Recently in mosques Category

Why not? The Qur'an tells men to beat women: "Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them." (Qur'an 4:34)

Muhammad’s example is normative for Muslims, since he is an “excellent example of conduct” (Qur'an 33:21) – and according to a canonical hadith, Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child bride Aisha, reports that Muhammad struck her. Once he went out at night after he thought she was asleep, and she followed him surreptitiously. Muhammad saw her, and, as Aisha recounts: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Sahih Muslim 2127) Aisha herself said it: “I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women.” (Sahih Bukhari 7.72.715)

And the egregious tool Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe just published a puff piece about this mosque.

"Boston bombers’ mosque recommended men beat their wives," by Patrick Howley for the Daily Caller, May 12:

The Islamic Society of Boston, the mosque attended by Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, posted an article on its website in September 2004 that advocated for the beating of women as a last resort to force them to behave.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based mosque posted an English translation of Saudi cleric Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajid’s 1997 work, “The Muslim Home: 40 Recommendations in Light of the Quran and Sunnah,” which the mosque headlined, “40 Recommendations for the Muslim Home.”

“Hinting at punishment is an effective means of discipline, so the reason for hanging up a whip or stick in the house was explained in another report, where the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: ‘Hang up the whip where the members of the household can see it, for this is more effective in disciplining them,’” the article states.

“Seeing the means of punishment hanging up will make those who have bad intentions refrain from indulging in bad behaviour, lest they get a taste of the punishment. It will motivate them to behave themselves and be good mannered,” it says.

“Hitting is not the way to discipline; it is not to be resorted to, except when all other means are exhausted, or when it is needed to force someone to do obligatory acts of obedience, as Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): ‘… As to those women on whose part you fear ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful),’” it goes on.

The author of the work, Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajid, said on religious program that “Jewish websites” can justifiably be hacked by Muslims as part of the “war against (Jews).”...

Mosques are the Battleground of the War between Islam and the West
by Enza Ferreri

"We don't debate unprofessional councillors, unprincipled journalists, and self-righteous community organizers; we turn the tables on them": this is how British planning lawyer Gavin Boby, also known as the "mosque buster", describes the activity of his organization, the Law And Freedom Foundation. He uses the law to stop the building of mosques in the UK by demonstrating to local councils that the building of a mosque or an Islamic centre is actually in violation of British law. And he succeeds: the count so far is 16 victories out of 17 cases.

Gavin Boby is a 48-year-old planning lawyer from Bristol, South-West England. He deals with planning permissions or zoning permissions.

Like many other people in Britain, for almost 10 years Boby had witnessed the progressive penetration of Islam in his country, but like many other people he watched idly not knowing what to do about it.

It was the same feeling of impotence that most of us shared. But then, a couple of years ago, he had this idea. Many mosques disrupt neighbourhoods and drive out long-time residents. Non-Muslim women in particular are made to feel uncomfortable in those areas. Why not use his legal skills to help local communities resist planning applications for mosques?

The BBC video above the article exposes how corrupt the process of granting mosque planning applications can be, showcasing a session in the Rochdale Council's planning committee in the North of England, during which councillor Begum does not allow discussion before the vote is taken and rushes the other members to vote.

This is very topical in light of the recent revelations that the Boston bombers' mosque "has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism", has classic jihadi texts in its library, and gave money to two terrorist charities which have been shut down by the U.S. government. But then again, when is something about the violent nature of Islam not topical these days?

Still, this is a good way to introduce the mosque buster's work. What are mosques? As we know, mosques are not like churches or synagogues, they are far more than houses of worship and contemplation, many of them are centres of jihadist activity that indoctrinate to commit and support violence against infidels. In America, as many as 4 different studies have independently come to the same conclusion that 80 per cent of US mosques "were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians".

The Law And Freedom Foundation website declares: "A mosque is not merely a place of worship. Islamic doctrine requires the application of Islamic law within its geographical reach."

We can see the truth of that in London. It is no coincidence that sharia-law areas or self-declared Muslim areas with Muslim patrols acting like vigilantes in cities like London are near mosques. We are increasingly seeing Muslim patrols in the proximity of mosques saying to passers-by that they can't walk a dog, wear a skirt, drink alcohol.

In an interview Gavin Boby explains that mosques are being used as the bridgehead, the forefront of the advance of Islam in a territory. What happens in neighbourhoods - usually working class districts which are not used to dealing with officialdom - where a mosque is built is that the area changes forever for its residents, who no longer recognize it and eventually have to move out, due to things like the parking jihad, general harassment, vandalism.

"The parking jihad is" he describes, "soon after the construction of a mosque, people will find no parking space there, their driveway is being blocked or even a car is parked in the driveway inside your property and if you ask them to move their car they'll say it's only for an hour." The parking tends to be used as a way to establish possession and control over the area, of saying: "This is a mosque area, we are the owners now and there's nothing you can do about it", and then after that it gets worse until the point when people move out.

"The Koran," the Bristol lawyer continues, "calls 14 times for the enslavement of non-Muslims, and 3 times for killing the unbelievers wherever they are found. This is obviously against English law. You don't need to be a good lawyer to fight it but you need to be a very good lawyer to get around it."

Partly, the mosque buster's approach is that of finding the contradictions and incompatibilities between Islam and Western fundamental principles (that's the easy part), and making mosque building and planning regulations become the battleground of these ideological conflicts.

In the same way as Islam is not just a religion but also a political doctrine of supremacy and power, so the mosque is not simply a building of worship but also a political one.

Gavin elaborates:

This is the Islamic doctrine, every mosque is instructed to be based upon the original mosque in Medina, where Muhammad originally in the 7th century set up his religious-political doctrine of social control, and the mosque is a place of government, it is a place where treaties are made, death sentences are passed, armies are blessed and dispatched, it is primarily about political control and it is very much used as a tool of advance. Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey talked about that, the Muslim Brotherhood compared their mosques to battalions and to beehives, where Muslims will gather and then advance, and there's nothing new about this, it goes back to the 7th century.

So this is the why of the Law And Freedom Foundation's operation. Now let's see the how.

Gavin works pro bono as a planning lawyer for anyone wishing to fight the erection of a mosque. He says:

The method is very simple. A planning application gets submitted for a mosque in an area, and it will never be called a "mosque". It will be called a community centre; an inter-faith centre; a public community, harmony-building outreach centre, and then the neighbours contact us, and it's usually people who have never been involved in politics before, are shy of politics and officialdom and ask us to help them to resist it. And that's what we do, we help them to simply use established methods of consultation to tell the local authorities: "We object to this proposal because of the effect it will have on the neighbourhood, the effect on parking, the effect on noise, the effect on disturbance, the architectural effect, the effect of concentrations of people generally, the amenity for residents". And also we give them advocacy in front of the council meeting, we'll advocate on their behalf.

