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April 10, 2008 | 4:47 pm

What’s best for America is also best for Israel

Posted by JewishJournal.com


What U.S. role in the world is best for Israel?

Is it to be loved, to be feared, or to be respected?

The 2008 campaign provides a good lens for answering that question.

In an annual BBC poll of residents in 23 countries, based on more than 17,000 interviews, we can chart the steady decline of the American “brand” overseas. In 2005, 38 percent had a positive view of the United States, followed by 32 percent in 2006 and 28 percent in 2007. This year, there has been a slight rebound, to 32 percent positive. The Bush administration’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the torture pictures from Abu Ghraib, and its general disdain for world opinion have taken a great toll. Even Americans are pessimistic. Of all the countries surveyed, Americans were the second least likely to say that their own country is a positive influence in the world today.

As domestic and international disapproval washes over the administration, they have taken to seeing it as a compliment or a sign of strength. White House press secretary Dana Perino argues that when you do important things that are hard, people do not like you. This is nonsense. Most people simply don’t like to be bullied or ignored.

If Israel itself had to win a popularity contest around the world, it would be in trouble. Ever since victory in the 1967 Six- Day War turned Israel from an underdog to a major regional force, the Jewish state has been demonized, attacked, insulted, and at times isolated. (Never mind that the 1973 Yom Kippur War placed Israel’s very survival in jeopardy.) So it’s not surprising that Israel is one of the least-positively viewed countries in the poll. But what’s remarkable is that there is one nation even more unpopular: Iran. While Iran may aspire to dominate the Middle East, its nuclear ambitions clearly unnerve much of the world and may prevent Iran from playing a lead role in anti-Israel coalitions. Iran’s alienation can also provide an opening for creative American diplomacy in the Middle East.

Whoever is elected president in November will have one great advantage in world opinion: He or she will not be George W. Bush. In modern times, there has been nothing like the antipathy Bush arouses overseas. Presidents of both parties have often been more popular abroad than at home (e.g., Richard Nixon, whose presidency is still revered in China and respected in Russia). Ronald Reagan rattled Europe with aggressive rhetoric in his first term, but ended up rather well regarded as far less warlike than his image suggested. George H.W. Bush was defeated for re-election, but was immensely successful, respected and liked on the world stage. Bill Clinton had his troubles at home, but won plaudits for his peace work in Ireland and his military intervention in Bosnia. Even the Vietnam War caused more distress within the United States than it did overseas. By comparison, the Iraq war has antagonized and energized the hatred of a whole generation of people abroad against America.

The trick for the new president will be to assess where he or she stands relative to Bush. For John McCain, the problem is that in drawing closer to the Bush administration, he may continue its belligerence. This will come as a great disappointment to nations that expect him to be more diplomatic than Bush. Singing “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” is hardly the prelude to a new diplomacy. For the two Democrats, the opposite problem exists: that they will so reject Bush’s foreign policy that they aim too hard to be loved in the world.

Machiavelli wrote that it is better to be feared than to be loved. Reagan used to say about the American role in the world that it is good to be loved, but it is better to be respected. Given American ideals, Reagan’s formulation seems preferable to Machiavelli’s. An America that is well liked and well respected is a great asset for Israel, although a little fear now and then is not a bad thing.

Once the Iraq war winds down, Guantanamo’s prison is closed, and torture is abandoned as American policy, the next president will have a golden opportunity to reshape the Middle East in a way that enhances Israel’s security. This does not mean the reshaping envisioned by the neoconservatives who built the Iraq war on a pipe dream of a host of democratic states in the Middle East all singing Israel’s praises in a chorus authored by the United States.

Back here on the planet Earth, the real scenario probably means talking with Iran,—but with no military options off the table—using Iran’s unpopularity as a wedge to change its behavior. Because of the Bush administration, it is difficult for nations to work with the United States to mix carrots and sticks with Iran. A respected United States, which leads rather than bullies, can do more to change the scene than all the invasions in the world.

—Pol Observer

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ACTION Alert!  PETITION - Say NO to Shariah Complaint Finance!!

