Radical Islamic Group Scores Invites to SOTU

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by JIM HANSON12 Jan 20161,888

Politicians often bring guests to the President’s State of the Union address, sometimes to make a partisan point. This year that privilege is being stretched beyond the bounds of decency: At least two members of a radical Islamic group will be attending as guests of Members of Congress, supposedly to represent American Muslims. That is a disgrace.

Representatives Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)(D-Calif.) and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)(D-Fla.) are bringing leaders from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR says it is an “advocate for justice and mutual understanding.” Yet after the San Bernardino terror attacks last month, CAIR was the chief public advocatefor the terrorists’ family, even arguing in court that they should retain custody of the terrorists’ child.

CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, has stated publicly he supports the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. CAIR itself wasdesignated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates in 2014.

The impetus for this travesty was a call by Representative Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, and Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) for their colleagues to bring a Muslim to the State of the Union. They said this is needed to counter the “shocking and alarming rise in hateful rhetoric against one particular minority population in our nation.”

But Muslims are not the primary victim of hate crimes in the U.S. The vast majority of victims of hate crimes, according to the FBI, are Jews.

What is actually more shocking and alarming than alleged rhetoric against Muslims is the rise in hateful killings by one minority population.

The recent slaughter in San Bernardino, the attempted assassination of a police officer in Philadelphia, and the slayings of our troops in Chattanooga and Fort Hood all had one thing in common: The killers were Muslim – or, more specifically, jihadists – a significant subset of Muslims who believe Islam must dominate the world.

The violent version of jihad is easier to understand, but the insidious nature of “civilization jihad” makes it even more dangerous in the long term. It aims to use the very institutions of free society to destroy it. This goal and strategy was stated outright in the Explanatory Memorandum of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was seized in 2004 during a police raid in Virginia:

The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.

CAIR is considered part of a network of front groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. It was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing trial in US history, which shut down the Holy Land Foundation due to its funding of Hamas.

CAIR is out front in the effort to downplay the role of Islam in Islamic terror. For example, CAIR reacted to the recent shooting of a police officer with this statement from CAIR-Philadelphia’s executive director, Jacob Bender: ”At this time, it does not appear that he was an observant or mosque-going Muslim.”

He was describing a man who was wearing Islamic garb and who told police he was acting in the name of Islam.

After the San Bernardino jihadist attacks, Hussam Ayloush, director of CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, told CNN that the United States bore responsibility for the killings: “Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism.”

CAIR does more than justify terrorism and obfuscate the motivations of the jihadists. It pushes the boundaries of “tolerance.” Last year, it promoted the story of Ahmed the clock-hoaxer as an incident of anti-Muslim bias, rather than what it arguably was: namely, an incident of political warfare striking back at the mayor of Irving, Texas, who came into CAIR’s crosshairs when she fought back against an attempt to open an Islamic Law tribunal in Irving.

The success of CAIR in presenting itself as an organization of “moderate” Muslims is especially dangerous as it marginalizes groups actually trying to reform Islam. TheMuslim Reform Movement, headed by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, is one such group that actually deserves to be heard. It calls for an awakening within Islam to make it compatible with free western society. We must ensure that extremists like CAIR don’t drown such voices out.

Jim Hanson is the Executive VP of the Center for Security Policy and previously served in US Army Special Forces.

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Fact Check: Top 10 Lies in Obama’s State of the Union

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by JOEL B. POLLAK12 Jan 20162,776

President Barack Obama promised his final State of the Union address would be short. Dana Bash of CNN called it “low-energy.” One thing it was notwas accurate–or honest. Here are Obama’s top ten lies, in chronological order.

1. “[W]e’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” This is pure fiction. Obama has doubled the national debt, and it’s not because he cut the deficit. Rather, he spent staggering amounts of money in his first months in office–which he assigns, dishonestly, to the previous fiscal year, under George W. Bush. He “cut” (i.e. spent more gradually) from that spending, but only under protest, after Republicans took the House in 2010.

(Update: It is true that Obama’s 2015 budget deficit was about 25% of his 2010 deficit. But he referred to “deficits,” plural. Until last year, all of Obama’s deficits were worse than all of Bush’s deficits except for the last two.)

2. “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”With that line, Obama took a shot at his would-be Democratic successors, as well as his Republican critics. But the truth is that despite the slow recovery–the slowest since World War II–labor force participation is the lowest it has been in decades. Wages are stagnant, household incomes still have not recovered from the recession, and young people see a bleak future.

3. “That’s what the Affordable Care Act is all about. It’s about filling the gaps in employer-based care so that when we lose a job, or go back to school, or start that new business, we’ll still have coverage.”That is a cruel joke, given that Obamacare canceled insurance coverage for millions of Americans who did not change jobs. It also raised deductibles and premiums so high that many insurance companies are leaving the Obama exchanges totally.

4. “Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did.” Actually, food stamp recipients, metaphorically speaking, were indirectly responsible–as well as Wall Street sharks. Obama leaves out the government’s role, under the Community Reinvestment Act, in pushing mortgages on people who could not afford them, and in backing the derivatives based on those mortgages that ultimately burst the whole bubble.

5. “We’ve protected an open internet…”. Obama’s policy of Net Neutrality has turned Internet service providers into public utilities under an ancient regulatory regime. The result has been a sharp decline in broadband investment and a much less free and open system. In addition, the Obama administration is rushing to shift control of ICANN to the international community, which will ensure that the Internet is less free, and subject to overseas censorship.

6. “Seven years ago, we made the single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results.” It is laughable that Obama would claim his failed clean energy spending–think Solyndra–led to the fracking-fed energy boom we have enjoyed for the past several years, especially when the administration did all it could to stop oil and gas development. He also nixed the Keystone pipeline and started a plan to kill coal plants.

7. “No nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin.” Of all the lies in Obama’s speech, this was undoubtedly the worst, coming hours after Iran seized two U.S. Navy boats and ten sailors. Obama did not even mention those Americans in captivity at any point in his speech, declining the chance to reassure the nation that they would come home safely. It is an omission that will define this address in history.

8. “As someone who begins every day with an intelligence briefing, I know this is a dangerous time.” Obama does not attend most of his daily intelligence briefings, preferring instead to read intelligence reports–so he claims–on his iPad, a stark contrast to the attentive approach of his predecessor. Late last year, even as Obama claimed that there was little risk from attack, radical Islamic terrorists carried out brutal attacks in Paris and in San Bernardino.

9. “We are training, arming, and supporting forces who are steadily reclaiming territory in Iraq and Syria [from Islamic State].” The Obama administration’s attempt to train and arm Syrian rebels has been a disaster. Belatedly, the administration has helped Kurdish peshmerga forces, and the Iraqi military has made gains lately, but Obama has not made a serious effort to defeat the Islamic State, and is even giving up on regime change in Syria.

10. “Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America.” And a year of appeasement has not promoted democracy, either. The Castros remain firmly in power, and we are not helping the opposition. Worse, the Cuban regime continues to arrest thousands of political dissidents, to cozy up to enemies like Iran and North Korea, and to carry out provocative acts–such as stealing a U.S. Hellfire missile.

Towards the end of his speech, Obama told one important truth: “There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide…”.

An unusual, but overdue, admission of guilt.

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