I was referring to Hassan Shibly, a representative of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who spoke at Tampa’s Steinbrenner High School in November. After I broke the story at my website Atlas Shrugs on December 4, giving specifics of where and when the CAIR rep spoke, and then published the article in the Thinker, “Hamas High School in Florida?,” patriots made hundreds of calls and sent hundreds of letters, emails, Tweets and Facebook messages in protest to Steinbrenner school officials.

The main person responsible was Kelly R. Miliziano, a teacher in the Social Studies Department at Steinbrenner. And she announced Wednesday that the school has scheduled additional religious speakers to balance the CAIR operative — a Hindu priest or a Christian pastor.

The problem with that is that Shibly is a political speaker. A Hindu priest or Christian pastor won’t counter the poisonous propaganda that Shibly spews to our impressionable young minds. An informed counter-jihad speaker such as Robert Spencer, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan or I myself must be given a chance to speak, so as to counter the lies of Hamas-tied CAIR.

Hamas-linked CAIR should not be speaking at all, but if the public school shills insist on presenting jihadi views, they must provide freedom lovers with the same opportunity. Further, political speakers should be off limits on school grounds.

Meanwhile, the email exchanges between CAIR and Steinbrenner High School are revealing. Miliziano wrote this in a November 14 email: “Every year I invite a representative from CAIR to speak to our AP World History Students.” After CAIR-Tampa responded favorably, Miliziano wrote again: “Over the years I have had many speakers from CAIR come to my classes, and it has been such a good learning experience for the students.”

Miliziano said that she “regularly asks” Shibly to speak. This is despite the fact that Shibly has a track record of defending jihad terrorist groups and acting as an apologist for the worldwide jihad and Islamic supremacism. Following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, Shibly granted legitimacy to the jihad terrorist group Hezb’allah by characterizing it as a “resistance movement” that provides valued social services to the Lebanese people. “They’re absolutely not a terrorist organization,” Shibly said, and “any war against them is illegitimate.”

Yet Miliziano refused to respond to parents’ requests to vet the notorious Mr. Shibly. Instead, she attacked the parents who complained. She even called parents’ concerns about CAIR “baseless and Islamophobic.” Yet although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has many links to Islamic supremacist and jihad terror groups. CAIR’s cofounders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad attended a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they conspired with Hamas operatives to raise funds for Hamas. And several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various jihad-related crimes.

This should be grounds for Miliziano’s immediate dismissal. Freedom lovers should urge Steinbrenner’s principal, Brenda Grasso, to fire Miliziano at once demand equal time for freedom fighters, while calling upon Steinbrenner High cease and desist from inviting Muslim Brotherhood groups to speak to public school students. Call for Ms. Miliziano’s removal. Demand equal time for freedom fighters. Brenda Grasso’s email is brenda.grasso@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

One parent of a Steinbrenner student, whose child went through Shibly’s indoctrination, wrote me that his daughter told him that Shibly said that “only 4% or 6% of Muslims were terrorists,” and that his presentation was so positive toward Islam as to be “borderline proselytizing.”

This parent went to Steinbrenner the morning of December 5 and spoke to Kelly King, the Assistant Principal for Curriculum. King confirmed that the speaker who addressed his daughter’s class was indeed a representative from Hamas-linked CAIR. “I explained to Ms. King,” wrote the parent, “that I strongly objected to CAIR being involved in the school, and recited some of CAIR’s more infamous highlights. She replied that the presentation was part of a history of religion unit in their history class. I told her that I have no problem with students being taught the history of Islam, but if the school was going to have a speaker do that, they should invite an Imam, not a representative from a religious based political organization, particularly one with such a dubious history.”

In response, King equated “a Christian pastor to a PAC” and ultimately referred the parent to Miliziano, who said that she regularly invited Shibly to give presentations, and “that the statements I had made about CAIR were baseless and Islamophobic,” even though the parent had expressly told her that he had no problem with the school bringing in an imam to discuss the history of Islam. When the parent tried to explain to her that “the school was associating itself with a religious-based political organization that propagandizes for Islam & Sharia, and are terrorist apologists,” Miliziano “completely dismissed these concerns.”

