The U.S. today suffers from a bipartisan cluelessness. Few Republicans and virtually no Democrats have a clear and full understanding of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. Politically correct nonsense rules the day, and hamstrings our resistance to jihadists and Islamic supremacists. Darrell Issa is the latest case in point.
“Darrell Issa Shows Ignorance of Islam in Donnelly-Kashkari Spat over Shariah,” by Pamela Geller at Breitbart, May 9, 2014:
California State Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, who is running for governor, recently pointed out that his rival Neel Kashkari “supported the United States submitting to the Islamic, Shariah banking code in 2008 when he ran TARP.”
The charge was true, but that didn’t stop the influential Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair, from furiously denouncing not Kashkari, but Donnelly – illustrating again what’s wrong with the right.
Issa raged: “There is no place in any public discussion for this type of hateful and ignorant garbage. As far as I’m concerned, this type of stupidity disqualifies Donnelly from being fit to hold any office, anywhere. Donnelly is no longer a viable option for California voters… There is no place in the Republican Party or in this race for someone like Tim Donnelly.”
Donnelly duly apologized. But he shouldn’t have. He was right. Did Darryll Issa even look into the charge? Or did he knee-jerk smear Donnelly? And who died and made Issa king of the Republican Party? Who is this uninformed loudmouth to say who is or isn’t welcomed into the Republican Party? Like Brody said in Jaws, we need a bigger boat. If every time someone touches the third rail – jihad and sharia – they get burned and turned on, then the Republicans are going the way of the Whigs.
It’s Issa who should be taken to the woodshed, not Donnelly. What was hateful wasn’t Donnelly’s statement but Issa’s response. What is ignorant is Issa’s complete lack of knowledge of sharia, TARP, and the taxpayer-funded sharia programs. Why should the American taxpayer legitimize and institutionalize the Sharia? Sharia finance is the pernicious effort to force the banking industry to conform to Islamic law. Sharia banking finances Islamic terror through zakat (Islamic almsgiving) and would destroy whole sectors of the American economy, as it prohibits investment in whole industries, including pork, alcohol, tobacco, and some forms of entertainment.
Shariah Finance Watch explains that sharia-compliant finance “as monitored by paid Shariah law advisors to U.S. banking institutions must ‘purify’ certain return on investment (ROI) dollars that do not meet Shariah law standards. This money must be donated to Islamic charities – including some that promote Jihad and support suicide bombing. Investment disclosures state that these profits can be as high as 6% of profits of investments.”
That’s what Kashkari was selling when he spoke at a Treasury Department conference in 2008 that was intended to “inform the policy community about Islamic financial services, which are an increasingly important part of the global financial industry.” The conference’s stated purpose was to “provide government policymakers information about Islamic finance. The presentation materials from the conference discussed topics such as the source of Islamic finance, how Islamic finance works, and the market factors that caused its growth.”
The introduction of sharia finance in the U.S. has support at the highest levels. A recent lawsuit brought to light the fact that $153 million in taxpayer money has been spent on sharia-compliant finance. David Yerushalmi of the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), who represented the anti-sharia plaintiff in that lawsuit, told me:
I take no position about what kind of governor Mr. Kashkari would make or indeed what kind of conservative bona fides he has in his brief. What I can say is that the U.S. Treasury under President Bush, during Mr. Kashkari’s deep involvement in TARP, actively promoted Sharia-compliant finance when it knew very well that this vehicle was being used not only to promote jihad, but also to effectively defraud Western investors by failing to disclose the Black Box that is Sharia. Mr. Kashkari might claim he was simply naive about the insidious and invidious nature of Sharia. That naiveté, though, becomes part of his resume for governor. But one thing I can say with absolute certainty: the Treasury Department he served knew exactly what it was doing. We uncovered documents during discovery where we learned that the Treasury was not merely promoting Sharia-compliant finance through its acquisition of AIG, but that it had been promoting Sharia as an international financing model leading up to the government’s takeover of AIG.
Confirming that is a statement from Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Kimmitt, who said around the same time that this conference was held that “the U.S. government is currently studying the salient features of Islamic banking to ascertain how far it could be useful in fighting the ongoing world economic crisis.”
Nevertheless, Kashkari downplayed his involvement in the conference: “They were looking for a senior Treasury official to give the opening remarks at this conference, and I happened to be scheduled to be in the office that day.” He did acknowledge, however, that “these sorts of conferences were put on to help promote an understanding of how you can still have free market principles and open economics even in Islamic countries.” Really? Where? In which Islamic countries? His claim is false on its face.
