Daniel Pipes:Muslim Autonomous Zones in the West? and etc

Muslim Autonomous Zones in the West?

by Daniel Pipes

 

 

 

 

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/01/muslim-autonomous-zones-in-the-west.html

 

In “Europe’s Stark Options,” I considered the future of the Muslim-European encounter and conclude there are three possible futures, “harmonious integration, the expulsion of Muslims, or an Islamic takeover.” I then dismissed the first as unrealistic and stated that it is too early to predict which of the latter two unattractive possibilities will come to pass.

A reader, Chris Slater of Upper Hutt, New Zealand, writes me to predict a fourth outcome as most likely: “larger existing Muslim areas will re-create themselves into independent national entities” and “by the middle of the twenty-first century nearly all western European countries will be riven by the creation of Islamic city states within their borders. For the sake of brevity they will be referred to as ‘microstates,’ that is, autonomous conurbations defined by the Islamic beliefs of their citizens.”

Slater foresees boundaries being formed “around existing Muslim centres of population, initially in France, Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, followed rapidly by Britain, Norway, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. Dates for eastern European states, particularly Orthodox, may be more difficult to predict, although Russia, with 15 percent of its 143 million people professing Islam, may well lead many western European countries in having an independent Islamic state. By the end of this century this process will affect every non-Islamic state throughout the world.”

These microstates will enjoy a “monopoly on legitimate violence,” impose their own autonomous legal order, and form alliances among themselves. They will feature such Shar‘i customs as polygyny, no-interest finance, huddud punishments, Islamic ways of dress, family “honor” codes, bans on criticism of Islam, and so on. Arabic and the dominant immigrant vernacular will enjoy more currency than the host country’s language. Street names will be changed, statues removed, churches and synagogues converted to mosques.

 

Slater sees this outcome this as “the only way to avoid the destruction of both the national cultures and, indeed, European civilization from total domination by the cultures of Muslim immigrants.”

Comments: (1) I prefer “Muslim autonomous zones” to “Muslim microstates.”

(2) It’s a plausible vision but I think the tensions between these microstates and the larger, Christian-origin polities will lead to the same two outcomes I have predicted, the expulsion of Muslims or a Muslim takeover. The microstate option implies a certain statis and stability but I expect things to remain dynamic: the Islamic polities will either grow and dominate or they will shrink and disappear. Perhaps some will dominate and others disappear. I cannot envisage a stable order along the lines Slater sketches out. Indeed, Slater’s point about this arrangement providing the only way to avoid the destruction of European civilization tacitly acknowledges the inherent tensions: either old-stock Europeans will manage to hold their own or they will succumb. A compromise, middle way strikes me as highly unlikely.

(3) That said, this scenario of Muslim autonomous zones has no less likelihood than that of harmonious integration, so if that is listed, so should this one. (January 12, 2009)

Europe‘s Growing Pro-Israel Sentiments

 

 

 

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/01/europes-growing-pro-israel-sentiments.html

 

Robert Marquand makes a convincing, if counter-intuitive case in the Christian Science Monitor that “Israel finds more sympathy in Europe: Concerns about Islamist threat have influenced traditionally pro-Arab Europe’s view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

He begins by observing that leaders from European Union countries recently joined Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni as she announced “We are all opposed to terrorism” and offers this anecdote as a symbol of the “little-noted but ongoing convergence between European and US-Israeli thinking” on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

For decades, Marquand writes,

Europe was a Middle East counterbalance – generally sympathetic to Palestinians as the weaker party, critical of an unqualified US backing of Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization had offices in Europe. France’s Navy helped Yasser Arafat escape Tripoli in 1983. Europe backed the Oslo Accords, and saw the Palestinian cause as a fight for territory and statehood.

Yet Europe’s traditional position on the Arab dispute has been quietly changing: It is gravitating closer to a US-Israeli framing of a war on terror, a “clash of civilizations,” with a subtext of concern about the rise of Islam – and away from an emphasis on core grievances of Palestinians, like the ongoing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and “occupation.”

Causes for the shift are complex and manifold, and in no small way associated with the rise of Muslim populations in Europe. But since Sept. 11, the discourse and psychology in Europe has shifted, with pro-Arab support “diluting and weakening,” as Karim Bitar, with the International Institute of Strategic Relations in Paris, puts it – and converging with US-Israeli framing of a fight against terror. “There is convergence on goals [terrorism] between Europe and the US, and a remnant of divergence on means [military logic],” argues the French intellectual Dominique Moisi. “The Europeans are less pro-Islamic Muslims now than before, after 9/11. We also see that even American Jews are not entirely at peace with what Israel is doing. There’s more criticism of Israel than before, in American opinion; and in Europe there is less support of what the Arabs are.”