Therefore the approach is twofold. The most commonly employed is to use the effects on and the desires of the local communities as tools in the consultation process which is local authorities' standard procedure before a planning or change of use permission is granted.

As an example, the last two refusals to mosque building from local authorities were motivated by: loss of the retail floorspace; harm to the character, function, vitality and viability of the neighbourhood centre; possible harm to the surrounding transport network in respect of movements to and from the site for both pedestrians and vehicles; loss of employment use in a Locally Significant Industrial Site and potential harm to the viability and function of the remaining Locally Significant Industrial Site; low public transport accessibility inappropriate for a large-scale community facility; lack of adequate on-site parking with resulting overspill on-street parking likely to cause unacceptable traffic management problems and traffic congestion, to the detriment of traffic flow and road safety in the vicinity of the site.

From these you can have an idea of the broadness and scope of reasons that can be used. Other common issues are noise, and congestion at particular times like Fridays at prayer times or when there are Koran lessons for children.

The second approach - although what is predominantly used is the first - goes more to the core of what Islam is. The organization's website states: "Also, it is hard to see how a Local Authority has the power to grant planning permission for a mosque, since the purpose of a mosque is to promote a doctrine that incites killing, enslavement and war. You don’t need to be a skilled lawyer to understand this point – you have to be a skilled lawyer to find a way around it."

This conviction was evident when the mosque buster was asked how he responds to people who say this is an infringement of freedom of religion. He answered:

I understand people who say that, and it would be the case if Islam were simply about private contemplation and reflection, the way that Christianity in a parish church is, but the problem is that you have two legal principles that conflict. You have this issue of freedom of religion and you have the public order issue, it's not an issue of censorship, it's a public order issue that [you have] if you have people preaching warfare, preaching violence, preaching killing and enslaving against another part of the population: that is against the most founding principles, [which were established] before freedom of religion was established within English law, within any law.

The British planning lawyer clarifies the relationship between these approaches when he advises his clients: "Don't focus on the religious and political aspects, focus on the technical ones, but what we are doing is trying to stop the area from being Islamized". But the two issues, i.e. the political question and the concern about community safety, are in fact indissolubly interconnected; he acts from knowledge of the intimidation and violence that the mosques regularly bring with them.

He observes that mosques are increasingly being built in the UK in numbers which are disproportionate to the need for them, and often in areas with hardly any Muslim population.

The Law and Freedom Foundation also offers advice to local activists on how to go about the business of mosque busting. Gavin Boby's is an original approach, even the way he talks gives you the immediate impression that he brings something new and different (lawyer-like but this time in a good sense) to the anti-Islam movement.

Boby has become a household name in the counterjihad movement, and others outside the UK are following his example, like Geert Wilders in Holland, whose party recently launched the “MoskNee” (“MosqueNo”) project. Still to remain in continental Europe, the mosque buster spoke at the Brussels ICLA conference on July 9 2012.

He was also invited to speak in Ottawa, Canada by the organization Act for Canada, which points out that the University of Alberta's former Chair in Islamic Studies explained how the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan al-Banna hoped to change "the status of the Mosque, bringing it from a static place of worship to a center of Islamic revolution", while Youssef Qaradawi, unconditionally endorsed by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada, wrote: "It must be the role of the mosque to guide the public policy of a nation, raise awareness of critical issues, and reveal its enemies. From ancient times the mosque has had a role in urging jihad for the sake of Allah". Gavin also spoke in Toronto and Montreal.

In August/September 2012 Mr Boby toured Australia on invitation of the Q Society of Australia, according to which many Australians still do not fully understand how important mosques and mosque-building are in Islamic doctrine and how crucially different a mosque is from a church or synagogue. Many Australians did not know that in their country there are already over 340 mosques and Islamic prayer rooms, many of which are rooms in once secular public buildings and public spaces.

As can be expected, there is controversy and attempts to stop this mosque-busting lawyer from giving speeches wherever they are scheduled, and he has been vilified by the mass media.

But what really matters is that it works. Maybe his activity can be the inspiration to find other specialistic, professional ways to use the law against the Islamization of our countries.

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L'Espresso, and La Repubblica.

From Yahoo News:

NEW YORK, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The human rights organization American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) has called upon government and law enforcement authorities to close three U.S. mosques that have been established as breeding grounds for jihad terror.

The call follows the issuance last week of AFDI's 18-point Platform for Defending Freedom, which offered practical steps to protect the nation from jihad terror in the wake of the Boston jihad bombings.

Those 18 points included a call for "immediate investigation into foreign mosque funding in the West and for new legislation making foreign funding of mosques in non-Muslim nations illegal," as well as for "surveillance of mosques and regular inspections of mosques in the U.S. and other non-Muslim nations to look for pro-violence materials. Any mosque advocating jihad or any aspects of Sharia that conflict with Constitutional freedoms and protections should be closed."

AFDI Executive Director Pamela Geller said in a statement: "In accord with those calls for responsible law enforcement regarding subversive activities in U.S. mosques, we are asking that government and law enforcement officials launch immediate investigations into the Islamic Society of Boston, the Dar al-Hijrah Mosque of Fairfax County, Virginia, and the Noor Center of Columbus, Ohio."

Geller emphasized: "These mosques are not unique. There are many others like them. But they are the tip of the spear. It is time that our officials demand that they obey American laws, or be held accountable for not doing so."

The reasons for the calls for closure include:

Islamic Society of Boston (two mosques, one in Cambridge and one in Boston)

• Founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who served as its first president. He is now in prison for financing al-Qaeda.
• Aafia Siddiqui attended this mosque. She is now serving an 86-year-sentence for plotting a jihad attack in New York City, and firing at military officers and FBI agents when under arrest.
• Tarek Mehanna attended this mosque. He is now serving 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda.
• Ahmad Abousamra attended this mosque. He was Mehanna's co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI.
• Jamal Badawi of Canada was a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding trial.
• Yusuf al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader who has praised Hitler and called on Muslims to finish his work, was a mosque trustee and has addressed congregants via recorded video message to raise money for the Boston mosque.
• Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at the Boston mosque in April 2009, has advocated replacing U.S. democracy with Islamic rule and called Christians "filthy" polytheists whose "life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of Jihad."
• Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon jihad bombers, attended the Cambridge mosque.

The Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center, Fairfax County, Virginia.

