Egypt. Many of them spoke out against the Mubarak regime and they are not the clients of the army but an independent force in their own right. So if you want to exalt the rule of law, you should support the military in trying to enforce a legally binding decision by two Egyptian courts.
Second, the left and liberal forces are largely boycotting the attempt to revive the parliament illegally because they fear the Muslim Brotherhood’s monopoly on power. Have you noticed that moderate support for anti-army demonstrations has dwindled away now? It is the Brotherhood that is going up against the armed forces, though leaving the door open for a deal.
PS: The head of Israel’s military intelligence has said that Israel’s army has stopped a dozen attempted cross-border attacks in Sinai. This is of extraordinary significance since it shows a full-scale offensive is underway and not just the two attacks previously implemented.
PPS: So ridiculous is the coverage in the mainstream media that we are now told by the New York Times and by the Atlantic that Arab liberals jeered Clinton because American conservatives told them to do so! Apparently, the Egyptian reformers are too stupid to figure out for themselves that Obama is their good buddy.
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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). Here are the links to the website of the GLORIA Center and to his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Photo credit, less legend: Richard Loyal French
For years, pundits, politicians and columnists – including me – have fiercely criticized the United Nations. This institution has become a political cesspool controlled by totalitarian states and rogue nations that despise democracy, liberty and freedom. It’s only getting worse with time.
Look what’s happened during the past two weeks: Syria is likely to get a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. Watch reported Iran will get a “top post” on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty conference, which it described as being “like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud in the stock market.” Meanwhile, U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan claimed to have had a “very candid and constructive” meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
These are all ridiculous stories, but honestly, should we be surprised? I’m not. The U.N. has a long, sordid history of electing tyrannies and dictatorships to its various agencies, boards and councils. For an organization that vigorously claims to support world peace, it also vigorously – and controversially – supports countries that don’t have the slightest grasp of this concept.
For example, Libya chaired the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2003 – and was a U.N. Security Council member in 2008 and 2009. Syria has twice headed the U.N. Security Council, in June 2002 and August 2003. Iran and Iraq were scheduled to co-chair a U.N. nuclear disarmament conference before Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in 2003. Additionally, North Korea – a major nuclear threat – headed the U.N. Conference on Disarmament just last year.
Not to be overlooked is the U.N.’s repeated condemnation of Israel’s policies for more than five decades while ignoring the terrible slaughter of Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims in two bloody civil wars, publicly supporting an antiterrorism conference held in Tehran, and refusing to expel members that openly support and finance terrorist groups. The list goes on and on.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: FreedomHouse
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Saturday Sudan’s next constitution would be “100 percent Islamic” to set an example for neighboring countries, some of which have seen religious parties gain power after popular uprisings.
The secession of mostly non-Muslim South Sudan a year ago sparked predictions that Sudan, which hosted former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, would start implementing Islamic law more strictly.
In a speech to leaders of the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition in Khartoum, Bashir suggested Sudan’s new, post-secession constitution could help guide the region’s political transformation.
“We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western (influences),” said Bashir.
“And we tell non-Muslims, nothing will preserve your rights except for Islamic sharia because it is just,” he said.
Read more from this story HERE.
Photo credit: linksfraktion