Public support for Arabs is down due social tensions with Muslim immigrants. “Europe fears an Islamist threat, whether internal or external, and this has begun to change the overall views on the Israel-Palestine conflict,” says Aude Signoles of the University of La Réunion. “There is a general ‘Arab fatigue’ in Europe,” says Denis Bauchard of L’Institut français des relations internationales.

A Pew Global Attitudes poll in 2006 found that French sympathies were evenly divided (38 percent) between those sympathizing with the Palestinians and with Israel, marking a doubling of support for Israel and a 10 percent gain for Palestinians over the previous two years. In Germany, 37 percent sympathized with Israel – an increase of 13 points over 2004 and more than double those who supported the Palestinians.

One sign is that other than José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, all of the major leaders European leaders today –Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Angela Merkel of Germany, Gordon Brown of Great Britain, and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy – are sympathetic to Israel.

What Marquand calls the “Euro-American convergence” means European diplomats support Palestinians on emotional and humanitarian grounds rather than political ones. “Europe itself is not the Europe of decades past,” he writes, “dominated by French diplomacy, with its Arab ties. There are 27 nations. Eastern and former Soviet states, like Poland and the Czech Republic, often take American positions on foreign affairs.”

Comment: This is another sign that Europe is not “finished,” but as I have argued elsewhere, in deep flux, with its destiny vis-à-vis Islam still very much unknown.

 

 

 

 

 

Europe‘s Islamist Imperialists

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2008/10/europes-islamist-imperialists.html

 

Deutsche Presse Agentur carries a fascinating story today datelined Cairo, “Egypt to deport German family for Islamic extremism,” worth quoting at length:

Egypt imprisoned and aims to deport a German family that tore up its German identification papers upon arrival, fearing the documents would connect them to an “infidel state,” Egyptian Independent Al-Badeel newspaper reported. Egypt accused the family of Islamic extremism and imprisoned the family, a man, his wife, his two sisters and his mother. According to media reports, the family does not want to return to Germany.

Currently, the German embassy in Cairo is cooperating with Egyptian officials to deport the family. However, it has declined to give them new identification documents for fear that it would also be destroyed. The country responsible for the family’s flight costs is under consideration. .

Eyewitnesses said the female members of the family wore clothing that only allowed their eyes to be seen. None of the family members are fluent in Arabic, which made communication with police authorities difficult. After their arrest, the process of being photographed for a passport was met with a lack of cooperation by the family who considered it an act against Muslim principles.

Comments: (1) If any reader knows the name of this family, please send it in so I can follow their case. (2) While on the surface, it appears that these five are paying homage to Islam and Egypt, closer inspection reveals their arrogance and aggressiveness:

They destroyed their German passports so as to force the Egyptian authorities to accept them.

They practice an Islam at odds to what is commonly found in Egypt.

They do not bother to learn Arabic vernacular.

In brief, they amount to a new-style form of European imperialism, one based not on a sense of cultural-racial-religious-economic superiority but on a purer form of Islamic practice. One wonders how unique this quintet is, how many other Westerners will follow in their footsteps

 

 

 

 

 

Asylum Granted to Escape Shari‘a

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2008/10/asylum-granted-to-escape-sharia.html

 

In a case with large implications, Britain’s highest court has allowed an illegal Lebanese immigrant to remain in the country to avoid facing the Shar‘i-based family code that prevails in her native country. Joshua Rozenberg reports in the Daily Telegraph that

The law lords ruled this morning that it would be a “flagrant breach” of the European Convention on Human Rights for the government to remove a woman to Lebanon where she would automatically lose custody of her 12-year old son under Lebanon’s sharia family law. The woman – referred to only as EM – came to the UK on false documents in 2004 with her son, AF, then aged eight. She has had sole custody of AF since birth but fled from her allegedly violent husband in Lebanon because of laws that automatically award fathers physical custody of their children from the age of seven.

If this approach becomes a general rule, then a good part of the world’s Muslim population could have asylum rights in Britain, for the Shari‘a is precisely most often applied in the realm of family law.

Secondarily, the ruling is of interest because one judge, Lord Hope of Craighead, commented at length and negatively about the Shari‘a:

The appellant came to this country as a fugitive from Shari’a law. Her son had reached the age of seven when, under the system that regulates the custody of a child of that age under Shari’a law in Lebanon, his physical custody would pass by force of law to his father or another male member of his family. Any attempt by her to retain custody of him there would be bound to fail. This is simply because the law dictates that a mother has no right to the custody of her child after that age. She may or may not be allowed what has been described as visitation. That would give her access to her son during supervised visits to a place where she could see him. But under no circumstances would his custody remain with her. The close relationship that exists between mother and child up to the age of custodial transfer cannot survive under that system of law where, as in this case, the parents of the child are no longer living together when the child reaches that age. There is a real risk in all these cases that the very essence of the family life that mother and child have shared together up to that date will be destroyed or nullified.