• The Saudi-backed North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a Muslim Brotherhood group, bought the mosque's grounds in 1983.
• Mohammed al-Hanooti, the mosque's imam from 1995-1999, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
• Anwar al-Awlaki, the mosque's imam from 2001-2002, has extensive contact with three 9/11 hijackers, the Fort Hood jihad murderer, and the Christmas underwear bomber.
• Johari Abdul-Malik, the mosque's director of outreach from 2002 to the present, has defended Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is in prison for financing al-Qaeda.
• Ahmed Omar Abu Ali taught Islamic studies and was a camp counselor at the mosque; he is now in prison for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush.
• Shaker Elsayed, the mosque's imam from 2005 to the present, was Secretary General of the Muslim American Society, a Muslim Brotherhood group.
• Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood jihad mass murderer, attended this mosque.
• Abdelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, a member of the mosque's Executive Committee, was convicted in November 2007 of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify regarding Hamas, and received an eleven-year prison sentence.

Noor Mosque, Columbus, Ohio

• The leader of the mosque, Dr. Hany Saqr, was previously an imam for another area mosque which at that time was the base of operations for the largest known Al-Qaeda cell in the U.S. since 9/11, including convicted jihadists Iyman Faris, Nuradin Abdi, and Christopher Paul. Saqr is one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America.
• Dr. Salah Sultan was the mosque's unofficial scholar in residence. A protégé of Qaradawi, Sultan is now in the Middle East and has appeared on Egyptian television approvingly quoting the genocidal hadith about how the end times will not come until Muslims kill Jews, and previously appeared at events in support of Hamas and Qaradawi.
• The Noor Center has been directly linked to the Somali Muslims who have gone from the U.S. back to Somali for jihad terror training.
• Siraj Wahhaj, a friend of the Blind Sheikh and a potential unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has spoken at the Noor Mosque.
• Mosque members threatened the life of Rifqa Bary, a teenage girl who left Islam for Christianity.

AFDI stands for:

• The freedom of speech – as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of "blasphemy" and "slander," which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism;
• The freedom of conscience – as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy;
• The equality of rights of all people before the law – as opposed to Sharia's institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Apparently this is different landing gear from that which crashed through the roof of the building that the Islamic supremacists want to tear down in order to build the triumphal mosque at Ground Zero. This landing gear has been there for eleven and a half years and was apparently never found before; it was discovered by surveyors doing work on the property. So apparently the shady grifter Sharif El-Gamal has gotten the money to build his triumphal mosque and is going ahead with it. But we'll be there, too.

Exit question: will all the Leftists and Islamic supremacists who have been insisting since the height of the Ground Zero Mosque controversy that this building was not part of Ground Zero stop the propaganda now that apparently landing gear crashed into this building not once, but twice? No, but they're shown up all the more for what they are.

"9/11 jet landing gear is found — behind Ground Zero mosque site," by Bill Sanderson for the New York Post, April 26:

The landing gear, thought to be from 9/11 jet, was discovered behind Ground Zero mosque site

Part of the landing gear from a passenger jet used in the Sept. 11 attacks was found behind the site of the controversial Ground Zero mosque, police said.

The piece of gear was discovered Wednesday, wedged between the rear of 51Park Place, the mosque site, and the building behind it, 50 Murray Street.

Police are treating the site as a crime scene.

They will photograph the piece, and the Medical Examiner will check the area for human remains.

The aircraft part has a clearly visible Boeing identification number, police said.

Surveyors hired by the owner of 51 Park Place made the find this morning when they were working on the property.

They called 911 at about 11 a.m. to report what they believed was damaged machinery, cops said....

Ground Zero Mosque freedom rally hosted by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer -- we'll be back, Sharif

Sharif el-Gamal, who famously opined that "when you beat up someone physically you get exercise & stress relief," was evicted from his SoHo office over $39,000 in back rent, and was found to owe $21,000 in fines on a property with 13 violations, along with other unanswered questions about his financial dealings. So how is it that he is still operating, and where did he get this $8 million?

"He now controls three properties next to each other on the same block." It came out in December, as I noted in a PJ Media piece, that "one year after the notorious Park51 'community center' opened 'with great fanfare,' it was 'now an empty space with no community programs.'" The New York Post reported: “What’s more, while the developers behind Park51 insisted for two years that the project was more than a mosque, it now appears to be just that. Dozens of worshipers gather at the site on Park Place Friday for prayer services — but that’s the only activity in the building.”

That was the ignominious denouement of the institution that its developer, Sharif El-Gamal, once boasted would soon be “the most famous community center in the whole world.” El-Gamal wasn’t the only one boasting: when Park51 officially opened in 2011, reporters from all over the world contacted Pamela Geller and me, as the leaders of the national opposition to the Ground Zero mosque, asking us for comment on the “fact” that we had “lost,” that the “community center” was opening despite our opposition.

But this was a case of a defeated side declaring victory and getting out, a la Vietnam. There is no triumphal mosque at Ground Zero. Pamela Geller and I defeated it. But it looks from this as if Sharif El-Gamal hasn't given up. And neither have we. If he moves forward with the triumphal mosque, we will back with the tens of thousands of protesters we brought to Ground Zero in 2010 and 2011.

"Park51 Developer Buys Next-Door Building for $8 Million," by James Fanelli for DNAinfo, April 24 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

DOWNTOWN — The developer behind Park51, the planned Islamic cultural center two blocks from the World Trade Center, is turning a Manhattan street into a game of Monopoly.

Sharif El-Gamal recently bought a five-story building adjacent to the controversial project for $8 million, city records show. With the purchase of 43 Park Place, he now controls three properties next to each other on the same block.

With the help of a $7 million mortgage, El-Gamal bought the latest building under the shell company 43 Park Place Partners Corp., city records show. The sale was recorded Jan. 23.

In July 2009 he and his partners paid nearly $5 million for 45-47 Park Place, a former Burlington Coat Factory store that was heavily damaged on 9/11. His group also leases 51 Park Place from Con Edison. Those buildings comprise Park51.

The latest property is a commercial building that's home to the Dakota Roadhouse bar, a bakery and other businesses.

So far El-Gamal hasn't won over his new tenants, some of which have been worrying about their future in the building. His real estate management company, Soho Properties, has offered buyouts to at least two tenants, but the amounts were too little to make the move worth it, sources said.

Tenants have also griped about the building's upkeep.

Its elevator has been out of service for the past two weeks, and SoHo Properties has been slow to address the problem, sources said. One worker with a broken foot has been forced to climb five flights of stairs to get to her office, a source said.

"It's definitely a nuisance," a source said. Tenants have also complained about water pressure problems on certain floors and lack of heat.