Issa’s savage attack on Donnelly is yet another indication of how naïve and complacent establishment Republicans are about the threat of jihad and Islamic supremacism. Issa said this on Bill Maher’s show back in 2007:
One of the problems that we have as Americans in my opinion having traveled the region a little bit, is that we try to say Muslims as though it was one place. If you go to the Palestinian territories the one thing you’ll see is that for over 1000 years, Christians and Muslims have lived side-by-side… So we can talk about radical Islam, but we see no evidence out of it there. You go to Ethiopia, [where] you have some of the oldest Christians in the world and Muslims. They have a lot of problems in Ethiopia, we’ll endless[ly talk] about the problems in Ethiopia, except they look down on Somalia for their problems, but there is no question that religious tolerance of the two living side by side has not been about extremism, ‘convert or you’ll die.’
“No evidence” of “radical Islam” in the Palestinian territories? What is he smoking? There are churches in those areas because under Muslim rule the Christians were subjugated dhimmis, denied basic rights and paying jizya (poll tax) to the Islamic state. The Muslims let them live because they constituted their source of revenue for the state. That’s tolerance?
Clearly Darrell Issa knows nothing about Islam, sharia, or Islamic history.
In 2011, Issa co-sponsored the Hezbollah Anti-Terrorism Act (HATA), a bill to cut aid to the Hezbollah-led Lebanese government. However, he has also denounced “Israel’s wanton violation of Lebanese territory and its somewhat failed attempt to defeat Hezbollah.” He has even said, “You can’t end an idea or a terrorist organization by guns alone.” So does Issa suggest we roast marshmallows with Boko Haram? Al-Shabaab? Hamas?
Darrell Issa is the latest illustration of what’s wrong with the Republican Party and of our increasingly serious need for a genuine opposition party in Washington.
Wellington says
Very disappointed in Issa. He is indeed clueless about Islam.
Lynn says
I was disappointed when I realized how much funding Issa took accepted from the islamic crowd. It’s a lot. So I like him but I like him less. I think he is unaware. He needs to see Frank Gaffney’s Course about the MB in American government.
voegelinian says
Darrell Issa also likely reflects, given his name, the additional problem, beyond PC MC, of a familial psychocultural dhimmitude still lingering in his heart and mind. I.e., he’s got the “Danny Thomas Syndrome”.
WVinMN says
Issa amounts to nothing more than the congressional version of Side Show Bob. His grandstanding show trials result in no actual consequences for bad actors who played roles in a variety of Obama Administration crimes, including the IRS, EPA, Fast and Furious and Benghazi scandals. This DC-hack didn’t even mandate that Hillary Clinton be sworn in prior to her testimony regarding Benghazi! And if if wasn’t for Landmark Legal Foundation (and their multiple Tea Party clients), NOTHING would have been gleaned concerning the IRS scandal. Not from Issa or anyone else on the Hill for that matter. And, oh yes, this creep is no friend of Israel. Imagine that.
Larry A Singleton says
One thing I’ll bet you don’t know and that’s that Darrell Issa is the Osama bin Ladin of these Audio Terrorists and their “boomer cars”. Issa is somebody that should be put in a bag full of cats and beat with a stick. He’s the founder of Viper Audio and former chairman of the powerful Consumer Electronics Asociation, which uses its financial muscle to lobby against citizens trying to enact local ordinances protecting peace and quiet!
watch the Pioneer video “Disturb” at Noise Off-org. Scroll down to the stupid looking guy on the screen shot above “Pioneer Disturb”. And remember; this is a PROMOTIONAL video!
http://www.noiseoff.org/boomcars.php
Bill says
The sooner Republicans learn the truth about Islam, that normal, “moderate” Islam is akin to Nazism, the sooner we may be able to act to save ourselves from this ideology. The lack of knowledge of Islam and the guiding, foundational texts that have always driven Islam (i.e. The Q’ran and the Hadith) amounts to willful ignorance.
somehistory says
*The charge was true,
Issa raged: “There is no place in any public discussion for this type of hateful and ignorant garbage.*
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Isn’t this similar to what muslims do when their book or prophet is quoted?
Revelation 13, in my opinion (many may disagree and that’s okay with me), applies here.
dumbledoresarmy says
Gravenimage – would you or Davegreybeard be able to send gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly copies of (1) the Barnabas Fund booklet “What is Sharia?”, which can be bought from their website, dirt cheap, and (2), available from the same website, Canon Dr Patrick Sookhdeo’s “Understanding Sharia Finance: The Muslim Challenge to Western Economics”? The latter is a slim, clearly-written, inexpensive and fact-packed booklet.
Both come across as “background briefings”; the first can be read in less than an hour, the second in an afternoon.
Throw in with it one or two of Raymond Ibrahim’s articles on Deception in Islam, and he’d know enough to be going on with.
sidney penny says
“The U.S. today suffers from a bipartisan cluelessness. Few Republicans and virtually no Democrats have a clear and full understanding of the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat. ”
You are so right.
Robert , do a little booklet for every one in congress and all the state assemblies.
Call it required reading for every one in congress and all the state assemblies.
Joann Martin says
They are going to crash a plane into The Louvre. http://www.attackonthelouvre.com