This system was described by counsel during the argument as arbitrary and discriminatory. So it is, if it is to be measured by the human rights standards that we are obliged to apply by the [European Convention on Human Rights]. The mutual enjoyment by parent and child of each other’s company is a fundamental element of family life. Under our law non-discrimination is a core principle for the protection of human rights. The fact is however that Shari’a law as it is applied in Lebanon was created by and for men in a male dominated society. The place of the mother in the life of a child under that system is quite different under that law from that which is guaranteed in the Contracting States by article 8 of the Convention read in conjunction with article 14. There is no place in it for equal rights between men and women. It is, as Lord Bingham points out, the product of a religious and cultural tradition that is respected and observed throughout much of the world. But by our standards the system is arbitrary because the law permits of no exceptions to its application, however strong the objections may be on the facts of any given case. It is discriminatory too because it denies women custody of their children after they have reached the age of custodial transfer simply because they are women. That is why the appellant removed her child from that system of law and sought protection against its effects in this country.

Lord Hope’s views contrast sharply to the positive view of other leading British figures, such as the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers.

 

 

 

 

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Ceasefire in Gaza

Foresaking Gaza Arafat’s War : Ceasefire in Gaza                    by Denis MacEoin

http://www.meforum.org/article/2048

 

Today everyone’s talking about a ceasefire in Gaza. With the UN proposing one and Israel demurring, the public, unaware of anything much about Gaza, Hamas, or Israel, blithely puts Israel in the dock. Yet during the last “ceasefire,” when rockets continued to land in Israeli civilian centers, there was a noticeable silence on the part of the international community. It seems it’s okay to drag Israel back from an attack on a massively financed and armed terrorist entity (and if Hamas isn’t a terrorist entity, it’s hard to know what it is), but just not right on to demand the same sort of action on the part of the terrorists. Don’t forget, Israel isn’t the only one refusing a ceasefire at this point: Hamas is rejecting one too, and for dishonest reasons.

There are things going on here that half the world just doesn’t get. All those clamoring for a ceasefire think all other parties understand the word just like they do. They’d be wrong. The secular Arabic press, such as the international newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat, uses the standard Arabic term for a cessation of fire: waqf al-nar or waqf itlaq al-nar. That is a literal translation, and it means exactly what ceasefire means in English and other languages. But Hamas don’t talk about a cessation of fire, because that would be to introduce a term from the Western political vocabulary into their discourse, and they can’t do that.

Why not? Because Hamas is a deeply-grounded Islamist movement that follows the principle that Muslims must never do anything that resembles what the non-believers do. That’s why many Muslims here will only wear Muslim clothes and refuse to join in Christmas, birthday or other celebrations with their Christian neighbors.

Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement, and, unlike Fatah, it prioritizes religious values and aims. A Hamas council has just introduced the implementation of severe punishments, such as amputations and crucifixions for breaches of Islamic law in matters like theft or adultery. Read their 1988 Covenant (al-Mithaq) and you will grasp the fact that their struggle against Israel has nothing to do with land in the sense that is understood in international law. Their gripe is that the whole of what they anachronistically term “Palestine” (the old Southern Syria) was conquered by Islam in the 7th century and not an inch of it must pass out of Muslim hands forever.

As their Covenant makes clear, they are fighting a Jihad, and the rules they observe are Jihad rules, based on centuries of legislation about the waging of war against unbelievers. The problem with Jihad rules is that they simply don’t recognize all the elements of international law that modern states base their treaties and international conventions on. Jihad law includes rules on how and when to deceive the foe, and envisages no outcome other than the death or submission of non-Muslims.

When Hamas announces a temporary cease-fire (a hudna or, recently, a tahdiyya or lull), it does so, not to have an opportunity to talk peace, but to regroup and re-arm. “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” The only solution to the Middle East problem is war: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Numerous times in the past, Israel has shown itself willing to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, on conditions similar to those propounded by the Quartet, first and foremost recognition of Israel’s right to exist, followed by a guarantee that there will be no further resort to violence, including terrorist attacks on civilians (and that includes firing rockets at them). As time has passed, especially since the death of Yasser Arafat, a degree of pragmatism has entered the Palestinian mind, but not the thinking of Hamas. Not only will Hamas not make peace with Israel in order to create a viable Palestinian state, they are as ready to kill Palestinian Muslims in order to gain total control of Gaza and the West Bank.