El-Gamal did not return a call for comment on his plans for the building.

El-Gamal has worked in real estate for more than a decade, but at least a half dozen of his deals have been bogged down by lawsuits and allegations of owed money.

In 2011, Con Edison threatened to evict Park51 because it hadn't paid $1.7 million in rent. El-Gamal later sued the utility, claiming it overvalued the property and miscalculated rent. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge sided with Con Ed's appraisal, but the litigation has continued.

Last week Khalil Sikander, an investor in two Washington Heights residential buildings, sued El-Gamal in Manhattan Supreme Court, accusing Soho Properties of mismanaging the properties, withholding account information and not paying its bills.

Sikander claims El-Gamal's firm didn't keep accurate records, failed to rent apartments and used inexperienced and unlicensed contractors to perform work on the buildings.

"He didn't pay bills," Sikander's lawyer, Claude Castro, said. "We want to look at the books and records. We want an accounting. We want to see why these bills have not been paid."

In 2012, El-Gamal filed a lawsuit against Sikander, accusing him of poorly repairing another Washington Heights residential building they had worked on together.

Park51 has been El-Gamal's most ambitious real estate project yet — but so far the biggest disappointment.

In 2010 he weathered a political firestorm over the proximity of Ground Zero to a mosque inside 45-47 Park Place. He then unveiled an ambitious plan to build a $140 million Islamic center at the property that would provide prayer space, cultural programs, daycare and a 9/11 memorial.

Park51 officially opened in September 2011 with a photo exhibit of children from around the world, but since then little progress has been made. Construction hasn't begun on El-Gamal's grand vision of a 15-story glass building at the site.

Park51's chief of staff, Katerina Lucas, left more than a year ago and has not been replaced. She declined a request for comment.

While the mosque still holds daily prayer services, the center's cultural programs have all but ceased. Park51's website doesn't appear to have been updated since last spring, with its main page advertising a class on Islamic calligraphy that took place in April 2012. Its last tweet — a call asking for an intern — was posted in June 2012.

A class on Capoeira, a Brazilian martial arts dance, remains the only cultural program up and running in the center, according to the class instructor, Luz Emma Canas Jesus.

"We've been there for two years," she said. "We've been the consistent program. They've had other programs come and go. We've been there."

Big surprise here -- this is going to knock back a lot of Christian leaders who are engaged in wonderfully fruitful "dialogue" with these slick deceivers. Or maybe they won't be knocked back, because they're impervious to facts. "Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties," by Oren Dorell for USA Today, April 23 (thanks to Charles Jacobs):

BOSTON — The mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing has been associated with other terrorist suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.

Several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated for Islamic terrorism, including a conviction of the mosque's first president, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, in connection with an assassination plot against a Saudi prince.

And its sister mosque in Boston, known as the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has invited guests who have defended terror suspects. A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

The head of the group is among critics who say the mosques teach a brand of Islamic thought that encourages grievances against the West, distrust of law enforcement and opposition to Western forms of government, dress and social values.

"We don't know where these boys were radicalized," says the head of the group, Charles Jacobs. "But this mosque has a curriculum that radicalizes people. Other people have been radicalized there."

Yusufi Vali, executive director at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, insists his mosque does not spread radical ideology and cannot be blamed for the acts of a few worshipers.

"If there were really any worry about us being extreme," Vali said, U.S. law enforcement agencies such as the FBI and Departments of Justice and Homeland Security would not partner with the Muslim American Society and the Boston mosque in conducting monthly meetings that have been ongoing for four years, he said, in an apparent reference to U.S. government outreach programs in the Muslim community.

The Cambridge and Boston mosques, separated by the Charles River, are owned by the same entity but managed individually. The imam of the Cambridge mosque, Sheik Basyouny Nehela, is on the board of directors of the Boston mosque.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, attended the Cambridge mosque for services and are accused of setting two bombs that killed three people and injured at least 264 others at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indicated that either mosque was involved in any criminal activity. But mosque attendees and officials have been implicated in terrorist activity.

• Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque's president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-Saudi crown prince Abdullah. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.
None

• Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.

• Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.

• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna's co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.

• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

What both mosques have in common is an affiliation with the Muslim American Society, an organization founded in 1993 that describes itself as an American Islamic revival movement. It has also been described by federal prosecutors in court as the "overt arm" of the Muslim Brotherhood, which calls for Islamic law and is the parent organization of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group.

Critics say the Muslim American Society promotes a fraught relationship with the United States, expressed in part by the pattern discussed by Americans for Progress and Tolerance in which adherents are made to feel cut off from their home country and to identify with a global Islamist political community rather than with America....

The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood group.

And his brother said: "I don’t like what America is doing. I don’t like it because they shouldn’t be in Muslim countries." If they believed that the U.S. was at war with Islam and that that war took the form of being illegitimately in Muslim countries, they might also have believed that it was their duty to wage defensive jihad, which according to Islamic law is obligatory upon every Muslim if a Muslim land is attacked.

"Bombing suspect’s mosque hosted author who criticized US, UK for ‘war against Islam,’" by Patrick Howley for the Daily Caller, April 19 (thanks to Patricia):

The Islamic Society of Boston, attended by Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, recently hosted a book event featuring a journalist who has been highly critical of the U.S. and U.K. “War on Terror,” which she described as a “war against Islam.”

The Islamic Society of Boston also encouraged its members to show their “support of the forgotten women of the War on Terror.”

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based mosque and its satellite cultural center —  which announced its indefinite closing Friday in light of “the terrible and sad events of last night, the criminal of the bombings on the loose, and the strong recommendations of our Governor” — hosted a book signing and “Meet the Author” event April 6 with British journalist and former Guardian editor Victoria Brittain, who discussed her book “Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror.”

The Islamic Society of Boston posted a graphic promoting the event on its Facebook page April 1, describing the plight of a British woman whose husband has been in Guantanamo prison for 11 years and encouraging people to “Put your profile in shadow in support of the forgotten women of the War on Terror.”

I was on the Laura Ingraham Show yesterday discussing the Boston jihad bombings and the extent of Islamic supremacist preaching in U.S. mosques. You can listen here.

I referred during this interview to four separate studies that all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.”

Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

And in the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.

Specifically:

A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshiper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.

That means that around 1,700 mosques in the U.S. are preaching hatred of infidels and justifying violence against them.

Watch for the worldwide Muslim protests against the desecration of this mosque -- no, wait...

"Egyptian mosque turned into house of torture for Christians after Muslim Brotherhood protest," from FoxNews.com, March 26 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line militia members.

“They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a hospital bed.

