The Terror Finance Blog

A Legal Thriller in London

By  Rachel Ehrenfeld 

As the old adage goes, books have a life of  their own. I learned this firsthand after publishing my third one, Funding  Evil,  which identified networks of criminals, billionaires, and state leaders  who underwrite terrorism and political violence. Six years later, what I wrote  about has little to do with the book’s legacy: an ongoing debate about libel  law in England and the U.S., and a movement for reform on both sides of the  Atlantic.

The controversy began in early 2004, when I received a fax in  my Manhattan home office. Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz—once the head  of the largest bank in the Middle East—was threatening to sue unless I  retracted any mention of his well-documented links to Al Qaeda, Hamas, and  other radical Muslim organizations. I felt confident in my material, so I  called his bluff. What happened next was unexpected: he filed suit in an  English court. My book was published and marketed only in the U.S. But  Mahfouz’s lawyers argued that 23 copies of my book were purchased online in  England, and that ABC News had published a chapter viewable internationally on  its Web site. Amazingly, this convinced London’s High Court to let the case  proceed.

English libel law originated to protect thin-skinned lords  from 19th-century gossips. Today it makes London the libel capital of the  world, an international destination for “libel tourists” who, because of the  Internet, can sue almost anyone for spreading alleged mistruths in England.  The country has been the venue for lawsuits by McDonald’s (against  environmentalists), filmmaker Roman Polanski (against Vanity Fair), and  a Rwandan genocide suspect (against Human Rights Watch), among dozens of other  cases.

The lure of the Union Jack is explained by where the burden of  proof falls. High-profile accusers in America need to demonstrate that a  statement about them was not only wrong but also that the defendant knew so  and wrote it to cause harm. The English system—and the system in most  commonwealths—is flipped, creating conditions that stifle free expression by  stacking the deck against writers. As an American citizen, I wouldn’t be tried  under such conditions. In 2005 a British judge awarded Mahfouz $225,000 by  default, and the court ordered me to destroy all copies of my book—in England,  the U.S., and everywhere else. I have refused to obey this  ruling.

Fortunately, I am no longer an outlaw. When I tried to  countersue Mahfouz in New York, I failed for for jurisdictional reasons. But  my effort led six states, including New York, to enact legislation—sometimes  referred to as Rachel’s Law—that prevents U.S. authorities from enforcing  overseas libel judgments that violate First Amendment rights. The Senate  Judiciary Committee is currently redrafting a bill that would provide national  protections, and there is movement in Britain as well. In late March, the  British justice secretary proposed rewriting the laws, and the newly elected  coalition government has made libel reform part of its official coalition  agreement.

But even as political will catches up to the problem in the  traditional media sphere, a set of libel questions persists online. The  biggest is whether online chatter—in blogs, on comment boards, through  social-media platforms—should be considered the legal equivalent of barroom  conversation or published material. If it’s the latter, then any of these  “authors” could be sued for libel. 

With the world watching, however, there are  signs that British judges are modernizing (and liberalizing) on their own.  They’ve thrown out at least three frivolous cases this year, including one  against a prominent writer and blogger. Parliament should follow with reforms,  and in the meantime Congress should move to protect American writers. Our  right to free speech depends on it.

Ehrenfeld directs the American  Center for Democracy in New York City.

How to Stop the Ground Zero Mega-mosque

Expose Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s history, his statements in Arabic, and his organization’s appallingly incomplete tax filings.

Pajamas Media | May 28, 2010

by Alyssa A. Lappen

On May 25, Manhattan Community Board 1 gave their nod of approval to construction of a highly contested, 15-story mega-mosque at the former Park Place Burlington Coat Factory — 600 feet from Ground Zero.

But this is hardly a final word on the matter.

New York City community boards function as mere advisory bodies, with no authority to make legally binding decisions for or against any proposed New York City structure. And while a motion to postpone the vote was defeated, the approval hardly represented resounding community support: only one board member voted no, but ten members abstained.

Nevertheless, the matter concerns far more than New York City planning, zoning, or community board politics. Following jihad doctrine, 19 Muslims attacked the U.S., as a nation, on 9/11. They attacked all nations whose citizens were among the nearly 3,000 murdered. Not surprisingly, the Muslim Gulf states are carefully watching the debate.

Obviously, this matter is no less Earth-shattering to Americans than the erstwhile plans of President Obama to conduct Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in a New York City federal civilian court. The nation spoke in a unified voice against that plan, and stopped it cold. The nation, with a unified voice, can stop construction of any mosque near Ground Zero as well.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in planning for this 15-story mosque, casts a gauntlet to America — the center of the war against radical Islam.

In 2004, this man assumed trusteeship of land at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue near New York’s Islamic Cultural Center (ICC). Rauf is also an ICC permanent trustee. Until Sept. 28, 2001, the ICC employed Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, an Al-Azhar University envoy to the U.S. One week later, from the “safety” of Egypt, Gemeaha said “only the Jews” could have perpetrated September 11. If Americans knew, “they would have done to Jews what Hitler did.” Allah says Jews “disseminate corruption in the land” and spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs,” he added.

Gemeaha’s successor at ICC was no better: Omar Saleem Abu-Namous saw no “conclusive evidence” proving Muslims responsible.

These pronouncements represent institutional discriminatory precepts embedded within Sharia law. Rauf’s associates, who operated under his trusteeship at the 96th Street mosque, uttered them, and not surprisingly, they mirrored Rauf’s own hateful post-9/11 comments.

In March, Rauf stated in Arabic: “I don’t believe in interfaith dialogue.”