A recent Hamas pronouncement boasted that the Palestinians (for which read Hamas) have made an industry of death and that everyone plays a part: “…the women exceed at this, and so too do the mujahideen [fighters in jihad] and the children. That’s why they have formed human shields of the women the children the elderly and the mujahideen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine.” (My italics)

This is the only fighting force in history to boast that they have made human shields of their own people. There are films of “brave” Hamas gunmen dragging screaming children along to serve as shields, and of civilians sent onto the roofs of rocket launching sites, where, ironically, they know the Israelis will not fire on them. It is a mockery of military ethics, yet it goes barely noticed in the Western media.

Israel is not along in fighting terrorism. Even now, this country fights al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq or the Taliban in Afghanistan. If we ever gave up the fight against Islamist terror in Britain, we would reap the whirlwind in bombings on land and in the air. Why then do so many of us scorn what Israel does? A combination of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran could one day bring Israel down and result in the deaths of millions of Jews. Is there any good reason why Israel should acquiesce in this? Is our grass roots anti-Semitism still so ferocious that we cannot bear the thought of a Jewish state in the Middle East, even if that state was brought into being by a majority vote of the UN?

This war is not a pretty war, but, truth be told, no wars are pretty. If Hamas cannot be fought to a standstill or until it is a spent force, lulls in the fighting will be of absolutely no use. Beaten to a ceasefire, Hamas will return. They will return and they will fight to a standstill again, then they will regroup and attack once more. More deaths, of Israelis and Palestinians both. Ever-postponed statehood for the Palestinians, unending vituperation of Israel, which is only a democracy trying to defend its civilians from crimes this country would not bear for a week.

It’s not a time for a ceasefire. When it comes, let the Palestinian Authority make it and keep to it, and let the PA police its own territories and rein in the madmen who cannot accept anything but their own right to rule everybody else, and their self-proclaimed right to kill Jews wherever they may be found. For Hamas has now announced that they will do exactly that: kill Jews, not just Israeli Jews, but Jews in any country where they may be found. And these are the people the UN and others would have Israel make a ceasefire with today.

 

Editor Dr. Denis MacEoin has lectured in Arabic and Islamic Studies and is the incoming editor of Middle East Quarterly.

 

 

The Islamic Way of War

The Islamic Way of War

 

 

by Raymond Ibrahim
National Review Online, January 11, 2009

http://www.meforum.org/article/2050

 

At the inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) back in April, presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration. Though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine — such as Clausewitz’s On War, Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, even the exploits of Alexander the Great as recorded in Arrian and Plutarch — Islamic war doctrine, which is just as if not more textually grounded, is totally ignored.

As recently as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that “the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered [emphasis added].” Today, seven full years after September 11, our understanding of the Islamic way of war is little better.

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et. al.) continue to be included on war-college syllabi, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today’s far different landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Contrast this with Islam’s doctrines of war: their “theological” quality — grounded as they are in a religion whose “divine” precepts transcend time and space, and are believed to be immutable — make Islam’s war doctrines unlikely ever to go out of style. While one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the exploits and stratagems of the prophet Muhammad — his “war sunna” — still serve as an example to modern-day jihadists.

For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel: the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad’s seventh century context; hijacked planes or WMD today); the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treaties whenever possible (see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057); and that the only function of the peace treaty, or “hudna,” is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

 

Quranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad’s famous assertion, “War is deceit,” have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation — the most notorious among them being the doctrine of “Taqiyya,” which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: “[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage.”

In addition to ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling still is the Defense Department’s continuing failure to appreciate the pertinent “eternal” doctrines of Islam — such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam’s worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya — that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, “jihadists,” actively uphold it.

Despite these problematic — but revealing — doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, senior U.S. government officials charged with defending America do not.

Why? Because the “Whisperers” — Walid Phares’s apt epithet for the majority of Middle East/Islamic scholars and their willing apologists in the press — have made anathema anyone who dares to point out a connection between Islamic doctrine and modern-day Islamist terrorism — as witness, the Steven Coughlin debacle. This is an all too familiar tale for those in the field (see Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America).

While there exists today many Middle East studies departments, one would be sorely pressed (especially in the more “prestigious” universities) to find any courses dealing with the most pivotal and relevant topics of today — such as Islamic jurisprudence and what it says about jihad or the concept of the Abode of Islam versus the Abode of War. These topics, we are assured, have troubling international implications and are best buried. Instead, the would-be student is inundated with courses dealing with the evils of “Orientalism” and colonialism, gender studies, and civil society.