And despite Miliziano’s assurances that a Hindu priest and a Christian pastor would address the class, so far only Shibly has done so.

This is unconscionable. Freedom lovers must demand equal time.

Pamela Geller is the publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and the author of the WND Books title “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance” and The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster).

“…on a day when others tried to divide us, we can regain the sense of common purpose that stirred in our hearts 10 years ago. As a nation, we face difficult challenges, and as citizens in a democratic society we engage in vigorous debates about the future. But as we do, let’s never forget the lesson we learned anew 10 years ago — that our differences pale beside what unites us and that when we choose to move forward together, as one American family, the United States doesn’t just endure, we can emerge from our tests and trials stronger than before. That’s the America we were on 9/11 and in the days that followed. That’s the America we can and must always be.”
– Pres. Barack Obama, USA Today, Sept. 8, 2011

Ten year have passed since the Islamist attacks on the United States of America; attacks that killed 2,977 people in New York, Washington, DC and Shanksville, PA. Since that time we have routed the Taliban from their haven in Afghanistan, dispatched Osama bin Laden to the icy deep and lopped off many of the heads of the Islamist terror hydra. We have grown as a people to better understand the dysfunctional relationship that the Islamic theo-political dogma has with Western Culture. And we have done our best to attain closure, for ourselves, for our society and for our country.

But closure can be hard to attain when there are no bodies to bury and no pointed victory over a vanquished foe. And when closure alludes because of unresolved issues we must always re-examine the event; the moment; the realities.

At the ten year mark, an American president is foolishly stopping short of succeeding in a generational conflict with fundamentalist Islamists…or radical Islamists…or jihadists, you pick the politically correct term the Progressive-Left elitists are sanctioning as appropriate this week. To me, they are the enemy; bloodthirsty ideologues who are committed to ideological conquest by the sword in their quest to establish a global Caliphate existing under the exclusive stricture of Sharia Law. But then, that’s just me…educated on the subject and painfully realistic in my examination. You see, I dispensed with the self-imposed mental handicap of political correctness years ago…and I feel a lot better for having done so. I also see things a lot clearer without the fog of stupidity clouding every issue.

At the ten year mark, a secularist New York Mayor – along with the Progressive elites of his ilk – is advocating for the construction of a victory mosque within the footprint of the fallen World Trade Center. New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, about as self-righteous as they come, is so certain that a “kumbaya” inclusionist approach to fundamentalist Islam will heal the rift between cultures that he refuses to examine the Islamic traditions of conquest; traditions that include building great mosques over conquered lands and, in particular, conquered religious properties. One need only understand that mosques now stand over holy places meaningful to religions that existed long before Muhammad or the theo-political creed that is Islam, established in 610 A.D., to validate this reality.

Ten years on we witness an American Administration that not only sullies the relationship between the United States and its greatest Middle Eastern ally, Israel, but acts transparently in its deference to the Palestinian Movement; a movement of predominantly intolerant, and in many cases violent, Islamists who stake claim to an area that, historically, never existed. It should be noted that these Palestinian Islamists are the same people who danced in the streets of Gaza in celebration of the slaughter that took place on American soil September 11, 2001.

Ten years on we observe an American Administration completely ignoring the sanctity of free speech – a freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution – in its advocacy of a move by the Islamic and global communities (via the United Nations) to “combat” so-called Islamophobia.

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center on Religious Freedom and a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, writes:

“An unprecedented collaboration between the Obama administration and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to combat ‘Islamophobia’ may lead to the de-legitimization of freedom of expression as a human right.

“The administration is taking the lead in an international effort to ‘implement’ a UN resolution against religious ‘stereotyping,’ specifically as applied to Islam.

“To be sure, the administration argues that the effort should not result in free-speech curbs. However, its partners in the collaboration, the 56 member states of the OIC, have no such qualms.