On May 26, Rauf gave an interview to Sa’da Abdul Maksoud on the well-trafficked Hadiyul-Islam website:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

Rauf’s statements in Arabic directly contradicted his statements to English speakers — i.e., that the U.S. Constitution is Sharia-compliant:

New laws were permitted after the death of Muhammad, so long of course that these laws do not contradict the Quran or the Deeds of Muhammad … so they create institutions that assure no conflicts with Sharia.

Consider the relevance of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood membership of Rauf’s father alongside Rauf’s own deceptive behavior and speech. In 1965, Muhammed Abdul Rauf (1917-2004) bought two-thirds of the bloc at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Rauf withheld information on the Islamic donors until 1984. Only after wrangling for permits for 20 years did Rauf begin construction — at that point, funding sources no longer mattered as construction became a fait accompli. Similarly, upon the 1992 dedication of the 96th Street mosque, founders revealed its $17 million in financing from 46 Islamic nations, all members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Another fait accompli, including plans for an apartment building restricted to Muslims alone. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added two more buildings.

Saudi Arabia founded the OIC in 1969 to promote the “struggle for Islam,” and has been its chief sponsor since. The OIC’s charter includes all Muslim Brotherhood precepts, the foremost being to spread Sharia worldwide. With headquarters in Jedda “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC in 1973 established the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “according to Islamic Sharia principles,” and through it, launched the petrodollar-based Islamic financing market as another way to stealthily spread Islam and Sharia worldwide.

“[A]n Islamic organization must serve God … and ultimately sustain … the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” Certainly the 46 OIC members had those Sharia principles in mind when they funded construction of New York’s Islamic Center.

Secrecy surrounding the land purchase and construction financing of the 96th Street mega-mosque emulate the teachings of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, a colleague of Rauf’s father, who taught Al Azhar University — Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican. Rauf fled Egypt’s 1948 crackdown on the MB. His eldest son Feisal was born in Kuwait that year.

MB doctrines require “flexibility” — adapting to each environment on local terms, especially in North America — to force Islamic law on the masses globally. Hiding financing sources are perfect examples of taqiyya, a theologically encouraged practice of deception to advance theocratic, fascist Islamic doctrines.

Like his father, Rauf is probably a stealth Muslim Brother, as are most MB members.

The Muslim Brotherhood founded virtually all Islamic terror organizations operating worldwide today, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. Thus, only propaganda and recruitment chiefs like Alabama-born Omar Hammami — and shills hoping to convince useful idiots the Brothers are genuinely peaceful — advertise their affiliation.

Rauf established ASMA’s Cordoba Initiative in Colorado in 2004, but registered the non-profit in New York only in April 2009. His financial statements look mysterious, too. A Cordoba Initiative project, since at least 2006, has partnered with the Gallup Organization and “a team of Sunni and Shi’a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state,” available both publicly and to pundits “and state officials in both the Muslim and Western worlds.”

If the U.S. is Sharia-compliant, and Rauf supports Western democracy and mosque-state separation, why has his New York-based institution initiated this project, funded by Malaysia and many other Muslim nations in the OIC?

Malaysia is not a secular democracy. Its federal government maintains a Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM) charged with promoting “the development and advancement of Islamic affairs,” including formulation of “policies for the ADVANCEMENT of Islamic affairs in the country and to safeguard the sanctity of the aqidah and the teachings of Islam.” (Emphasis in original.)

Rauf may well get Saudi funding too: In February 2001, the IDB established its U.S. dollar-denominated Awqaf Properties Investment Fund (APIF) to “develop and invest in accordance with … Islamic Sharia [principles], in Awqaf real estate properties … in [IDB] member countries … and Islamic communities in non-member countries.” Financing applications go — where else? — to OIC founder and chief IDB backer Saudi Arabia, which has worked tirelessly for decades to advance Islamic communities in the most influential non-Muslim nation, the U.S.

OIC countries financed the 96th Street mosque. Why would Rauf not approach them again, particularly since an IDB financing mechanism for projects like his is already in place?

At Tuesday’s meeting, a 9/11 survivor, along with relatives, parents, and dear friends of victims, all spoke eloquently against the mosque. Bereaved mother Cynthia Kane honored her son, firefighter George Kane, and his hundreds of brave colleagues who died fighting to save lives. Another victim’s father poignantly noted that bodily remains of 997 people are still missing. “Where the hell do you think they are? They are on that [holy] ground … and building a mosque over them is truly insensitive.” 9/11 Families leader Debra Burlingame professed happiness that the controversy might encourage Americans to finally ask: “What is Sharia?”

The best route to stopping construction may be through the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service. According to a Certified Public Accountant and Act for America member, available American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) tax filings raise several red flags.

Very little ASMA information is available on the non-profit organization from Guidestar, a commercial service that provides 990 filings from thousands of tax-exempt charitable organizations, many much smaller than ASMA. However, the CPA reports that many documents required for public examination are missing from Guidestar’s ASMA files. Federal law requires ASMA to provide tax returns for public inspection, but evidently it has not done so, the CPA says.

Director since 2005, Daisy Khan — Rauf’s interior designing, Kashmir-born wife — apparently never filed a required informational return or regular annual reports: “shocking for a charity with over $1 million in grants just last year.”

Several other issues indicate ASMA’s financial statements are not “in accordance with accounting standards for nonprofit organizations.” An organization established in 1998 should have two-year comparisons, not the one-year comparison provided in the fiscal 2009 statement. Failing that, ASMA must provide comparative statements in its notes or a letter to stakeholders — which it also does not do.

Likewise, ASMA claims to be a 501(c)3 organization. They do present a letter of determination (albeit, misstated as being granted in “1988”). But ASMA financial statements do not specify under which code ASMA’s tax-exempt status falls.