The greater irony — when one talks about Islam and the West, ironies often abound — is that, on the very same day of the ASMEA conference, which also contained a forthright address by premiere Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis (“It seems to me a dangerous situation in which any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam is, to say the least, dangerous”), the State Department announced that it would not call al-Qaeda type radicals “jihadis,” “mujahadin,” nor incorporate any other Arabic word of Islamic connotation (“caliphate,” “Islamo-fascism,” “Salafi,” “Wahhabi,” and “Ummah” are also out).

Alas, far from taking the most basic and simple advice regarding warfare — Sun Tzu’s ancient dictum, “Know thy enemy” — the U.S. government is having difficulties even acknowledging its enemy.

Raymond Ibrahim is Associate Director of the Middle East Forum and editor of The Al-Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.

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Middle East
January 15, 2009

 

 

 

Forum

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Recently joining the Forum as associate director, Raymond Ibrahim (best known for authoring The Al Qaeda Reader and a daily writer at JihadWatch.org) will be regularly supplying the Forum with analyses regarding radical Islam. Fluent in Arabic and well acquainted with the primary texts of Islam (he worked for six years as a reference assistant at the Library of Congress,) Mr. Ibrahim is particularly well-suited at delineating the otherwise obscure doctrinal and historical aspects that fuel radical Islam.

The National Prayer Service and the Wahhabi Lobby

The National Prayer Service and the Wahhabi Lobby

by Winfield Myers
Front Page Magazine
January 17, 2009

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/the_national_prayer_service_an.html

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6640

 

Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will deliver a prayer at the National Cathedral during the National Prayer Service on January 21st. The event is part of the festivities for the inauguration of Barack Obama, which occurs January 20. A convert to Islam, Mattson directs the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary.

ISNA has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamist group, and was named an un-indicted co-conspirator in U.S. v Holy Land Foundation, a case that uncovered covert financing of the terrorist group Hamas. Since her election as ISNA president in 2006, Mattson’s apologias for the radical Wahhabi sect of Islam have gained a much wider audience.

Daniel Pipes has written that, under Mattson’s leadership, ISNA is “a key component of the Wahhabi lobby.”

In a “Meet Ingrid Mattson,” Campus Watch adjunct scholar Jonathan Schanzer offered specific examples of Mattson’s denials and deceits regarding radical Islam’s threat to the U.S. Among them:

Wahhabism is simply a “reform movement” that “really was analogous to the European protestant reformation”;

Contrary to statements by Director of National Intelligence Adm. Michael McConnell that “there are sleeper cells in the U.S,” Mattson claims that in fact “there aren’t any sleeper cells”;

The president’s use of the term “Islamic” when speaking of terrorist attacks on the West is “not only inaccurate, but unhelpful.”

Additional examples of Mattson’s dissembling abound. During a 2001 CNN chatroom interview, asked at what point in history the Muslim world “turn[ed] from a philosophical and educated state comparable to the Greeks to the now third world state it is in,” Mattson emulated other members of the Middle East studies establishment and employed postcolonial theory to blame the West:

Well, the decline began with the colonization of the Muslim world by European powers. One of the first things the colonialists did was to dismantle the institutions of what we could call civil society. The Muslim world has until now not recovered from that dismemberment of its society.

In a move hardly in keeping with the ecumenical nature of a National Prayer Service, Mattson sought to sow division between religious groups when in 2007 she advised American Jews not to trust conservative Christians:

Right-wing Christians are very risky allies for American Jews because they are really anti-Semitic. They do not like Jews.

Next Wednesday’s event won’t mark Mattson’s first appearance at a significant Obama event. Last August, she participated in an interfaith meeting at the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Nor will it be the first time Mattson benefits from an obsequiousness Washington political class more fearful of giving offense than of facing down apologists for radical Islam. Former Undersecretaries of State Karen Hughes and Nick Burns and Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England went to great lengths to legitimize ISNA. Hughes addressed ISNA’s annual convention in 2005, and England attended the following year.

At the State Department’s 2006 annual Iftaar dinner, Hughes singled out Mattson for praise, calling her:

A thoughtful scholar, a teacher … I think we owe Ingrid a round of applause…. She’s doing a wonderful job and is a wonderful leader and role model for many, many people.

Mattson’s participation in President-elect Obama’s Inaugural festivities heralds the incoming administration’s intent to follow the Bush administration’s practice of ignoring her long history of shilling for radical Islam. In lending its imprimatur to ISNA, the Obama White House proves that opening the doors of power to Wahhabi apologists is the kind of bi-partisan undertaking we’d all be better off without.

Winfield Myers is director of Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.