“Many OIC states police private speech through Islamic blasphemy laws that the Saudi-based OIC has long worked to see applied universally. Under Muslim pressure, Western Europe now has laws against religious hate speech that serve as proxies for Islamic blasphemy codes.”

It would seem that those who want to honestly examine and debate the grotesque contradictions presented by Muslims of a fundamentalist Islamic bent in their alleged symbiotic relationship with the West face the challenge of censorship should they dare to confront issues such as honor killings, female genital mutilation, gender equality, rights for homosexuals in the Islamic culture, freedom of religion in Islamic nations, etc.

Ten years on from the mass slaughter of September 11, 2001, and reports continuously surface about the encroachment of jihadist terror organizations into the Western Hemisphere. The Italian daily Corriere della Sera, reports that Hezbollah is setting up operations just 90 miles south of Key West, Florida, in Cuba. Reports of Hezbollah, Hamas and even al Qaeda activity in the tri-border area of South America and in Venezuela have been verified. And reports increase with each passing day of Hezbollah corroboration with Mexican drug cartels operating on the Southern border of the United States.

Ten years later and the West looks on as a so-called “Arab Spring” takes hold across the Middle East and Northern Africa. As Progressives, the uninformed and the know-nothing cheerleaders for the Obama Administration cheer the “advancement of democracy” in these lands, they ignore the inevitability that democracy in the Middle East is always subject to the organized forces that be; that the best organized factions within each “sovereign” locale will ultimately win power and, therefore legitimacy on the world stage. The gigantic problem with this all-to-soon-to-become-reality scenario is that fundamentalist Islamists are the best organized in each and every one of these locales.

In Egypt, even though many of us exclaimed the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood, the mainstream media, along with the Obama Administration and the Progressive Movement, celebrated democracy in the aftermath of Mubarak. Today we witness the Muslim Brotherhood threatening the Egyptian military not to interfere in the crafting of a new constitution.

In Lybia, even though many of us warned that Libyan rebels had extensive ties to jihadists groups including al Qaeda and offshoots that waged war against US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama Administration, along with the presiding governments in Britain and France, advocated for NATO operations to support the terrorist affiliated groups over the clown prince Qaddafi. Today, these rebels not only have Qaddafi’s money, they have his SA-24 heat-seeking missiles and, some fear, his stockpile of chemical weapons.

Ten years on…

In 2006, I wrote of Jonathan Briley. Mr. Briley is better known in his death as “The Falling Man” of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks. I wrote then:

“The mainstream media in the United States has taken the images of September 11th, 2001 off the television and out of the newspapers. They say that the images are too disturbing, that they incite a want for revenge rather than allow closure. But they are wrong to do this.

“The United States should not and cannot simply forgive and forget just because the host country of the Taliban and al Qaeda – Afghanistan – has been liberated and transformed. Facts demonstrate that al Qaeda, the Taliban and radical Islam have been planning and preparing to implement their global campaign of terrorism – their declared war against the Western World – since before 1993, well before September 11th. Their central location for training may have been eliminated but they had prepared for that, splintering like roaches to the four corners of the world, preparing, planning and implementing their battle plans made decades before.

“Make no mistake, they are a cunning adversary. They understood that the US would come after them. They planned for this event.

“This war cannot be about ‘tolerance’ or forgiving, or about understanding the ‘reasons why’ someone would want to murder innocents whether it be with an airplane, a car bomb, a suicide vest or a saif. This battle has to be about freedom and the right of innocents to live their lives in liberty, free of fear from an unholy sect of genocidal totalitarians who offer only oppression, dominance and terror as their bounty…”

With all of the appeasement the West has offered the radical, fundamentalist Islamist community, with all of the advances made by jihadists around the world, with Islamists pressuring governments around the world, from Britain to the Netherlands, Spain to Germany and the United States, to coddle their barbarity; to provide inclusion for their totalitarian theocratic ideology, can we truly say that Jonathan Briley has received any semblance of justice, that his family has attained any modicum of closure? Only the radically dense would answer yes.