ASMA also fails to list required future lease payments, although its auditor reportedly specializes in non-profit groups and purports to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). “I’m shocked by all these” oversights, said the CPA, who has merely begun to list GAAP requirements on which ASMA flunks.

Maybe there’s just too much information Rauf and ASMA don’t want the public to know. Perhaps the IRS should institute a new taqiyya-busters division. Meanwhile, the public can shower the IRS with complaints on these evidently numerous tax-code violations.

(Click here to watch Walid Shoebat expose the Ground Zero mosque on PJTV.)

Hawala; a tool to fund terror

By Bryan Bender,   May 15, 2010 WASHINGTON —  

WASHINGTON — An informal money-exchange network known as “hawala’’ — a centuries-old system that operates outside conventional banking networks — is at the center of the investigation into three Pakistanis arrested Thursday in Massachusetts and Maine with alleged ties to the suspect in the failed Times Square bomb plot, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The men, who were detained on immigration charges after several raids across the Northeast, were described by government officials as having funneled money to Pakistani-born Faisal Shahzad, who is in federal custody for trying to set off a car bomb earlier this month. The three men are being investigated for possibly using the hawala system to provide money that Shahzad used to finance the plot, the officials said yesterday.

But finding out where any such funds originated could prove exceedingly difficult, according to government officials and specialists in terrorist financing, who say that by its very nature hawala leaves few clues. The source of the transfer is often anonymous.

“We have more tools than ever before, but when you are dealing with people working very independently and very autonomously you can quickly come to a dead end,’’ said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Hawala, which originates from the Arabic word for change or transform, is a practice that predates modern banking systems and has been around for centuries. There are believed to be thousands of hawala brokers operating in the United States, and they are not necessarily operating outside  US laws if they register with the US Department of Treasury. Many don’t, however, operating more like black-market, cash-based versions of Western Union.

Relying on an informal network of brokers who use designated couriers, the networks are used to transfer money in relatively small amounts in and out of developing nations where modern financial systems are scarce, such as in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Transactions often can be completed within 24 hours and at a lower cost than a traditional wire transfer or bank draft that could take  as long as a week and require official paperwork.

Hawaladars, as the brokers are known, often operate out of cash-intensive businesses such as restaurants, convenience stores, or gas stations, the officials said.

Federal agents on Thursday searched a Brookline gas station where one of the three men was employed and an apartment in Watertown where two of them lived. They also conducted raids in New York and New Jersey.

Officials said they are interested in searching for possible evidence of the financial transactions. Authorities have said that the owner of the gas station, Elias Audy, has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that it is not known whether the three men who were detained were aware of Shahzad’s plans.

Ronny Sydmney, a Brookline selectwoman and a longtime friend of Audy’s, said yesterday she believes “he was totally unaware’’ of any illegal activities that may have been going on in the Mobil station. Audy’s lawyer, Susan Howards, did not return several phone calls.

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence estimates that, worldwide, tens of billions of dollars change hands through hawala each year. But most hawala transactions are for legitimate purposes, officials say.

For example, a Boston cab driver who wants to send a portion of his earnings home to his family in a remote village in Pakistan would contact a businessman in the local community who acts as a hawala broker. The broker is given the money along with a small handling fee and the address or cellphone number of his relative.

Then the hawaladar contacts one of his counterparts, usually by phone, near where the recipient lives and requests that the equivalent amount in the local currency be delivered the next day, according to specialists. The Pakistani broker at the point of origin will later settle the debt, leaving no identifying records of the customers on either end of the transaction.

“There is no paper trail,’’ said Rachel Ehrenfeld, the author of “Funding Evil’’ and director of the Economic Warfare Institute at the American Center for Democracy in New York.

People in Afghanistan and Pakistan are among the most prolific users of the hawala system to transfer money within the region or across the world, according to US officials. A new report by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs estimates that only 3 percent of Afghanistan’s banking is done through the official banking system.

“It is estimated that between 80 percent and 90 percent of all financial transfers in Afghanistan are made through hawala,’’ according to the bureau’s 2010 annual report.

The State Bank of Pakistan requires hawaladars to register as official foreign exchange dealers; most do not. And the illegal operators, according to the State Department, are most active in the cities of Karachi, which is known to be a center of terrorist activity, as well as Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan.

“Today, hawala and traditional banking exist as parallel, but intertwined, economic systems in India and Pakistan,’’ according to Interpol, the international police organization made up of 188 countries.

Special Agency James Casey, who formerly ran the Eurasia Section of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, says that despite the lack of records there are still ways to prosecute hawala brokers if they can be identified with the help of fellow members of the community.

The Bank Secrecy Act, for example, requires any person or group acting as a money-services business to follow several record-keeping and reporting requirements. They are also required by law to register with the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which Casey says “they usually disregard.’’

They are also required by law to report transactions  exceeding $2,000 they suspect may be tied to illegal activity. Casey, who now runs the FBI’s Jacksonville, Fla., field office, said some transaction records may exist.

“Many keep extensive documentation because the settling of accounts often takes place well into the future,’’ he said. “What investigators need to look for are unconventional records or ones kept in a language other than English.’’

At the same time, hawaladars often use food stamps, lottery tickets, and phone cards as alternate currency, possibly other clues for investigators, he said.

Still, frequently even the hawala broker doesn’t know who originally requested the money transfer. If the men arrested were engaged in a hawala operation, “Who were the people who contacted them to give the money to Shahzad?’’ asked Ehrenfeld. “Catching such people is very difficult."