Ayad said he was beaten for hours with sticks before being left for dead on a roadside. Amir’s brother, Ezzat Ayad, said he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. Saturday, with the caller saying his brother had been found near death and had been taken to the ambulance.

“He underwent radiation treatment that proved that he suffered a fracture in the bottom of his skull, a fracture in his left arm, a bleeding in the right eye, and birdshot injuries,” Ezzat Ayad said.

Officials at the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque said radical militias stormed the building, in the Cairo suburb of Moqattam, after Friday prayers.

“[We] deeply regret what has happened and apologize to the people of Moqattam,” mosque officials said in a statement, adding that “they had lost control over the mosque at the time."

The statement also “denounced and condemned the violence and involving mosques in political conflicts.”

The latest crackdown is further confirmation that the Muslim Brotherhood’s most hard-line elements are consolidating control in Egypt, according to Shaul Gabbay, a professor of international studies at the University of Denver.

“It will only get worse,” said Gabbay. “This has been a longstanding conflict, but now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power, it is moving forward to implement its ideology – which is that Christians are supposed to become Muslims.

“There is no longer anything to hold them back,” he continued. “The floodgates are open.”

Gabbay said the violent militias that allegedly tortured Ayad work hand-in-hand with police and may, in fact, be beyond the control of increasingly unpopular President Mohammed Morsi. While he may benefit from roving bands that attack demonstrators, they also undermine his claim of being a legitimate leader.

“Egyptian society is split over the Morsi regime, and it is not just a Coptic-Muslim split,” Gabbay said. “The less conservative elements of the Muslim society are increasingly uneasy with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Christian Copts are an easy target, but they are not alone in their mistrust of the Brotherhood.”

Experts agreed that the Copts, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 83 million people, are not alone in their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood, which took power in hotly contested elections following the 2011 ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak. Moderate Muslims and secular liberals are increasingly uncomfortable with the Islamization of the government.

Sheikh Ahmed Saber, a well-known imam and official in Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments, has blasted Morsi’s justice ministry for allowing persecution of Copts.

“All Egyptians in general are oppressed, but Christians are particularly oppressed, because they suffer double of what others suffer,” Saber told MCN.

Israeli policeman on fire on Temple Mount after being hit by firebomb

And the world demands concessions of the Israelis, without ever asking the "Palestinians" to end their bloody jihad. "Arabs Desecrate Al-Aqsa Mosque with Terror Attack (Photos)," from the Jewish Press, March 9 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

On Friday, following the morning prayers on the Temple Mount, police estimate that a hundred Arabs began rioting and throwing rocks at police officers.

In what is being considered a serious escalation, two Molotov cocktails (firebombs) were thrown at police from within the Al-Aqsa Mosque. One policeman was lightly injured by the fire, and taken to the hospital.

Police arrested at least four people, and dispersed the rest with stun grenades.

On Saturday, Arabs threw three firebombs at a police position in Hebron, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Watch for Muslims worldwide to protest against this desecration of a mosque. But don't watch too closely, because it will never happen.

"Seven Afghan civilians killed in mosque blast," from Reuters, January 13 (thanks to Lookmann):

(Reuters) - At least seven civilians were killed in a blast inside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan overnight shortly after a joint foreign forces-Afghan operation in the area killed four Taliban fighters, local officials said on Sunday.

The explosion occurred in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province at about 2 a.m. local time (4:30 p.m. EST Saturday), said provincial governor spokesman Sahihullah Shahid.

"A convoy of Afghan and foreign troops came under fire from insurgents inside the mosque ... Seven villagers were killed by an explosion after the operation," Shahid told Reuters....

The Taliban and Wardak police said an ISAF air strike killed the civilians, but the coalition said no aircraft were used.

The ISAF spokesman said the joint force was fired at by Taliban fighters from a nearby building which is believed to be used as a mosque. The soldiers returned fire, killing four insurgents, he said.

"If that (civilian deaths) occurred, those civilians died somehow after the forces left the area," he said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a statement e-mailed to media, said "American forces" used two air strikes in an attack on the mosque.

In "Media shocked Ground Zero mosqueteers are liars" at WND, December 11, Pamela Geller tells the truth behind the mainstream media distortions of the effort to build an Islamic supremacist triumphal mega-mosque at Ground Zero:

“It’s all pray and no play,” said the New York Post on Sunday. “The Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero that opened with great fanfare a year ago is now an empty space with no community programs. And while the developers behind Park51 insisted for two years that the project was more than a mosque, it now appears to be just that. Dozens of worshipers gather at the site on Park Place Friday for prayer services – but that’s the only activity in the building.”

The New York Post sounds surprised that the Ground Zero mosqueteers turned out to be liars. I’m not. It’s the modus operandi of mega-mosque builders. Sell it as one thing, but build a beachhead for Islamic supremacism.

Aren’t you glad we defeated that mega-monster? Don’t fall for the “they opened the mosque” – or the “community center” – lie. They were always praying in the Burlington Coat Factory building that was partially destroyed in the September 11 attacks, the same building that houses “Park51″ now. Look at the story at my website AtlasShrugs.com back in December 2009, when I first took up the fight. They were praying there then. It was never about that. They pray everywhere. They pray in the streets at Ground Zero – facing Mecca, of course. So what else is new?

What we were fighting was the 15-story mega-mosque they had planned to build at Ground Zero. And we won. The rest is all propaganda.

And there has been plenty of propaganda. The New York Times kept pimping for the hustler who is the “developer” of Park51, Sharif El-Gamal, long after we exposed him as the fraud and two-bit gangster he is. El-Gamal thinks that beating people up is a great “stress reliever.” He threatened Muslims who think that the triumphal mosque is offensive. He is a deadbeat who didn’t pay his taxes – to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. He defaulted on not one bank loan, but two. And he was evicted from his Soho properties offices. On top of all that, he lost in a series of lawsuits ConEd filed for back payment of rent. ConEd is trying to evict him.

The imam who had been closely associated with the project, Faisal Abdul Rauf, is another slick liar. As I revealed in August 2010, he is not at all as “moderate” as the media are so desperate to portray him. Speaking on July 12, 2005, at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre in Australia, Rauf delivered a few choice sound bites that belied his moderate image and raised questions about what the mega-mosque would really have stood for if it had gone up.

Here’s Rauf saying the U.S. is worse than al-Qaida:

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al- Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims. You may remember that the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was secretary of state and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it.”

No mention of the millions of victims of over a millennium of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilation and enslavement. No mention of the recent slaughter by Muslims of Christians, Hindus, Jews, non-believers in Indonesia, Thailand, Ethiopia, Somalia, Philippines, Lebanon, Israel, Russia and China.