So, as we watch the secular commemorations of the ten year passing of the attacks on our country by radical Islamists, fundamentalist Muslims, jihadis, or, if you have dispensed with political correctness as I have, the scum of the Earth, ask yourself: do you feel safer today than Jon Briley did at fifteen seconds after 9:41am, on September 11, 2001? I know I don’t.

Such is the case with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Not since Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbor has the United States had its territorial sovereignty violated by such aggression. Everyone who was alive on 9/11/01 recalls today what they were doing, and how they reacted, felt, grieved, mourned, and prayed. For most Americans, that grief, sadness and prayer will never end.

Faith becomes more important to people when they are faced with the loss of loved ones. Religious ceremonies typically accompany the burial process, and the same holds true for memorial events like the upcoming September 11, 2011 ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Except that in the case of the ceremony to be held at the site of the World Trade Center– Ground Zero – Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the kibosh on having religion be a part of it.

It is a decision that seems to defy all logic and commonsense, and it comes off as cruel, heartless, and suggests Hizzoner is out of touch with the people who elected him to be Mayor (not King) of New York City. It falls on the heels of another take-your-breath-away decision about the same event. In mid-August, Mayor Bloomberg nixed inviting first responders to the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC.

Faith and first responders defined the attacks and their aftermath. Let’s remember – although the mainstream media tries its best to make us forget – that the attacks themselves were motivated by a perverted sense of faith, by radical Islamists hell-bent on a twisted brand of Jihad against the west. First responders pulled people from the wreckage of this religion-inspired assault, many losing their lives in the process. It is faith that has sustained Americans as they have tried to make sense of the devastation and loss ever since.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani made religion a part of the healing process shortly after 9/11 during an interfaith ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Let’s not forget how President George W. Bush injected faith into everything he did as President, recognizing its importance in a nation grounded in Judeo-Christian roots. So why exclude first responders and faith, Mr. Mayor?

I don’t think Mayor Bloomberg has excluded faith from the 9/11 memorial this year because he is anti-religion. Quite the contrary. In May 2010, he came out in full-force defense of the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero. He’s even on record for saying the government, “shouldn’t be in the business of picking” one religion over another. So why the hostility toward religion at a time when most Americans (indeed New Yorkers) demand it?

There’s a paradox about liberalism that I have observed for many years – if not a downright psychopathology. At the risk of possibly offending a few in the minority, liberals intentionally offend the majority. Mayor Bloomberg is likely guided by this distorted sense of reasoning. He’d rather guarantee that he insults a majority of Christian, Jewish, and people of other faiths in order to avoid even the potential of offending a minority of Muslims. We saw it with his decision to support the Ground Zero Mosque, and we’re seeing it with the decision to remove religion from the 9/11 anniversary memorial. But how to explain the prohibition on first responders? I can only think of the famous punch line comedian Ron White uses often: “You can’t fix stupid!” But you can vote it out of office.

Follow Mike Angley on Twitter: @MikeAngley and on FaceBook: mike.angley.

All Threat to Freedom groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign American Constitutional freedoms and/or lawful initiatives for American self-defense.

My colleague Robert Spencer and I compiled the list from records of Threat to Freedom group statements and activities as they appear in their own publications and websites, as well as from reports from concerned citizens and mainstream media reports.

Threat to Freedom group activities can include misrepresentation of anti-terror and other law enforcement initiatives, attempts to restrict the freedom of speech regarding Islamic jihad or other threats to freedom, defamation of freedom fighters, disinformation campaigns in the mainstream media regarding attempts by the U.S. and Israel to defend themselves, and more.

Listing as a Threat to Freedom group does not in itself imply that a listed group calls for or participates in violence or criminal activities, although it does not rule out their doing so.