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

The Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Muslim Brotherhood Roots, Radical Dreams

Everything there is to know about Faisal Abdul Rauf, the wolf in sheep’s clothing behind the planned lower Manhattan mega-mosque.

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Pajamas Media | May 14, 2010

The prospective developer of a $100 million, 13-story mosque 600 feet from Ground Zero presents himself as a Muslim moderate (1). Yet Kuwait-born Faisal Abdul Rauf also boasts of his issue from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship” (2). Indeed, Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets.

Rauf’s father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917-2004) — an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna — conveyed to Feisal his family’s long tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican, Al-Azhar University. The elder Dr. Rauf studied and taught there before fleeing Egypt in 1948. That year, Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait.

Feisal Rauf has planned for some time to further develop his father’s U.S. Islamic expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in lower Manhattan. Area residents did not even notice the mosque until 2006, when the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) refused to license a new bar on the same block and started yanking others’ liquor licenses (3).

Rauf attended grammar school and high school in the UK and Malaysia, according to his biography. He probably first lived in America only in 1965, at age 17, when his father moved from Malaysia to New York to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center (not built until the mid-1980s) (4). Rauf then obtained a BS in physics at Columbia University (5). In 1971, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Rauf’s father headed the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Ave. (6) His father, buried in Suitland, MD, at the for-profit Washington National Cemetery, also founded three Malaysian Islamic studies programs, including the International Islamic University of Malaysia (7).

Rauf’s early UK education and familiarization with American popular culture and values made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic taqiyya — deceptive speech and action to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam (8). To further that Islamic advancement, Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His Kashmir-born wife Daisy Khan, an interior designer by profession, has run the organization since 2005 (9).

Rauf then began cultivating new spheres of influence. In about summer 2002, Rauf started lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York campus of Chautauqua Institution, a 136-year-old non-profit where religion director Joan Brown Campbell took Rauf under her wing. Under the rubric of the “Abrahamic” faiths, a convenient cover for Rauf’s Islamic activities, Campbell subsequently named him the prospective head of a Muslim house now planned on campus by another Rauf brainchild — the 501(3)c organization Muslim Friends of Chautauqua. Rauf also befriended Karen Armstrong, the former British nun and devotee of Islam.

In summer 2002, as a “theologian in residence,” Armstrong advocated for the Muslim Brotherhood — as if the father of all Islamic terrorist organizations was a progressive charity:

[The MB] set up a wonderful welfare program before it was suppressed. … Factories where Muslims could work, had time for prayers, had vacation time, insurance, [learned] labor laws, [provided] clinics, they taught people how to treat sewage, drainage, and it was always the religions response to try to help modernity to give to the ordinary people the benefits of modernity in an Islamic setting that made sense to them and made things more balanced (10).

In 2003, Rauf befriended leaders of Denver’s Aspen Institute, including former executive director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennett. In 2004, under ASMA auspices, Rauf organized a meeting of 125 young Muslims and formed Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. With Bennett’s help, he co-founded the Cordoba Initiative in Aspen, purportedly to “improve” Muslim-West relations (11). Rauf gets funding from a variety of other liberal organizations, including, for example, Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation.

However, Rauf directly contradicted his conciliatory behavior with a firebrand interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. Terrorism, he stated, will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims:

The West’s role during World War II was strictly defensive, and in no way religious. Moreover, Rauf’s statements — which Daisy Khan glossed over in a December 2009 Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham — ignored Islam’s continuous attacks, from the 7th to 16th centuries, on non-Muslim peoples throughout the Mideast, Africa, Europe, central Asia, and India (12).

The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. … It was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets (12).

Rauf further revealed his antagonistic sentiments in the 2006 Copenhagen gathering he organized for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. To enhance his moderate cloak, Rauf invited such liberal Muslims as Irshad Manji and Mona Eltahawy. But the Muslim leaders of Tomorrow also includes radicals like Yasir Qadhi — a favorite speaker at conferences of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Dhaba “Debbie” Almontasser, who works closely with Hamas’ U.S. arm — the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), itself an unindicted co-conspirator in terror financing.

Perhaps Rauf founded the Cordoba Initiative in 2004 intending to build a mosque in downtown Manhattan directly across from Ground Zero. However, Rauf tipped his hand to authorities only in April 2009, when he incorporated the Cordoba Initiative in New York (13). Within months, in July 2009, he bought a future mosque site at 45 Park Place for $4.58 million in cash from the heirs to New York’s Pomerantz family.

As Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center towers, falling jet debris simultaneously crushed the five-story 1923 structure some 600 feet away that until that morning housed a robust Burlington Coat Factory store (14). Over the ruin of the former retail outlet, Rauf now plans to build a 13-story, $100 million mosque. Rauf says the Cordoba Initiative bought the former retail building to prove to the world that Islam is not a violent faith (14).

Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the Park Place building (16). Yet in fiscal 2009, Rauf’s ASMA received large international donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009 — days before Feisal closed the purchase — ASMA received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar (17). That Persian Gulf nation has long harbored terror financiers, and even the government stands accused of funding international terrorism. Qatar also has, for decades, hosted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The elderly sheikh, a large and founding shareholder in the terror-financing al-Taqwa Bank, champions sharia law, wife beating, and suicide bombing.

ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland’s Millennial Development Goals Fund (MDG3), $144,752 from New York’s Carnegie Corporation, $53,664 from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), plus donations from the Rockefeller Brothers and Hunt Alternatives funds, among others (18).