The Jihad is progressing on every front and infiltrating the West and as you know they are now infiltrating our financial institutions with “Shariah Complaint Finance”

This will have deadly consequences to our already fragile economy, jeopardize our security and democracy.

Please sign this Petition below and have it up on your website.

I cannot believe that Standard & Poors is one of the Sponsors of this Islamic Finance Conference!

We need to collect thousands of signatures which we will then send onto SEC, Dept of Justice, FBI, CSP, US Treasury Dept and any and all other relevant agencies.

Thank you

Say NO to Shariah Complaint Finance! Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/qxyz1108/petition.html

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Jihad Comes to Wall Street
“Sharia finance” does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of sharia — and terror.

By Alex Alexiev

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjBhMTM5MTlmN2YzNzE0MmFkOTg2OGYxNWM2MGNiNTQ

If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders’s movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.

For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: “Islamic Ethical Investment.” According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.

Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than “Jihad with money.” As al-Qaradawi explains, “God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money.” Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.

Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such “ethical” mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.

Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.

Predictably, none of this is even remotely disclosed by any of the dozens of Western banks promoting sharia finance today, which obviously exposes them to huge non-disclosure risks ranging from fraudulent misrepresentation, to material support for terrorism.

Consider the board chairman of the Dow Jones Islamic Index (IMANX), one Mufti Taqi Usmani. Mr. Usmani is widely reputed to be one of the world’s top experts on sharia finance. Whatever his stockpicking abilities may be, they are dwarfed by his jihadist credentials. A key executive of Pakistan’s prominent Deobandi jihadist factory, the madrassa Darul Karoom Karachi (currently headed by his brother, Rafi Usmani), Taqi Usmani has openly advocated jihad by Muslims in the West, and just last month again publicly endorsed suicide bombing and the Taliban.

Since sharia-finance funds like the IMANX may invest in companies that are not completely halal — that derive their profit from interest or other sharia-prohibited activities — returns on investment in those companies must be purified by donating a portion of that ROI to charity. More often than not, it is people like Usmani who are paid lucratively to sit on sharia-finance boards in order to determine what charities will receive the sharia-finance institutions’ donations — and it’s a fair bet that the March of Dimes is not among them.

IMANX itself is owned and operated by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), an organization listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator by the Department of Justice in a recent terrorism-finance trial, and the proprietor of hundreds of radical mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S., including some that have been closed down by the government as criminal enterprises.

The chairman of both NAIT and IMANX, Bassam Osman, has been the top executive of terrorist-funding organizations like the Quranic Literacy Institute (suspected financiers of Hamas whose assets were seized by the U.S. in 1998) and the Islamic Academy of Florida (founded by Sami al-Arian, a convicted financier of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist criminal enterprise), and is a board member of other un-indicted co-conspirators like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Is Dow Jones aware of all this? Is Rupert Murdoch? And if they are not, shouldn’t they be?

The IMANX marketing slogan is “Markets Fluctuate. Principles Don’t.” Judging by the ideological principles of those involved in its leadership, that is precisely what Wall Street — and the West — should fear.

The legitimization of sharia in the West and its gradual imposition in Muslim communities and beyond is a key objective of sharia finance, and there is no doubt it has already made huge strides. Indeed, the precedent of legal sharia-finance transactions was used by the hapless archbishop of Canterbury to buttress his argument that introducing sharia in the United Kingdom was unavoidable.

Given the reality of malignant Islamism now spreading into our own capital markets to the loud cheers of the same Wall Street masters of the universe who gave us sub-prime mortgage securitization, Americans have a right to ask: Where are the U.S. Treasury Department and the SEC, whose job it is to protect our markets? Given the outright fraudulent misrepresentation of the potential liabilities of sharia-finance funds under existing regulations, they should get involved soon.

— Alex Alexiev is vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy.