Here are the first groups listed on our AFDI Threats to Freedom Index. There is more detail in my book Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition retails jihadist propaganda against Israel, distorting the facts of the conflict and attempting to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

Code Pink: Far-Left organization aligned with Communists and Islamic jihadists, masquerading as a “peace” organization dedicated to stopping what it characterizes as unjust wars.

Cordoba Initiative: Stealth jihad organization aligned with anti-Israel jihad organizations and dedicated to building the triumphal Islamic supremacist mosque at Ground Zero.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas-linked organization spreading disinformation about Islam and terror, opposing anti-terror activity, and defaming freedom fighters. CAIR was one of the many Islamic groups that was named an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas jihad funding trial.

Friends of Sabeel-North America (FOSNA): Palestinian Christians aiding the jihad against Israel and retailing jihadist propaganda against the Jewish state.

If Americans Knew (IAK) spreads disinformation about the Palestinian jihad against Israel and Israel’s efforts to defend itself.

International ANSWER: a far-Left organization that opposes U.S. attempts to defend itself from jihad aggression.

International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT): Muslim Brotherhood organization with numerous documented links to Saudi Wahhabi organizations and jihad terror activity.

International Solidarity Movement enlists Leftist Americans to aid the Palestinian jihad against Israel and impede the defensive actions of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Islamic Circle of North America: Muslim Brotherhood organization preaching a global Caliphate and Islamic law (Sharia) over the U.S. ISNA was another Islamic group that was named an unindicted coconspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas jihad funding trial.

Islamic Society of North America: Muslim Brotherhood organization named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas jihad terror funding case.

Muslim American Society: chief arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., which is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”

Muslim Public Affairs Council: Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization that has spread disinformation about the extent of Muslim cooperation with anti-terror efforts, and has encouraged Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement.

Muslim Students Association: Muslim Brotherhood organization creating an atmosphere of intimidation for Jewish students on campuses nationwide, and bringing in speakers who preach jihad and hatred.

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP): a black militant group that relentlessly promotes violence against white people, and Jews in particular.

North American Islamic Trust (NAIT): Muslim Brotherhood organization and subsidiary of the ISNA, holder of titles of hundreds of Islamic properties in the U.S. It funds mosques and Islamic schools nationwide, and safeguards and pools the assets of the Muslim community in America. In doing so, NAIT promotes the concept of waqf, the eternal Islamic ownership of land—which is certain to cause trouble in the United States in the future. It also is tied to Saudi Wahhabi groups that are aggressively pushing, all over the world, the most virulent, violent form of Islam on the planet.

Organization of Islamic Cooperation: International organization dedicated to destroying free speech about Islam and jihad in America and Europe. The great historian Bat Ye’or explains that the OIC is “close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim Brotherhood,” and that “it shares the Brotherhood’s strategic and cultural vision: that of a universal religious community, the Ummah, based upon the Koran, the Sunna, and the canonical orthodoxy of shari’a.”

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding: Saudi-funded center at Georgetown University spreading disinformation about Islam and jihad. It underwrites material by the deceptive pro-Sharia academic John Esposito, such as the 2011 book Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21^st Century, a book-length barrage of Muslim victimhood propaganda, designed to deflect attention away from Islamic jihad activity and Islamic supremacism.

George Soros: The only individual to make the “Threats to Freedom” list, Soros is, according to Discover the Networks, “one of the most powerful men on earth,” with personal assets of an estimated $13 billion. Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) donates millions of dollars to far-Left, pro-Sharia, anti-freedom groups.

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) defames and attempts to marginalize conservative, pro-freedom organizations as “hate groups.” It uses its listing of “hate groups” to try to stigmatize, and ultimately criminalize, love of country and patriotism. It works to systematically destroy voices that are speaking out against oppression and persecution.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spreads jihadist propaganda and disinformation about Israeli self-defense on U.S. university campuses.

In a capitulation to Islamic supremacists and violent radical Leftists, French and European Union authorities have canceled a free speech rally that we had planned with a coalition of American and European human rights organizations in Strasbourg, the seat of the European Parliament.