The Ground Zero mosque plan is more than a little reminiscent of a program initiated by Rauf’s late father in 1965. That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf moved to New York to plan and head a huge Islamic Cultural Center that took decades to realize (19). He bought prime Manhattan real estate at 96th St. and 3rd Ave — roughly two thirds of a city block — apparently with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The late Rauf long retained some of that land in a personal trust (19). But when construction started on the $17 million mosque in 1984, it had received funding from 46 Islamic nations. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its founders-envisioned apartment unit has been restricted to Muslims alone (20).

Whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What’s Right with Islam. The book was translated into many languages. In Indonesia’s Bahasa, its title translates as “The Call from the WTC Rubble.” Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Kuala Lumpur gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir (20) — an organization banned in Germany since 2003, and also outlawed in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among other places — and ideologically akin to the MB. Both seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law (sharia), and eventually impose Islam and sharia law worldwide. Most North American MB organizations avoid widely publicizing that aim. The HT however, at a July 2009 Khalifah conference at a suburban Chicago Hilton, openly promised to replace capitalism with Islam and sharia law (21).

Feisal Rauf supports sharia law, too.

Described in one Asian report as an Egyptian citizen living in the U.S., he has repeatedly stated, and writes in his 2004 book, that the U.S. Constitution is sharia-compliant. The “American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law,” Rauf wrote in his book. The “American political structure is Shariah-compliant,” he contends, since Muslim jurists over the centuries have “defined five areas of life” to be protected by Islamic law — life, mind, religion, property, and family. Only two further actions could render the U.S. more Islamic than it is already, Rauf contends:

[Inviting] voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation’s practical life, [and allowing] religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws (22).

These assertions, however, merely fulfill the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine of flexibility — adapting to each and every environment in which the brothers eventually hope to force Islamic law upon the masses. Rauf’s claims starkly represent taqiyya, the Islamic practice of deception, to further theocratic and essentially fascist Islamic advances (23). And the additional “leeway” Rauf seeks for intra-community religious-law enforcement is a thinly veiled attempt to impose shariah more widely in the U.S., in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution.

President Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo challenged Muslims, as Rauf wrote in a June 5, 2009 Washington Post column (24): “Live up to the tenets of our religion, embrace Shariah law as conceived by the Prophet, and see what happens.” But sharia inhibits all kinds of freedoms, especially those of women and non-Muslims. Islamic law protects only the lives, minds, religion, property, and families of Muslims — not all peoples of all faiths, as Rauf would have us believe (25).

Since at least 2006, Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative has partnered with the Gallup Organization and “a team of Sunni and Shi’a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state” for use by the public, pundits, “and state officials in both the Muslim and Western worlds.” If the U.S. is so sharia-compliant, and Rauf so strongly supports Western democracy and separation of mosque and state, why has his U.S.-based institution initiated such a project? Funded by Malaysia and many other Muslim nations in the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), no less?

Rauf has often directly contradicted his seemingly tolerant and peace-loving pronouncements with harsh, antagonistic assessments of the U.S. In his May 7 Khutbah (Muslim sabbath sermon), delivered at 1:00 p.m. at 45 Park Place in Manhattan, Rauf implied that Muslims did not perpetrate 9/11 at all, according to writer Madeline Brooks, who attended (26): “Some people say it was Muslims who attacked on 9/11 … ” he stated, before trailing off into another topic.

He also expressed this view in an interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sept. 30, 2001 as well (27):

The attacks were “a reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, [yet] … ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries. … [U.S.] policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

Not the crimes Muslims committed: “the crime that happened.” He continued:

In … the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA (28).

Rauf explained the Islamic disdain for life, as well:

In the Islamic belief system, the next life is the primary life. The next life is more real, more intense, and more vivid.

In short, Islam reveres death. Indeed, Islam orders its adherents to conduct jihad warfare, and promises paradise and 72 virgins to those who die in the service of Allah (29).

Even Cordoba Institute’s name telegraphs the organization’s deceptiveness. Cordoba (also the name for Chautauqua’s proposed new Muslim house) was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate that ruled most of Spain from Tariq ibn Zayid’s 711 invasion through 1248, and controlled parts of Spain until its full liberation in 1492. However, neither the Umayyads (who ruled monolithically until about 1031), nor the particularly vicious Almoravids (who swept over the Atlas mountains and, in 1080, into Spain) ruled non-Muslims kindly. While Islamic harshness varied, it remained unquestionably ever-present.

Rauf is not alone in his blatant whitewash of Islam’s brutal history in Spain. Many others purvey the same historical falsehood. Yet Muslim rule in Spain never remotely approached the mythic level of beneficence that Rauf pretends (30).

The surviving victims of 9/11 and families of the deceased should not be alone in opposing Rauf’s proposed 13-story mosque, 600 feet from the World Trade Center site. Traditionally, Muslims have destroyed houses of worship built by virtually every other faith under the sun. Worldwide, Islam has plundered tens of thousands (if not more) of Christian churches, Jewish synagogues and holy archaeological sites, plus Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh, and other temples and monasteries. Then, in the interest of jihad, Islam has claimed all these religious places of others as their own “mosques,” forever Muslim.

To allow a mosque at a place a Muslim gang destroyed on 9/11 would amount to formally blessing Islam’s 1,400-year-old tradition of exclusivity and suppression of all persons of all other faiths. It would be a 100% victory of Islam and sharia law over the U.S. Constitution and America’s time-honored democracy and pluralism.
_____________________________

NOTES:
1 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).

2 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).

3 Carl Glassman, “West Broadway bars facing license ban,” Tribeca Trib, Mar. 31, 2006, http://www.tribecatrib.com/bak/archives/newsmarch06/Bar_new.htm (viewed 5/20/2007).

