By Rachel Lipsky
September 6th,
2014
To fully
appreciate the meaning of interfaith dialogues with
so-called “moderate” Muslims and friends, consider the apt Sears Optical commercial. “Mama,” Kitty’s
myopic owner, fails to see without her glasses. She opens
the door to let Kitty in to “snuggle with mama” but instead,
a raccoon―known to carry rabies―runs in and jumps in with
‘mama’ on her cozy bed.
Consider this an
analogy for a distressing drama in progress at Chautauqua Institution, a strikingly
beautiful summer retreat in Chautauqua, N.Y. While enveloped
by pastoral landscape, Lake Chautauqua, beautiful houses and
gardens, and enriched by music, visual arts, ballet, opera,
symphony, chamber music and much more, Chautauqua is opening
its doors to another sort of rabid beast.
After toying with
the idea for many years, Chautauqua’s religion department
this summer announced plans to add a Cordoba House to the
Institution’s “Abrahamic family,” to be led by
the infamous Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a move it describes as
“highly supported by Chautauqua Faith leaders.”
What’s the rush?
Why now, when bands of Islamic brigands roam much of the
Middle East and Africa, and Muslim
Brotherhood sympathizers worldwide endanger Western
civilization? Why at this moment, as Islamic jihadists slaughter
Christians throughout the entireMiddleEast as
well as elsewhere. After all,
Chautauqua Institution was founded by Protestant Christians.
Rather than
outrage over endemic tyrannical Islamic abuses of
Christians, associate religion department director Maureen
Rovegno expresses what an objective individual could at best
describe as naiveté:
“The only way
that this fear [of Islam] can be alleviated, or
neutralized, is to get to know each other in a personal
way.” As the Psalm goes: ‘How good is it, and how
pleasant, when people dwell together in unity’.”
Thus, only this
summer, Chautauqua featured five influential Muslim
Brotherhood functionaries and apologists as guest speakers:
Former Islamic Circle of North America president Imam Abdul
Malik Mujahid, Imam
Rauf, DaliaMogahed, KarenArmstrong and John
Esposito, a Georgetown
University professor and head of its Prince Alwaeed
bin Talal Center for
Muslim Christian Understanding, eponymous for the Saudi
royal who in 2005 donated $20 million to
the center.
Esposito has long
espoused views consistent
with Brotherhood doctrine and during the 1990′s was known to claim
that Islamic fundamentalism, in fact, was democratic and
posed no threat to the U.S. Esposito has also served with global Muslim
Brotherhood leader Yusef
Qaradawi―since 1999
banned for his terror support from entry to the U.S.―at both
the Institue
of Islamic Political Thought and the Circle
of Tradition and Progress as well as the United
Association For Studies and Research (USAR), part of the
Hamas’ U.S. Muslim Brotherhood support infrastructure.
On Aug. 15, 2014,
I tried to question Esposito following his presentation at
the Chautauqua Hall of Philosophy. Chaos briefly ensued. I
began with a referral to Sheikh Qaradawi, the MB spiritual
leader banned in the U.S., and a major supporter of
Hamas―the Palestinian branch
of the Muslim Brotherhood.
I stated:
Imam
Rauf favorably describes him as “the
most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim
world today.”
Dalia Mogahed, a featured
Chautauqua speaker during the Week on Egypt, conducted
her first interview with Qaradawi on
his Islam Online website.
(All four,
presumably involved with Chautauqua’s future Muslim House,
were the Institution’s guest speakers this summer.)
I intended to
share the following data on the horrors that Qaradawi
sanctions, authorizes and stands for. Esposito refused to
let me read even a small sample of Qaradawi’s edicts:
・ Qaradawi declares
force a legitimate means to establish or support Islamic
principles (“changing wrong by force whenever possible”) Priorities
of the Islamic Movement chapter
Time clearly was
not at issue. The preceding questioner was as short as
possible. To paraphrase, he asked (55:13-55:45)
“The U.S.
state department declares Hamas a terrorist organization.
Would you be willing to denounce Hamas?”
Esposito claimed
that this was not his topic. When pressed, Esposito again
dodged.
At other
Chautauqua assemblies, questioners ran on at length but
asked no question—and received applause. On Jul. 15, 2014,
after Imam
Abdul Malik Mujahid spoke, for
example, another woman stood in the same Hall of Philosophy
and for two minutes (1:03:27 - 1:05:05) bemoaned
the fate of Sami Al-Arian, a “convicted
terrorist-supporting felon, …under…separate
indictment for criminal
contempt,” as if he were a
“poor victim.” Al Arian workedwith the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad and served
as a board member. In September
1991, Al Arian was caught on
tape declaring:
“These people
– whom God, the Glorious and sublime, had made into
monkeys and pigs, had become discontent and angry with,
had cursed in this world and in the hereafter… [Koran
5:78, 5:60, and related Hadith]”
On Aug. 15, by
contrast, I could have finished my question in under one
minute. However, Esposito interrupted repeatedly and instructed me to “show some civility.” (55:50 –
58:40) This same man refers to the wicked Qaradawi ― for
good reason banned from the U.S. for 15 years ― as a
“reformist” and “continues to consider Al-Arian a ‘very
close friend’ and ‘a man of conscience with a strong
commitment to peace and social justice’.” Obviously, he
wished only to conceal the truth.
Fellow audience
members shouted me down, displaying appallingly belligerent
disrespect. They thus unveiled Chautauqua’s general
tolerance for such fascist attitudes: not a single voice
asked the hecklers to behave with decorum.
The sad reality:
about Islam, Chautauqua won’t let the truth out. The
precepts of sharia (Islamic law) prohibit criticism
of Islam. As if in keeping with that, Esposito
manipulatively suppressed any legitimate questions, much
less open, honest discourse. He evidently acquiesces to sharia’s
bans of free speech, press and conscience.
It makes sense:
Esposito regularly appears as a keynote speaker at the
Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the U.S. fund
raising arm of Hamas, and an unindicted
co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy
Land terror-funding case, with ties to Hamas that led the
FBI to terminateany
official contact with the group.
At a recent CAIR
fundraiser, Esposito smeared Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a highly
acclaimed champion of the rights of Muslim women,asan
“Islamophobe” (7:15-7:23), a
slanderous noun for a fictitiousphenomenon. “Phobia” means an
unusually persistent fear of some object or situation.
Indeed, the word Islamophobia was reportedly
concocted by Islamists at the Virginia
offices of the Muslim Brotherhood’s International Institute
of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Chautauquans, especially, use it
to tiringly silence all critics of Islam and more
specifically all criticism of the barbaricIslamiclegal
code. They intend
solely to prohibit correct, indeed highly appropriate,
expressions of alarm.
Sadly, at this
pace, Chautauqua Institution’s engagement of radical
supporters of Islamic law will undoubtedly render it a
tyrannical place, especially regarding the alarmingly
supremacist Islamic political ideology. Chautauqua
apparently prefers to assume the mantle of a
protector and advocate of Islam than defend the Western
civilization that made its existence possible.
The myopic “mama”
missing her glasses in the Sears Optical ad cannot
distinguish between her kitty and a raccoon. That
Chautauqua, similarly, fails to see the reality of
“civilization Jihad” as described by the Muslim
Brotherhood’s explanatory
memorandum, could
potentially have far more devastating results.
At some point,
the truth will out, even at Chautauqua. Let’s hope that by
then, it’s not too late to save the Institution from its own
folly.
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