Our human rights organizations Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and its sister group, Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) were planning to hold their first-ever transatlantic summit in Strasbourg, France, on July 2.

The SIOA/SIOE summit was dedicated to the defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law – all principles denied by Islamic law.

But the Strasbourg police could not guarantee our safety. When the thugs of the Antifa group and Islamic supremacist organizations announced plans to hold a violent counter-demonstration and to do everything they could to disrupt our activities, the authorities canceled permission for our demonstration and conference, instead of standing up to these violent neo-fascists and their Islamic supremacist allies.

Strasbourg authorities told us that they could not guarantee our safety at the conference and demonstration location, the Place de la Republique. Efforts were made to hold the demonstration nearby, but the authorities still considered security to be too much of an issue.

Muslims and Leftist fascists previously burned down a hotel in Strasbourg during a NATO summit, and burned a large number of cars in a car park during riots in the same city.

We are not intimidated, and will demonstrate in the future, just as we did in Harrow, Copenhagen and Aalborg. This planned Strasbourg demonstration and conference will be rescheduled.

This incident shows yet again that freedom and democracy are being denied in Europe. But we are not giving in. On the contrary: when our governing authorities are refusing to protect freedom, we have to do it ourselves. That’s the impetus for our Freedom From Jihad Flotilla.

The SIOA/SIOE Freedom From Jihad aid flotilla is intended to be a direct response to the capitulation of French, European, and American authorities to Leftist and Islamic supremacist forces of oppression and injustice. It is set to launch after our national Rally for Freedom at Ground Zero on the tenth anniversary of the Islamic jihad attacks that murdered three thousand Americans.

The Audacity of the Infidel will launch on September 11 from the New York harbor closest to the World Trade Center site. On board will be freedom fighters from all over the world, united in defense of human rights and human dignity against Islamic supremacist oppression.

The mission is the first attempt by free citizens anywhere in the world to come to the aid of non-Muslims persecuted for their faith in Muslim countries. It is a direct response to the heavily-armed Leftist/jihadist flotilla that attempted to violate Israel’s legal maritime blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza on May 31, 2010. In that incident, Turkish jihadists onboard one ship attacked Israeli soldiers without provocation; nine jihadists were killed in the battle. The Freedom From Jihad Flotilla is also a response to the Audacity of Hope flotilla that is soon to set sail to continue the jihad against Israel, with plans to use chemical weapons against Israeli forces.

The Freedom From Jihad Flotilla will offer aid to persecuted Christians, Hindus, and other non-Muslims, and call upon the international community to recognize Muslim persecution of non-Muslims as a violation of international law, to be punished with strict economic sanctions and other appropriate action.

The first stop will be Greece, in recognition of the Greek victims of jihad in Anatolia for well over a thousand years. The Freedom From Jihad Flotilla will then sail along the Turkish coast, where speakers will pay homage to the millions of victims of the Armenian and Greek genocides in Turkey.

The next stop will be Egypt. All Coptic Christians seeking to escape Islamic oppression will be saved. Subsequent stops will include Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other areas where Christians are facing persecution from Muslims. The freedom flotilla will also include stops in Bangladesh, for Hindus facing Muslim persecution, and Thailand, for Buddhists facing the same persecution.

The SIOA Freedom From Jihad Flotilla will call upon the international community to act in defense of these basic human rights:

• 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.

The Flotilla will call upon all free people of all races and creeds to stand with us to defend our freedoms against the radically intolerant ideology codified in Islamic law.

We are determined to defend human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the West – even if our governing authorities are too afraid to do the job themselves.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad (both Regnery).

The bill passed the Tennessee Senate with 26 Yes, and 3 No; the vote in the House was 76 Yes, 16 No, and 1 Present/Not Voting. This bi-partisan support for a bill that does nothing if not increase the ability of the legal and law enforcement authorities of Tennessee to better protect the citizens of that state from terrorist threats (including organizations/entities that encourage/support terrorism) shows that a certain rationality has returned to public discourse, and re-focused the response of government, at least in Tennessee, from politically correct falsehoods and multicultural wishful thinking, to a more pragmatic acceptance of threats and a realistic approach to terrorism prevention.