4 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.; Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).

5 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.

6 Islamic Center of Washington, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Center_of_Washington (viewed 5/9/2010).

7 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, ibid.; Jaclyn Ling-Chien Neo, “’Anti-God, anti-Islam and anti-Quran’: Expanding the range of participants and parameters in discourse over women’s rights and Islam in Malaysia,” Pacific Basin Law Journal, Vol. 21:29, 2003, p. 69, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID753226_code491760.pdf? abstractid=753226&mirid=1 (viewed 5/7/2010).

8 Ikhwan website, http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/ (viewed 6/4/2008); The Muslim Brotherhood charter calls on members to sidestep attention through their long-established “flexibility” strategy — muruna in Arabic. To spread Islam, a basic requirement of shari’a or Islamic law, MB adherents also routinely practice concealment, known alternatively as either taqiyya or kitman. See also Warner MacKenzie, “Understanding Taqiyya: Islamic principle of lying for the sake of Allah,” Islam-Watch, Apr. 30, 2007, http://www.islam-watch.org/Warner/Taqiyya-Islamic-Principle-Lying-for- Allah.htm (viewed 5/16/2010).

9 “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,” chairman, Cordoba Institute, http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/staff-bios (viewed 5/11/2010).; Daisy Khan biography, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/b_dkhan.html (viewed 5/12/2010).

10 Quotation in Chautauqua institution panel, summer 2002.

11 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 9, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010).

12 Frank Walker, “We must act to end jihad: imam,” Sydney Sun-Herald, Mar. 21, 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/21/1079789939987.html (viewed 4/5/2004).

12 Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, ibid; Andrew G. Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, ibid.

13 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 9, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010).

14 Marc Pitzke, “Finding Allah at Ground Zero: A new Manhattan mosque hopes to heal,” Spiegel Online, Dec. 17, 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-667678,00.html  (viewed 5/10/2010); “9/11 Firefighter opposes mosque at Ground Zero as “a Trojan horse rolled onto our most sacred ground”, asks “Where is the money coming from?” The Jawa Report, May 8, 2010, http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/202370.php (viewed 5/9/2010);

14 Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, May 10, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.a sp (viewed 5/10/2010); Matt Dunning, “CB1 committee hails plan for a mosque two blocks from WTC site,” Tribeca Trib, May 10, 2010, http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/2010/may/603_cb1-committee-hails-plans -for-a-mosque-two-blocks-from-world-trade-center-site.html (viewed 5/10/2010).

16 “9/11 Firefighter opposes mosque at Ground Zero as “a Trojan horse rolled onto our most sacred ground”, asks “Where is the money coming from?” The Jawa Report, May 8, 2010, http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/202370.php (viewed 5/9/2010); Christian Salazar, “Some 9/11 families angry about plans for Ground Zero mosque,” Associated Press, May 7, 2010, http://www.kboi2.com/news/national/93073789.html (viewed 5/10/2010).

17 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010), as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, May 10, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.a sp (viewed 5/10/2010).

18 ASMA Financial statement for year ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf , ibid, as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, ibid, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.a sp.

19 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/bernama-malaysian-national-new s-agency/mi_8082/is_20041212/islamic-scholar-tan-sri-dr/ai_n51486662/ (viewed 5/4/2010).

19 George Goodman, “Ground broken for Islamic Center,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/realestate/ground-broken-for-islamic -center.html?&pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010); Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).; Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” ibid.

20 Goodman, ibid.; David Dunlap, “A new mosque for Manhattan for the 21st century,” New York Times, Apr. 26, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/arts/architecture-a-new-mosque-for-m anhattan-for-the-21st-century.html?pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010).

20 http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-ci ty-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/

21 “Hizb Ut-Tahrir: Shariah Takes Precedence over U.S. Constitution,” IPT News, July 20, 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/1100/hizb-ut-tahrir-shariah-takes- precedence-over-us, (viewed May 13, 2010).

22 Spencer Ackerman, “Religious protection,” The New Republic, Dec. 12, 2005, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/religious-protection; Feisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West, (New York: HarperOne, 2004) p. 86.

23 “Taqiyah,” Dictionary of Islam, http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Hughes/t.htm (last visited 4/20/2010).

24 Feisal Abdul Rauf, “Obama’s challenge to the Muslim world,” Washington Post, Jun. 5, 2009, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/feisal_abdul_rauf  /2009/06/obamas_challenge_to_the_muslim_world.html (viewed 4/26/2010).

25 al-Mawardi, The Laws of Islamic Governance; Reliance of the Traveller.

26 Madeline Brooks, “The Ground Zero Mosque Must Be Stopped,” No mosques at Ground Zero, May 9, 2010, http://nomosquesatgroundzero.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/breaking-our-med ia-and-the-news-thats-not-fit-to-print5-09-10/ (viewed 5/9/2010).

27 Ed Bradley, “Prominent American Muslims denounce terror committed in the name of Islam,” 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001, http://islamicity.com/video/ch20/CBS60Minutes.ram; (viewed 5/5/2010). Transcripts, at Monroe County Green Party, http://www.monroegreens.org/Sept11/60minutes20010930b.htm, The Anti-Venom, http://brotherandrew.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Jiha d&thread=75&page=1 and Islam for Today, http://www.islamfortoday.com/60minutes.htm (all viewed 5/5/2010); Partial transcripts at http://hem.passagen.se/okn50/60m_e.html, http://newsbusters.org/forums/topic-discussion/religion-peace-17019 , http://www.abc.se/~m9783/CBS_60.html, and http://web.comhem.se/onesr/CBS_60.html, (all viewed 5/9/2010).

