Obama Appoints Radical Muslim Apologist To Faith-Based Committee

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Obama Appoints Radical Muslim Apologist To Faith-Based Committee

    President Obama has announced the addition of Dalia Mogahed to the
    President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood
    Partnerships. Ms Mogahed has a history as an apologist for radical
    Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Much of her work has been in
    conjunction with her mentor, John Esposito.

    Last year Gallup Press has published a book Who Speaks for Islam? By
    John L. Esposito, one of the Muslim Brotherhoods biggest supporters in
    the US (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Georgetown stooge), and  Esposito
    protegee, the head of Gallup's Muslim division, Dalia Mogahed. The
    book claimed that that their research proved that most Muslims are
    peace-loving moderates just like us. The amazing part of their
    research was THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO FIND THE RIGHT NUMBERS! They
    just lied about what the numbers mean.

      ...7 percent. That is the percentage of Muslims who told pollsters
      that the attacks of September 11, 2001, were "completely" justified
      and who said they view the United States unfavorably--the
      double-barreled litmus test devised by Esposito and Mogahed to
      determine who is radical and who isn't.

      The authors don't actually call even these people "radicals,"
      however; the term they use is "politically radicalized," which
      implies that someone else is responsible for turning these
      otherwise ordinary Muslims into bin Laden sympathizers. By
      contrast, Muslims who said the 9/11 attacks were "not justified"
      they term "moderates."

      More than half the book is an effort to distinguish the 7 percent
      of extremist Muslims from the "9 out of 10," as they say, who are
      moderates and then to focus our collective efforts on reaching out
      to the fringe element. With remarkable exactitude, they argue: "If
      the 7 percent (91 million) of the politically radicalized continue
      to feel politically dominated, occupied and disrespected, the West
      will have little, if any, chance of changing their minds." There is
      no need to worry about the 93 percent because, as Esposito and
      Mogahed have already argued, they are just like us.

      There is much here to criticize. The not-so-hidden purpose of this
      book is to blur any difference between average Muslims around the
      world and average Americans, and the authors rise to the occasion
      at every turn. Take the very definition of "Islam." From Karen
      Armstrong to Bernard Lewis--and that's a pretty broad
      range--virtually every scholar of note (and many who aren't) has
      translated the term "Islam" as "submission to God." But
      "submission" evidently sounds off-putting to the American ear, so
      Esposito and Mogahed offer a different, more melodious
      translation--"a strong commitment to God"--that has a ring to it of
      everything but accuracy.

      Or take the authors' cavalier attitude to the word "many." How many
      is many? Thirty percent of the vote won't get Hillary Clinton
      nominated for president, but it would be a lot if the subject were
      how many Americans cheat on their taxes or beat their wives. At the
      very least, one might expect a book based on polling data to be
      filled with numbers. This one isn't. Instead, page after page of
      Who Speaks for Islam? contains such useless and unsourced
      references as "many respondents cite" this or "many Muslims see"
      that.

      Or take the authors' apparent indifference to facts. Twice, for
      example, they cite as convincing evidence for their argument poll
      data from "the ten most populous majority Muslim countries," which
      they then list as including Jordan and Lebanon, tiny states that
      don't even rank in the top 25 of Muslim majority countries. Twice
      they say their 10 specially polled countries collectively comprise
      80 percent of the world Muslim population; in fact, the figure is
      barely 60 percent.

      These problems would not matter much if the book gave readers the
      opportunity to review the poll data on which Esposito and Mogahed
      base their judgments. Alas, that is not the case. Neither the text
      nor the appendix includes the full data to a single question from
      any survey taken by Gallup over the entire six-year period of its
      World Poll initiative. We, the readers, either have to pay more
      than $20,000 to Gallup to gain access to its proprietary research
      or have to rely on the good faith of the authors.

      Or, more accurately, we have to rely on Gallup's good name--the
      "integrity, trust and independence" cited above. Public comments by
      Mogahed at a luncheon I hosted at the Washington Institute on April
      17 show exactly what that is worth.

      Here's the context: As the event was about to close, Mogahed was
      pressed to explain the book's central claim that radicals
      constitute 7 percent of the world's Muslim population. A questioner
      focused on the critical distinction between the 7 percent of
      respondents who said the 9/11 attacks were "completely justified"
      and the other 93 percent. How many of those 93 percent, Mogahed was
      asked, actually answered that the attacks were "partly,"
      "somewhat," or even "largely" justified? Were those people truly
      moderates?