When the bill is signed into law by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam once an entity has been designated as a terrorist organization, it is a felony for anyone to knowingly help that entity with money, advice or any other aid.

Previous versions of the bill had included the words “jihad” and “Sharia” but the passed version of the bill does not. In fact, there is no differentiation made in the passed legislation between any specific ideology, or religious views that might encourage terrorism, or violence. All those who might support “entities” or “organizations” designated as a terrorist organization whatever their religious or ideological views might be, will fall under the purview of this new law.

The bi-partisan passage of the “Material Support to Designated Entities Act” in Tennessee is an official acknowledgment of realities and a long overdue response on the part of high level politicians in America that threats (and actions) of jihad and terrorism are the results of a specific ideology. The bill did not pass in a political vacuum.

Less than two weeks before the bill’s passage, Geert Wilders, the persecuted Dutch Freedom Party leader, drew thousands to his “A Warning to America” speech in Nashville on May 12, 2011. Wilders can see in his own country what it means to be losing a civilizational war against Islam.

Tennessee is a hotbed of resistance to political Islam. The Middle Tennessee ACT (Act for America) chapter is the largest in America and has brought in monthly speakers on the nature and danger of political Islam. Their events routinely draw hundreds.

Nearby, the city of Murfreesboro has also recently started an ACT chapter. Murfreesboro has been the site of a spirited and lengthy resistance to Islam by opposing the construction of a local huge mosque/Islamic center.

In the political background of the bill’s passage were the lobbying efforts of the Tennessee Eagle Forum, led by Bobbie Patray (known as “Ms. Bobbie” to every politician who sits in the Tennessee Legislature or the governor’s mansion). She is a political force unto herself and was involved in the passage of three other bills that resist Islam.

Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Bill Ketron and House Speaker Pro Tem Judd Matheny have proven to be strong leaders by weathering a full court press against the bill by the “main stream” media at the local and national levels. Nashville’s mainstream newspaper, The Tennessean, ran a Sunday front page article creating the “Big Lie” that the bill would prohibit Sharia law and make it illegal to practice Islam in Tennessee.

The “Big Lie” resulted in a small media storm that caused Al Jazeera, New York Times, Fox and others to show up and record what they apparently hoped would be the modern day equivalent of the Scope’s “Monkey Trial“, held in Dayton, TN in 1925.

CAIR organized a protest at the Legislature. The ACLU weighed in to oppose the bill (for many, reason enough to support the bill). Adherents of Islam packed committee meetings and attended sessions with the bill’s sponsors – to no avail.

When the votes were counted, it was a bipartisan group of concerned Americans who won over an energized Muslim Brotherhood, the ACLU, and a biased newspaper. The passage of this bill is a significant step by the state of Tennessee in resisting the Islamic attack on our civilization.

It has often been suggested since 9/11 that any discussion of Islam in which the doctrine of jihad was criticized was an offense against religious tolerance, multiculturalism, (and political correctness) mainly due to the contra-rational concept so prevalent after the jihadist attacks in New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Bali, Mumbai, Kenya, Israel, Beslan, London, Madrid and hundreds of other places, that Islam is a hijacked “religion of peace.”

Only after adherents of Islam (i.e., Muslims) gave non-adherents real cause to fear Islam (9/11) and those who implemented its doctrine of jihad did the term “Islamophobia” enter common usage. The passage of the Material Support bill in Tennessee overturns the false concept that legitimate discussions of the threat of Islamic jihad doctrine are somehow inherently bigoted by acknowledging, through bi-partisan supported legislation, that such discussions are based on facts and critical reasoning.

Tennessee is famous across the country for its friendly and hospitable people. In fact, the United States is known across the world for these same traits of culture. Adherents of Islam in Tennessee are allowed to freely practice their religion; this bill does not in any way interfere with the legal practice of any faith.