28 Ed Bradley, “Prominent American Muslims denounce terror committed in the name of Islam,” 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001, http://islamicity.com/video/ch20/CBS60Minutes.ram, ibid.

29 Qur’an 9:29 commands, “Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His Apostle, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” As translated by Yusuf Ali, from Yet Another Quran Browser, http://qb.gomen.org/QuranBrowser/cgi/bin/retrieve.cgi?version=pickthal l+yusufali+khan+shakir+sherali+khalifa+arberry+palmer+rodwell+sale+tra nsliterated&layout=auto&searchstring=009:27-31, (4/26/2010); see also Sahih Muslim: The Book of Jihad and Expedition (Kitab al-jihad Wa’l-Siyar), As cited in Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, 2005, pp 138-139, from Abdul Hamid Siqqiqi, “Translation of Sahih Muslim,” Muslim Students Association, “Book 019, Number 4294:

30 Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, University of California, 2006, 2nd ed., 206 pp.

According to three important contemporary reports Fletcher summarizes, — one “crucial administrative document from the Islamic side,” some small “archaeological evidence” and the “Chronicle of 754,” an anonymous Christian narrative in Latin — after 711 Arab raids laid waste to “several provinces,” Tariq ibn Zayid’s army followed with fully equipped legions, who in 712 murdered Roderic of Spain.

North Africa’s governor then executed all Toledo’s prominent nobles (causing the Bishop to flee), devastated the countryside and perpetrated further destruction and mass murder in Zargoza and the Ebro valley. Upon returning to the Umayyad seat of power in Damascus, he transported innumerable enslaved Visigoth lords, and all their gold and jewels.

By 715, the next governor, Abd al-Aziz, conquered provinces throughout Iberia. Documents and archaeological excavations corroborate the arrival of Toledo’s Bishop in Rome and signs of 8th century devastation beside coins dated 711 to 713. In his April 713 treaty, Abd al-Aziz promised Theodemir lordship over, and free Christian practice throughout, seven southeastern towns. For this Abd al-Aziz extorted from Theodemir stiff annual head taxes of one silver dinar per person, all the region’s wheat, barley, unfermented grape juice, vinegar, honey and oil, and an inviolable promise not to help enemies of Spain’s Islamic conquerors.

From 718 through 720, As-Samh handed all Visigoth monarchy holdings to Arab Muslim governors, and gave all the less fertile land to the North African Berber Muslims. His generosity brought 150,000 to 200,000 Arab and Berber soldiers to Spain to usurp its wealth.

After the 750 Abbasids defeat of the Umayyads, in 762, the Islamic caliphate moved from Damascus to Baghdad. In 756 the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman escaped the Abbasid Caliph al-Saffah (“shedder of blood”) and established a rival Umayyad empire that ruled Spain until 1031. But the Umayyads continued to wreck havoc on Spain. Emir al Haken (796-822) kept a palace cavalry of 2,000 and a standing army of 60,000. In 805 alone, he crucified 72 people. In 818, he leveled Cordoba’s southern suburb. The military governors of the Umayyads’ three Spanish regions were constantly at war. In 884, for example, Burgos was destroyed “to its foundations.”

Even the reputedly enlightened Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) brutalized the population. At the Cordoba palace alone, he owned 3,750 slaves on his death in 961. On July 26 in 920, a Pyrenean monk at San Juan de la Pena recorded a slaughter in Valdejunquera, southwest of Pamplona. In 920, a three month campaign culminated on July 25 with a siege of the Muez castle. All “combatants” were “put to the sword,” including over 500 “counts and knights.” While returning to Cordoba, general al-Nasir totally destroyed many other villages too. The poet Ibn Abd Rabbihi later wrote the invaders left Osma “like a blackened piece of charcoal.”

In 976 Almanzor or Al-Mansur (“the victorious”) took power. In 977 he campaigned with his general against Leon. Some 56 campaigns followed in Almanzor’s rule alone. In 985, he sacked Barcelona and the San Cugat del Valles monastery. In 987, he plundered Coimbra (now in Portugal). In 995, he imprisoned the count of Castile, and destroyed Carrion and Astorga. In 997 he attacked Santiago de Compostela. In 999 he destroyed Pamplona and in 1002 flattened Roija and San Millan de la Cogolla monastery. Almonzor raided Catalonia in 1003; Castile in 1004; Leon in 1005; and Aragon in 1006. Almanzor himself described all war on Christians as Jihad. Christian subjects said he was “seized by the Devil.”

In the 11th century, Morocco’s Almoravids crossed the Atlas mountains, conquered its plain and then conquered Spain — which they ruled from 1080 until Fernando liberated most of the peninsula in 1248. “[N]oting can stand in their way,” wrote the Muslim historian Ibn Kahldun of Almoravid religious and military fervor, “for their outlook is the same and the object they desire is common to all and is one for which they are prepared to die.” Thus in 1148 alone, the Almohads massacred 100,000 Jews in Fez, 120,000 Jews in Marrakesh and wrecked devastation and death throughout Spain, from Seville to Tortosa.

In 1148, Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides fled Cordoba’s Almohad persecution with his family disguised as Muslims. He found asylum in Fatimid Egypt. Arabs and Muslims had “persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us,” he later wrote. “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.” Maimonides’ 1172 Epistle to the [persecuted] Jews of Yemen that forced conversions they reported from Yemen, the Berbers had similarly forced upon Jews across the Maghreb and Spain. He described Mohammed as “the Madman,” despairing that the sole objective of his “invented … well known religion,” was “procuring rule and submission….”