      In her answer, transcribed below, Mogahed refers in pollster code
      to numbers ascribed to the five possible answers to the poll
      question about justifying 9/11. Although she and Esposito never
      discuss the details of this question in their book, they did
      expound on them in a 2006 article in Foreign Policy magazine, which
      described a five-point scale in which "Ones" are respondents who
      said 9/11 was "totally unjustified" and "Fives" those who said the
      attacks were "completely justified."

      In that article, she and Esposito wrote: "Respondents who said 9/11
      was justified (4 or 5 on the same scale) are classified as
      radical." In the book they wrote two years later, they redefined
      "radical" to comprise a much smaller group--only the Fives. But in
      her luncheon remarks, Mogahed admitted that many of the "moderates"
      she and Esposito celebrated really aren't so moderate after all.
      (Source)

    Once again the President of the United States is selecting his staff
    from the "realm" of those who would destroy us.  The report below is
    from the Global Muslim Brotherhood Report:

      Esposito Protoge Appointed To Obama Advisory Council
      The White House has announced that one of two Muslim members
      appointed to the President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and
      Neighborhood Partnerships is Dalia Mogahed, a protege of John
      Espositio, perhaps the best known academic supporter of the Muslim
      Brotherhood and with strong ties to Saudi Arabia. The Office of
      Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was formerly known as the
      White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and is
      part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
      Ms. Mogahed, who was born in Egypt and lived in the U.S. since the
      age of 5, is the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim
      Studies and the co-author of a book with Dr. Esposito suggesting
      that majority of the world's Muslims support some form of
      democracy. Dr. Esposito is also a member of the Gallup Center along
      with Ahmed Younis, previously a National Director for the Muslim
      Public Affairs Council (MPAC), part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
      In 2003, Ms. Mogahed was identified in 2003 as the Outreach
      Coordinator for the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh (ICP) whose
      co-founder recently lost a DOE security clearance and whose Imam
      will probably be deported on immigration violations. Ms. Mogahed is
      the daughter of Elsayed Mogahed, an Egyptian immigrant who is a
      former engineering scientist at the University of Wisconsin and
      director of the Islamic Center of Madison (ICM). The website of the
      ICM links mainly to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations and
      Souheil Ghannouchi, the President of the Muslim American Society
      (MAS), was ICM Imam and President for several years. The MAS is
      part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and closest to the Egyptian
      Muslim Brotherhood.

      The appointment of Ms. Mogahed is further evidence of the
      increasing role of Dr. Esposito within the Obama administration.
      Previous posts have discussed President Obama's meeting with the
      Alliance of Civilizations, an organization represented by the U.S.
      by Dr. Esposito and the scheduled appearance of Secretary of State
      Hillary Clinton at the upcoming annual conference of the Center for
      the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), founded by Dr. Esposito
      and who will also be speaking at the conference. Dr. Esposito has
      espoused views consistent with Brotherhood doctrine and during the
      1990's was known for his claims that Islamic fundamentalism was, in
      fact, democratic and posed no threat to the U.S. Dr. Esposito has
      at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim
      Brotherhood/Hamas organizations including having served on the
      advisory boards of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in
      the U.K. and the United Association for Studies and Research in the
      U.S. and has served with global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef
      Qaradawi on the Steering Committee of the Circle of Tradition and
      Progress. In 2005, Saudi prince Alaweed bin Talal, a financial
      supporter of the global Muslim Brotherhood donated $20 million to
      the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown, headed
      by Dr. Esposito. Despite these many ties to the global Brotherhood,
      Dr. Esposito claimed significant gaps in his knowledge about the
      Brotherhood while  testifying in the retrial of the Holy Land
      Foundation terrorism financing case.

      The Council on American Islamic Relations, another part of the U.S.
      Muslim Brotherhood, congratulated Mr. Mogahed on her appointment.

    Posted by Sammy Benoit at 4/12/2009

  Linkname: YID With LID: Obama Appoints Radical Muslim Apologist To
  Faith-Based Committee

  URL:
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2009/04/
obama-appoints-radical-muslim-apologist.html