The Tennessee Material Support bill is not about religious intolerance or bigotry nor is open discussion about Koran, Sira, and Hadith, and what some adherents of Islam do on account of these sacred Islamic texts. The continued tolerance for Islam in the United States in this post-9/11 world is a significant commentary on the openness and decency of the American people and our ongoing difficulty in accepting that a religious ideology could be the source of so much hatred, violence, and intolerance.

Those who commit violence due to the Islamic doctrine of jihad have been telling us clearly – through their videos, publications, public statements, writings, organizational charters, and acts – that their motives are entirely in line with the ideology of Islam and that they are meeting their jihad obligations as laid out to them (as adherents) in the doctrine to which they adhere. Bin Laden himself was quite clear on this point, as were his jihadist minions on 9/11 and afterward. We have not been very good listeners.

Since the horror of 9/11 many Americans continue to refuse to accept that our world now is riven by an ideological conflict on account of which the fate of the United States and of the entire West now is at stake. We are still a House divided.

Abraham Lincoln, in his famous “House Divided” speech, delivered in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858, regarding a different matter (“slavery agitation”) said:

In my opinion, it (slavery agitation) will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.

Now, in our own great ideological war brought upon us (due only to the fact that we exist), and not caused by us – it is clear that our country (and the West in general) cannot long endure half realist/learned, and half denialist/ignorant.

It seems altogether fitting and proper that the former Confederate state of Tennessee should set the pace for realistic engagement in this civilizational war to defend our freedoms and Constitutional Republic.

Who could have known that ten years would be required for reality to shatter our dreams of what we want the world to be, and replace our fantasies of coexistence and global brotherhood with the truth of the existence of people and ideologies whose purpose is nothing less than our destruction and all those who live and think as we do?

This acceptance of the lessons of distant and recent history and of our finally paying attention to the words, actions, and foundational doctrines of our enemies is nothing more and nothing less than a culture-awakening “moment of truth.”

There should be no calumny associated with speaking the truth. There ought to be an acceptance of reality for what it is, rather than a rejection of it because it is not what we’d prefer.

The actions of the Tennessee legislature in passing SB1028/HB1353 are laudable for many reasons first and foremost that it accepts reality for what it is, and takes concrete legal steps to secure the people of that state from ongoing threats of terror and violence. There is no civilization that can sustain itself with passive denialism and Utopian wishful thinking.

Perhaps it is not excessive rhetoric at all to suggest that the passage of the “Material Support to Designated Entities Act” in Tennessee marks a turn-of-the-tide moment in recent American history. Perhaps more rational voices – supported by history, evidence, and the actions of those whose purpose is our destruction – will be heard with more patient and open ears in halls of learning and law across the country, and Tennessee’s model of acceptance of the truth will sweep the land from east to west and north to south.

What remains now is for Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to sign the bill into law.

Please consider sending Governor Haslam a note via email (bill.haslam@tn.gov) mentioning that you support Tennessee bill SB1028/HB1353 (Material Support to Designated Entities Act) and that you strongly hope that he will affix his signature to it.

Co-authored with Dr. Bill Warren

DL Adams is an analyst and historian.
Dr. Bill Warner is Founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam. Dr. Warner’s website is PoliticalIslam.com.

There are reports that Muslims stoned praying Jews at the Western Wall today. That would be the equivilant of Jews stoning Muslims at Mecca.

Here is video of the incident, although it is hard to make out what is happening.

More info here:

Police enter Temple Mount to stop riots

Police and Border Guard forces broke into the Temple Mount compound on Friday after stones were hurled at the end of Friday prayers. Officers dispersed the rioters using crowd dispersal means and isolated them. No injuries have been reported. Three worshippers were arrested.

Dozens of youths began to hurl stones at the Moroccans’ Gate adjacent to the Western Wall as Friday prayers in the Old City drew to a close. Security forces were forced to enter the compound to put a stop to the violence.

No reports of anything that might have been said at Friday prayers to inspire this violence.