Defund the Taliban

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld
Director, American Center for Democracy and Author of "Funding Evil"
  
Drug money is funding the Taliban's increasingly numerous and bolder attacks in Afghanistan. Yet, the United States has shifted its policy from eradicating poppy fields - the source of the high-grade cheap heroin that feeds at least 93% of the world's opiate addiction - to interdiction. The U.S. now targets about 50 known Afghan drug traffickers with Taliban ties. According to Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Patrick Ryder, the U.S. is "targeting terrorists with links to the drug trade rather than targeting drug traffickers with links to terrorism."

In March, on his surprise visit to Afghanistan, President Obama properly criticized the government for ignoring corruption and mismanagement. At the same time, the United States' current policy allows Afghan opium production, the major funding source for the Taliban. It is the drug trade, which permeates every corner of government and Afghan society, that fosters corruption, dysfunction and disregard for the rule of law.

While Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose political power is waning, lashed out against Mr. Obama's criticism, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Zulmai Afzali, pointed out the folly of the U.S. strategy, "The Taliban are the ones who profit from opium, so you are letting your enemy get financed by this so he can turn around and kill you back."

Afghanistan's multibillion-dollar illegal drug industry finances Taliban and al Qaeda activities, funding bribes to Afghan and Pakistani officials, sustaining the terrorists' stranglehold on farmers and foiling feeble coalition attempts to control the thriving drug trade.

Led by the United States, unsuccessful control policies have earned pointed criticism by the director of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, who noted that "drug production in Afghanistan has increased 40 times during the last 10 years in the presence of international troops. The previous year saw only a dramatic decline in the volume of confiscated drugs."

The United Nations estimates that the poppy generates approximately $4 billion in local revenue annually. Growers get just $1 billion, while the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist and criminal groups siphon off about $3 billion. In addition to its participation in the drug trade, the Taliban profits from the poppy crop through a 10 percent "protection" tax on farmers.

To seriously curtail the Afghan insurgency and global narcoterrorism, the U.S. must use effective eradication methods while subsidizing the cultivation of alternative crops. Most important, successful eradication of the Afghan drug trade will expedite the safe withdrawal of nearly 100,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

The U.S. must complete research on mycoherbicides - specialized bioherbicide agents designed to inoculate the soil against the growth of certain plants, ensuring that the targeted plants cannot be cultivated.

In January 2003, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime released the Research and Development of an Environmentally Safe and Reliable Biological Control Agent for Opium Poppy Summary Report. The research indicated that mycoherbicides do not have adverse health or environmental effects. They also are target-specific - they have no effects on plants they are not engineered to affect. Congress mandated further study on mycoherbicides in 2006, but the Office of National Drug Control Policy only contracted with the National Research Council to commence research in 2009 on the impacts of mycoherbicides and the feasibility of producing and implementing their use on a wide scale.

Why the delay? Had the study been completed in 2006, and the mycoherbicide eradication program put into action, heroin production would have plummeted, seriously curtailing  the financial lifeline of the Taliban.

If mycoherbicide use is implemented, the United States also should invest approximately $150 billion to $200 billion in decade-long development programs in Afghanistan, Colombia and other locations to encourage farmers to grow non-poppy and non-coca crops and develop new industries.

A comprehensive subsidy program makes good economic sense. According to official U.S. data, the societal cost of heroin and cocaine abuse in the U.S. topped $160.7 billion in 2000, including investments in drug prevention, treatment and law enforcement efforts. This total includes workplace accidents and lost productivity, rising health care costs and maintenance of a prison system packed with people imprisoned for a drug-related offense or a crime committed under the influence of drugs.

Investing $15 billion to $20 billion annually in development programs would cut costs devoted to mitigating the consequences of drug abuse domestically. At the same time, poppy and coca growers would suffer no economic loss by switching to legal crops and new industries.

The dual mycoherbicide-alternative development approach would reduce the world's supply of heroin and cocaine, severing the financial lifelines of terrorist organizations.

The sooner the mycoherbicide-alternative development is put into action, the sooner the battle against the Taliban and other terrorist and criminal organizations can be won.

Another breach in the UN terrorism sanctions regime

On April 29, the European Court of Justice ruled that the freezing of funds of persons with suspected links to Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban does not apply to certain social security benefits paid to their spouses (ECJ Press Release and  ECJ Ruling C-340-08) 

The ruling narrows the notion of “indirect funding” of designated individuals as defined in the UN Security Council regulations as funds “owned or controlled directly or indirectly” by persons “acting on their behalf or at their direction”. 

Following UN instructions regarding the assets exemptions, social payments made to spouses of designated individuals were subject to special regulations in the UK to prevent designated individuals to also benefit from the funds. The spourses of a designated individual challenged the application of these measures before the House of Lords which referred the case to the European Court. 

Contradicting the UN objective to stop designated persons gaining access to economic or financial resources of any kind that they could use to support terrorist activities, the European Court of Justice ruled that the benefit that a person included in the list might indirectly derive from the social allowances paid to his spouse does not compromise the objective pursued by the regulation. 

By implicitly agreeing that designated individuals could receive funds from their wives, the European Court of Justice not only weakens the efficiency of the UN sanctions regime designed to encompass cases of indirect terrorism financing, it also offers an avenue to provide funding for sanctioned terrorists within the framework of the UN sanctions regime. 

This is the second time in two years that the European Court of Justice is undermining the uniform application of UN regulations adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. The first time was its ruling in the case of Yassin Abdullah Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v Council and Commission. This European Court ruling further contributes to the fragmentation of international law in a way that fundamentally jeopardizes the international efforts to prevent terror financing and combat terrorism.