Rauf’s words manifested no candor, no criticism of Islam or Muslim – in other words, none of the mutual respect and willingness to take responsibility we might expect from such a celebrated “moderate.”

Read it all.

The New York Post says here that the Park51 "community center" opened "with great fanfare," and it certainly did. Reporters from all over contacted Pamela Geller and me, asking us for comment on the "fact" that we had "lost," that the "community center" was opening despite our opposition. But this was a case of a defeated side declaring victory and getting out, a la Vietnam. As we had both made repeatedly clear when we led the national opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque, we were well aware that Muslims were gathering for prayers in the Burlington Coat Factory building that had been extensively damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and had no objection to that.

What we were objecting to was the planned sixteen-story mega-mosque that the grifter Sharif El-Gamal and the unsavory and dishonest Islamic supremacists Faisal Abdul Rauf and Daisy Khan planned to build on that site after they tore down the Burlington Coat Factory building, as that would have been a triumphal mosque built on the site of a jihad victory, like the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Once Americans voiced their opposition in huge numbers to that planned victory mosque, and we exposed the developers' Islamic supremacist ties and many shady financial dealings, the project was put on indefinite hold. But El-Gamal and his Leftist sycophants in the mainstream media were not about to admit defeat; instead, they announced -- with great fanfare indeed -- the opening of the Park51 Cultural Center, in the same severely damaged Burlington Coat Factory building. They held a few sad and tatty "events" there, again to great fanfare, and then, when the media frenzy died down, went back to doing the only thing they had been doing in that building all along: holding Islamic prayer.

So it is a mosque, just as we always said it would be in the teeth of their disingenuous denials (which were uncritically and insistently repeated in the mainstream media), but it is not the 16-story mega-mosque of triumph they had wanted to build, and which had been the focus of our objections. So the real victory was ours. And if El-Gamal or anyone else ever tries again to build the triumphal mosque, we'll be back.

This article from the New York Post, even though it again exposes El-Gamal's dishonesty, glosses over that central fact. Take a look at how many people in the comments section there are saying that this mosque "should never have been built." But that's the thing: it wasn't built. This non-center is still in the damaged Burlington Coat Factory building. The Post was severely remiss not to point that out.

"No community programs at ‘Ground Zero’ mosque a year after the controversy," by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein in the New York Post, December 9:

It’s all pray and no play.

The Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero that opened with great fanfare a year ago is now an empty space with no community programs.

And while the developers behind Park51 insisted for two years that the project was more than a mosque, it now appears to be just that. Dozens of worshipers gather at the site on Park Place Friday for prayer services — but that’s the only activity in the building.

Gone are the Arabic classes, workshops in calligraphy, talks on the genealogy of Muslims in America, film screenings and art exhibits. The sole community event is a class in capoeira — an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines dance and music. The teacher of the twice-weekly class said she has five students.

“We are the only cultural program that is still there,” said Luz Emma Canas Jesus, of Capoeira Mucurumim.

The Park51 Twitter feed was last updated in June, and its Web site lists no events. The Web site for the mosque, formally called Prayer Space, lists four services a day, and a handwritten note on the building’s window also advertises a 4 a.m. service.

Park51 organizers repeatedly refused to answer questions about what happened to the programs offered last fall and spring. Sharif El-Gamal, the lead developer behind the project, ducked out the women’s entrance for the prayer space and would not speak to a reporter.

Just two years ago, El-Gamal’s grand plans for the site — a $100 million, 15-story community center and prayer space — generated worldwide controversy because of its proximity to the Ground Zero site.

At the photography exhibit that kicked off the opening of a scaled-down center in September 2011, El-Gamal admitted he erred in not including families who lost loved ones on Sept. 11 in the planning process.

Development plans are now in limbo over fund-raising for the project and a dispute with Con Ed, which owns half the site. In 2009, El-Gamal’s company bought half the property, which once housed a Burlington Coat Factory store, for $4.8 million, and leased the other half from the utility. It is seeking to buy that part of the property.

Con Ed threatened to evict Park51 a year ago over $1.7 million in unpaid back rent.

El-Gamal’s company then sued Con Ed, claiming its appraisal for the property was wrong and the formula to figure the rent was inaccurate. A judge ruled in Con Ed’s favor on the appraisal, and the rent lawsuit is continuing with the next court date set for Tuesday.

In an interview last year, El-Gamal said he was exploring other uses of the property, including an office tower or condominiums. He said a prayer space would remain part of the project.

And oddly enough, while there he somehow never imbibed the True, Peaceful Teachings of Islam. "Terrorism Arrests: Mosque’s members, neighbors react," by David Olson for the Press Enterprise, November 21:

A man who prayed at the same mosque as one of the Inland terrorism suspects arrested last week said he hoped Arifeen David Gojali is sent to jail if he really was plotting to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

“Muslim or not Muslim, he should go to jail” if he is guilty, said Gamal Atia, who has worshipped at Masjid al-Sabireen Cham American Muslim Community in downtown Pomona for 11 years.

Atia, 55, of Pomona, said he regularly saw Gojali pray at the mosque with his parents and brother.

“He's a good person,” Atia said. “They're nice people. I'd see him on Friday and in the evenings sometimes.”...

If Gojali is guilty, “I'm very, very sorry,” Atia said. “This is not our religion. Islam is a religion of peace.”

Atia said people shouldn't blame Islam for the actions of a small number of extremists, just as all Christians shouldn't be blamed for the actions of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 and injuring more than 600. McVeigh was raised Catholic but before he was executed in 2001 identified as agnostic, according to news reports.

This is the usual boilerplate. It never discusses the fact that jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence, in a way that no one uses the texts and teachings of Christianity.

Atia said that if Gojali is guilty, people should focus on him as an individual, not as a Muslim.

“It's not the religion,” he said. “It's the people who are crazy.”

His comments echoed those by Inland Islamic leaders on Tuesday, who said they worried that the arrests of the four suspected terrorists would increase fear of Muslims. They condemned terrorist acts and said that if the men are guilty, they weren't following Islamic teaching.

The men — Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, a former Pomona resident who had moved to Afghanistan; Ralph Deleon, 23, of Ontario; Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, of Upland; and Gojali — were arrested last week after an FBI investigation found they had been plotting to join the Taliban and al-Qaida and wanted to attack U.S. bases in Afghanistan....

The imam of the mosque, who Atia said he knows only as Imam Kassem, is from Cambodia or Vietnam. He's been gone for about three weeks, apparently for a trip to Southeast Asia, Atia said....