WHAT IS SHARIAH LAW AND FINANCE?
WHAT IS SHARIAH LAW? 
Understanding Shariah law is integral to understanding the dangers of Shariah-compliant finance. Shariah law is Islamic law dating back to the 9th century and is today the law of the land in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and the law under which the Taliban operates. However, with a current population of 1.5 billion Muslims, this translates to a huge pool of Jihadist recruits and supporters - a base of approximately 150 - 225 million Muslims.
Shariah law authorities, some of whom are now being paid handsomely by Barclays, Dow Jones, Standard & Poors, HSBC, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Deutschebank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Credit Suisse and others have the power to dictate Shariah compliance as deemed by “scholarly consensus” on matters of finance, family, penal law, apostasy, and war. Examples of authoritarian Shariah law include: requirement of women to obtain permission from husbands for daily freedoms; beating of disobedient woman and girls; execution of homosexuals; engagement of polygamy and forced child marriages; the testimony of four male witnesses to prove rape; honor killings of those, principally women, who have dishonored the family; death to apostate Muslims who chose to leave Islam; inferior status of non-Muslims, and capital punishment for those “slander Islam.”

ISLAMIC FINANCE - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: 
National Security and Financial Risks: Islamists are attempting to impose Shariah Compliant Finance (SCF) on Western institutions to use our own financial strengths against us. The most serious problem with SCF is that it legitimates and institutionalizes Shariah law (i.e., Islamic law), a theo-political- legal doctrine violently opposed to Western values. With $1 -$2 trillion petrodollars annually looking for an investment home, blind exuberance is driving financial institutions to adopt SCF, without even a minimal baseline for legal compliance. This willful blindness, and lack of both transparency and due diligence may cause SCF to be the next sub-prime crisis, but this time with deadly consequences.

Legal Risks: Western financial institutions which adopt SCF may have criminal and civil exposure to claims of aiding and abetting sedition and the material support of terrorism, securities fraud, consumer fraud, racketeering, and antitrust violations, as well as exposure to tort claims for sedition and terrorism, and for the violation of internationally recognized norms of the law of nations.

Terror Financing Mechanism: SCF 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.  With $800 billion already in SCF assets, the potential for billions of dollars to be siphoned off for terrorism is real. This would be a serious criminal violation of U.S. law. 
Consider this example: Shariah Mutual Funds promote themselves as “ethical funds.” To be Shariah-compliant, they donate “tainted” revenues to Shariah-compliant “charities.”  A post 9-11 U.S. investor in a Shariah-compliant “ethical investment” is not told that Shariah law also requires imposing Shariah as U.S. law, execution of gays and female apartheid.  Is he a victim of consumer fraud?  Is this same post 9-11 investor unwittingly funding terror? The government has shut down the three largest Shariah-compliant charities in the U.S. - the Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, and the Global Relief Foundation - after proving they funded terrorist organizations. The American taxpayer deserves answers to these questions.  The Center for Security Policy (CSP) is meeting directly with members of Congress, U.S. regulatory agencies and Wall Street financial institutions in order to ensure the enforcement of existing U.S. laws on sedition, disclosure, material support of terrorism, and money-laundering. CSP is committed to revealing the civil liability and criminal exposure of Shariah law and Shariah-compliant finance.

Below is a list of Shariah Finance compliant banks. One must come to the conclusion, this is an ever greater threat than Jihadists in America. If our government doesn’t take action soon, then our inconvenient “recession” will look like a stroll in the park. In an effort to combat terrorism my family has decided to pull a considerable sum of money and close accounts of the newest Shariah compliant bank Wachovia. We will not have our funds in institutions that support Islamic Terrorism.  Become aware of banks and banking institutions that support Shariah law and Finance. By closing accounts you have in those institutions, you will know that you are NOT supporting terrorism against our own people and friends. Note the institutions below to see if you are currently supporting terrorism!

Shariah Compliant Banks

Asset Acceptance Capital Corporation
Aviva Plc
AXA
Barclays PLC
BNP Paribas Group
Citibank, N.A.
Credit Agricole, S.A.
Deutsche Bank AG
Dow Jones & Company Inc.
Equity Insurance Group Limited
Goldman Sachs Group
HBOS plc
HSBC Holdings plc
INVESCO Perpetual
Julius Baer Group
Maersk Logistics
Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
Morgan Stanley
NYSE Euronext
Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Comment by linda on 4/13/08 at 9:00 am

Very interesting as well as informative post.Thanks for providing for us.I read your article with my pleasure.
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Comment by Mark Ewans on 12/27/09 at 1:26 pm

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