The tan-and-cream-colored building does not have a sign identifying it as a mosque. The only indications it is an Islamic center are a parking lot sign that says, “For Imam Parking Only” in front of a space near the entrance doors, and Arabic writing in a side window.

Melkus has been in the neighborhood almost every weekday morning over the past four years to auction properties at the nearby Los Angeles County courthouse.

He said he's never noticed anyone enter or leave the building.

Mike Bee, who also works at the courthouse almost every weekday morning and parks near the mosque, said the arrest of Gojali worries him.

“I'll probably be more cautious,” said Bee, 47, of Los Angeles. “There could be terrorists in there. This just gives me a reason to believe there are more of them out there, for sure.”

Maria Gonzalez, whose morning walk takes her past the mosque every day , said she typically sees about eight people milling about before or after the dawn prayers.

Gonazalez [sic], 58, said in Spanish that she and her neighbors had long been nervous of seeing men in Islamic skullcaps at the mosque.

“We were afraid,” she said. “I thought they might be terrorists.”

Now that she knows a mosque worshipper was arrested on terrorism, she's even more nervous.

“You can't tell who it is who wants to kill people,” she said....

Stephanie Reyes, 24, who lives about two blocks from the mosque, said she was never worried about extremists at the Islamic center — until now.

Until now!

Relax. The four jihadis are just misunderstanders of Islam. "Muslim leaders: Terror suspects don’t represent Islam," by David Olson for the Press-Enterprise, November 20:

Leaders of several Inland mosques say they do not recognize the names of the four men accused of planning a terrorist attack on U.S. military bases in Afghanistan.

The FBI says in a federal complaint that one of the suspects, an Ontario man named Ralph Deleon, talked of how a couple of “brothers from the mosque want to join the jihad.” The complaint doesn’t identify the mosque.

The other suspects live in Riverside, Pomona and Upland.

Mustafa Kuko, director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, said he had asked mosque members Tuesday morning if they knew Arifeen David Gojali, the Riverside suspect. No one did.

What a surprise! And David Olson doesn't seem to have had the wit or curiosity to ask whether there were any records -- attendance at classes, etc. -- that he could look through that might establish whether Gojali or the others had been around.

“If I see anything suspicious, I’ll report it,” Kuko said. “The FBI knows I will cooperate.”

Kuko said he is frustrated whenever Islam is linked with terrorism.

“Sometimes when people see this in the media, people will say, ‘This is Islam,’” he said. “Then they won’t believe what we say when we say Islam is a religion of peace.”

They won't believe you because of the steady stream of jihad plots carried out by people acting in the name of Islam, and because of the less than forthcoming responses from people in your position when asked about them.

Sam Badwan, the chairman of the board of directors of the Islamic Center of Claremont in Pomona, said that whenever anyone is arrested who claims to be planning terrorist attacks in the name of Islam, he and other Muslims always worry that misunderstandings of Islam will spread.

“You look around and see good people, good, hard-working people, true Americans who contribute to our society and bring up their families with good values,” said Badwan, who lives in Rancho Cucamonga. “They’re people who contribute to society. Then you see the news and it sounds like there’s a target on our backs.”

Note how he is working hard to portray Muslims as victims, when the real target is on the backs of the non-Muslims that these four jihadis wanted to murder.

Badwan noted how the three men who allegedly were part of the planning of the attacks were in their early 20s. Two of the men converted to Islam in 2010, federal officials said.

“They not have even known anything about Islam” and – if they did as alleged hold extremist beliefs – may have been susceptible to manipulation of their beliefs, he said.

Are the local mosques holding any classes for converts to make sure they don't misunderstand Islam in this way? Is anyone? David Olson didn't have the wit or curiosity to ask.

As the details of the investigation unfold, Kuko warned of not presuming the four men are guilty. He always worries that the FBI may use entrapment techniques to induce people to follow extremist beliefs.

That Kuko said that is in itself suspicious. But once again, David Olson didn't have the wit or curiosity to ask him how moderate, peaceful Muslims who rejected violent jihad could possibly be entrapped, as I explained here.

Now wait a minute. Didn't the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims at those mosques rise up and cast these miscreants out?

"Russian police detain members of banned Islamic group," from Reuters, November 12 (thanks to Benedict):

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian police have arrested six members of a banned Islamic group on suspicion of recruiting followers in Moscow mosques and possessing weapons, the Interior Ministry said on Monday....

The Interior Ministry said the detainees were members of the Islamic Revival Party, which was designated as an international terrorist group by Russia's Supreme Court and banned.

Police searching places where the detainees were staying found nine hand grenades and other weapons and ammunition, as well as extremist literature.

It a statement the ministry said leaders and members of the group had been "conducting active recruiting at mosques in Moscow and also distributing extremist literature and drawing other people into illegal activity."...

Attacks on government-backed Muslim leaders in the Volga River province of Tatarstan in July added to fears of a spread of Islamist violence.

Rights activists say the violence is fuelled in part of heavy-handed police tactics and intolerance for religious beliefs outside the mainstream.

Yeah, that's it. It's all the non-Muslims' fault, as always.

Calm down, you greasy Islamophobe. Your church has a bomb-making factory on the premises, doesn't it?

In recent years we have seen mosques used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb factory; to store weapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in the U.S.) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions; to fire on American troops; to fire upon Indian troops; to train jihadists; and more.

"Bahrain says it uncovered weapons cache inside unlicensed mosque," from Al Arabiya, October 24 (thanks to 538):

Police in Bahrain said on Wednesday they uncovered a weapons cache inside an unlicensed mosque where locally-made bombs were being produced.

Authorities said they seized electric detonators, stopwatches and other materials used to make bombs.

The cache was uncovered in the area of Abou Baham, a scene of violence attributed by official media to Shiite hardliners....

Islamic supremacists including Hamas-linked CAIR are in an uproar about these claims, but there is a big problem with their indignation: if Muslims in New York couldn't be "baited," they wouldn't be "baited." There is no amount of "baiting" that could make me say something in favor of terrorism or do something to aid in terrorism. Islamic supremacist groups are already using Shamiur Rahman's claims to try to advance their attempts to get the NYPD to stop efforts to counter jihad terror altogether. Their indignation over what Shamiur Rahman says here is just as hollow and self-serving as their claims that various jihad terror plotters were entrapped, even when they are recorded making clear statements about their aspirations to commit mass murder for Allah.

"Informant: NYPD paid me to 'bait' Muslims," by Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo for the Associated Press, October 24 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

NEW YORK (AP) — A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.

The AP corroborated Rahman's account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police. Friends confirmed Rahman was at certain events when he said he was there, and former NYPD officials, while not personally familiar with Rahman, said the tactics he described were used by informants.

Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques — known informally as "mosque crawlers" — tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime....

One of his earliest assignments was to spy on a lecture at the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College in Manhattan. The speaker was Ali Abdul Karim, the head of security at the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn. The NYPD had been concerned about Karim for years and already had infiltrated the mosque, according to NYPD documents obtained by the AP.

Rahman also was instructed to monitor the student group itself, though he wasn't told to target anyone specifically. His NYPD handler, Steve, told him to take pictures of people at the events, determine who belonged to the student association and identify its leadership.

On Feb. 23, Rahman attended the event with Karim and listened, ready to catch what he called a "speaker's gaffe." The NYPD was interested in buzz words such as "jihad" and "revolution," he said. Any radical rhetoric, the NYPD told him, needed to be reported....

"He was telling us how he loved Islam and it's changing him," said Asad Dandia, who also became friends with Rahman.

Secretly, Rahman was mining his new friends for details about their lives, taking pictures of them when they ate at restaurants and writing down license plates on the orders of the NYPD.

On the NYPD's instructions, he went to more events at John Jay, including when Siraj Wahhaj spoke in May. Wahhaj, 62, is a prominent but controversial New York imam who has attracted the attention of authorities for years. Prosecutors included his name on a 3 ½-page list of people they said "may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he was never charged. In 2004, the NYPD placed Wahhaj on an internal terrorism watch list and noted: "Political ideology moderately radical and anti-American."

That evening at John Jay, a friend took a photograph of Wahhaj with a grinning Rahman.

Horror of horrors!

"If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate." -- prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, 2002

No reason to look in on that guy at all!

Rahman said he kept an eye on the MSA and used Shahbaz and his friends to facilitate traveling to events organized by the Islamic Circle of North America and Muslim American Society. The society's annual convention in Hartford, Conn, draws a large number of Muslims and plenty of attention from the NYPD. According to NYPD documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD sent three informants there in 2008 and was keeping tabs on the group's former president.

Rahman was told to spy on the speakers and collect information. The conference was dubbed "Defending Religious Freedom." Shahbaz paid Rahman's travel expenses.

Both ICNA and MAS are Muslim Brotherhood groups. So there was reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Rahman, who was born in Queens, said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.

He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked....

Did any rogue prosecutions of innocent people result from this false reporting?

In FrontPage this morning I discuss a common-sense call for monitoring mosques that has gone out not in the United States, of course, but in, of all places, Saudi Arabia:

It’s happened again: venomous Islamophobes have called for the monitoring of mosques. That’s right: racist bigots, seething with unaccountable hatred for their fellow citizens who happen to be mosque-attending Muslims, are calling for unconscionable restrictions upon Muslims’ religious freedom, and a cloud of suspicion to be cast upon the entire Muslim community, as they have called for law enforcement authorities to step up their monitoring of Muslim houses of worship.

Here’s the story:

JEDDAH: A number of religious scholars and academics have stressed the need for the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call and Guidance to beef up monitoring of places of worship. It followed the recent report of a Riyadh mosque serving as a facade for manufacturing explosives.

That’s right: the call for the monitoring of mosques has gone out not in the United States, and not from “Islamophobes” at all, but from Muslims in Saudi Arabia. The call came after “the Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it discovered explosive substances and devices at a lean-to of a quiet mosque in Riyadh.”

These “religious scholars and academics”  have a valid point. After all, in recent years we have seen mosques used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb factory; to store weapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in the U.S.) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions; to fire on American troops; to fire upon Indian troops; to train jihadists; and more.

American authorities have as much reason as Saudi authorities to be concerned. Four separate studies all found that 80% of U.S. mosques were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians. There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.”

Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

And in the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don’t teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.

Specifically:

A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshiper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.

That means that around 1,700 mosques in the U.S. are preaching hatred of infidels and justifying violence against them. As Pamela Geller asks: “You think there will never be any consequences of that?”

There is more.

Mosques can be monitored in Saudi Arabia, but there cannot be any monitoring of mosques in the U.S. Oh, no. That would be "Islamophobic." Maybe the Obama Administration could bring in some Saudi mosque inspectors to assure them that everything is on the up-and-up in mosques stateside.

"Misuse of mosque for manufacturing explosives condemned," from Arab News, August 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

JEDDAH: A number of religious scholars and academics have stressed the need for the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowment, Call and Guidance to beef up monitoring of places of worship. It followed the recent report of a Riyadh mosque serving as a facade for manufacturing explosives.

This is nothing that will especially catch anyone's notice. As we have documented over the years here at Jihad Watch, mosques all over the world have been used as bases for attacks against Infidels, to stockpile weapons, etc. In this case there will be nothing like the world outcry that would ensue if a church were found manufacturing explosives. That would be a true man-bites-dog story.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that it discovered explosive substances and devices at a lean-to of a quiet mosque in Riyadh. Mosques normally use attached rooms to accommodate workers or for library service.

The scholars also demanded deterrent punishments to those who exploit the spiritual atmosphere in mosques to promote chaos in the country, Al-Madinah daily reported on Monday.

“Those who seek to destabilize the country and fight against security forces come under the category of ‘those who rebel against Allah and His Messenger’ and a country’s legitimate government and hence should be punished severely,” said Sheikh Abdullah Al-Manie, who is a member of the Council of Senior Religious Scholars and adviser at the Royal Court.

"Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment..." -- Qur'an 5:33

The scholar also congratulated the Interior Ministry for its successful preemptive strike against the Riyadh cell and protecting the people from such heinous deeds.

“The Islamic Affairs Ministry should ensure that imams and muezzins inspect the mosque premises regularly and thoroughly, so that the facilities are not misused for subversive activities. The sacred houses of worship should not be converted into dens of destructive acts,” he said.

Member of the Fiqh Academy Muhammad Al-Nojaimi stressed the duty of the worshipers and residents in nearby buildings apart from imams and muezzins to see that mosques are not exploited for subversive activities. “Officials concerned should also investigate why some expatriates are unofficially undertaking duties at mosques. They should also launch campaigns and raids at such mosques,” he said....

Meanwhile, a former Saudi fighter in Afghanistan, Sheikh Siraj Al-Zahrani, warned against the dangers of Saudi youths being carried away by the temptation to be martyrs in Syria. Siraj said he joined the Afghan Taleban fighters on the assumption that they were fighting on the straight religious path, but experience made him disillusioned and prompted him to return home. “No youth should go to Syria or other war fronts without the permission from their guardians. A family should be cautious about its sons being lured to war zones for jihad,” the sheikh said.

Cautious indeed!