Newt Gingrich’s ardent admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt owes more to the latter’s unflinching wartime leadership than his welfare-state policy prescriptions. This week, though, the former Speaker is also undoubtedly in accord with FDR’s aphorism, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” To his great credit, Newt has made an enemy of CAIR.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, that is. The nation’s best known cheerleader for radical Islam — or, as Fox News compliantly puts it, “the largest Muslim civil liberties group in the United States” — has issued a blistering press release that labels Gingrich “one of the nation’s worst promoters of anti-Muslim bigotry.” The occasion for this outburst is the imminent Republican primary in South Carolina.
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Asked at a campaign appearance whether he’d ever consider endorsing a Muslim for president, Gingrich sensibly answered that he would not rule it out — “it would depend on whether [the hypothetical Muslim candidate] would commit in public to give up sharia.” Naturally, the usual suspects are in full fury, with CAIR the loudest among them. They’ve trotted out the rote response, dutifully echoed by Fox, that sharia, Islam’s legal code, is simply a set of spiritual guidelines — one that, in CAIR’s portrayal, “teaches marital fidelity, generous charity, and a thirst for knowledge.”
Actually, it teaches polygamy, the underwriting of jihadist violence through ostensible charity, and the Islamization of knowledge. Don’t take my word for it. I refer you instead to a CAIR favorite, the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
CAIR and IIIT are both Muslim Brotherhood affiliates long active in our country. Founded in the early Eighties, IIIT is a Virginia-based think tank dedicated to what it calls the “Islamization of knowledge,” which is a “euphemism,” as the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran puts it, “for the rewriting of history to support Islamist narratives” — such as the claim that Spain is actually the rightful property of Muslims, to be renamed “al-Andalus,” as it was known under jihadist conquest. CAIR, strategically based in Washington, was shrewdly designed to be an Islamist public-relations arm — the Brotherhood realizing that the American media and government were suckers for agitators who style themselves as “civil rights” advocates. This was back in the mid-Nineties, when new criminal laws against supporting terrorists complicated the Brotherhood’s overt championing of Hamas.
Both CAIR and IIIT were identified as Brotherhood satellites in the internal Brotherhood memoranda that proved critical in the Justice Department’s successful Holy Land Foundation prosecution — a case involving millions of dollars funneled to Hamas, and a case in which CAIR was cited as an unindicted co-conspirator.
CAIR and the IIIT are so inter-bred that CAIR’s advisory board has included Sayyid Syeed, a founder of, and director of “academic outreach” for, IIIT — in addition to being a founder of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA, another unindicted coconspirator in the HLF case) and a former president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the first building block of the Brotherhood’s American infrastructure. And late last year, just weeks before blasting Gingrich, CAIR presented a lifetime achievement award to Iqbal Unus, a top IIIT official, who was also a prime mover in the development of MSA and ISNA.
CAIR’s reverence for the IIIT is relevant because the Islamization think-tank is prominent among the endorsers of Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. In fact, IIIT’s endorsement report is included in Reliance, vouching that this English translation of Umdat al-Salik — an authoritative compendium of sharia composed by a renowned 14th-century Islamic jurist — is accurate, faithful to Muslim doctrine, and highly successful in “its aim to imbue the consciousness of the non-Arabic-speaking Muslim with a sound understanding of Sacred Law.” Thus, IIIT opined, “there is no doubt that this translation is a valuable and important work, whether as a textbook for teaching Islamic jurisprudence to English speakers, or as a legal reference for use by scholars, educated laymen, and students in this [English] language.”
These hyperbolic attacks on Obama really have to stop, from both regular people like you and major pundits like Andrew. I mean, unless you WANT another four years of the president's policies.
Look, there is plenty to attack in Obama's record. We have no need whatsoever to make crap up. And the idea that Obama has "deep respect" for either Sharia Law or Marxist philosophy is patently ludicrous. Blithely continuing to claim such broad baloney, rather than ACTUALLY critiquing what he has ACTUALLY done, virtually ensures his re-election.
Hear Hear Brendan. We're not going to defeat President Obama by making stupid arguments no one takes seriously. There's enough in his record to oppose, we don't have to make cr#p up. Cordially, Bill
Find the story regarding the Taliban members arrested for throwing acid on school girls. After reading that, google the Taliban's response ... if you question it as an isolated event.
1) Marriage corruption supporters (x)
2) Republican establishment (x)
3) Democrat establishment (x)
4) Mainstream media (x)
5) Those Republicans that betrayed Newt and then went on to fleece America (x)
Newt has a lot in common with the majority of Americans.
Yes it does, but why do we have to settle for Newt. I've witnessed to many things about this guy. The flaws I've seen in him are "character flaws" . Those do not change. We are who we are. This guy will lose. You have better candidates to put in the running. Newt is a bad soap opera. Forgiving the man is fine, but I am not willing to vote him in as president. (from an independent voter since 1972 & 32 yr business owner)
Exactly. An oath-betraying, constitution-abrogating, liberty-eviscerating RINO is just as evil as an oath-betraying, constitution-abrogating, liberty-eviscerating liberal. Replacing a Tweedledee Democrat with a Tweedledum Republican will only continue to take us down the wrong path.
You forgot to mention that Newt's enemies also apparently include
6) Newt Gingrich's wife #1
7) Newt Gingrich's wife #2.
By the way, isn't that the definition of corruption...manipulating an institution for your own personal benefit while denying the same personal benefit to others? In this sense, Newt's enemies embodies the corruption of marriage like few other people in this country truly do.
So his enemies also include:
8) People who despise political corruption disguised as egotistical grandstanding.
Newt's first wife is not his enemy, not even close (or are you suggesting that divorce NECESSITATES 'enemy status'?) .
Obviously his 2nd wife is his enemy.
Do you hold the people you work with, live with in your neighborhood, go to church with, perhaps you even are family with (and maybe even yourself) to the same exacting standard of perfection? That must be fun
Hold people to perfection is not an issue here. Newts life is a bad soap opera. If this is the best the GOP can do choosing a candidate then the party is in trouble. I cannot get the vision of he and "Nancy" sitting together exchanging bull chit. If you want to lose the election choose Newt. I am an independent since 1972. The last election I voted a straight Republican ticket. If Newt is in I won't be voting a straight ticket.... Is this really the best the GOP can do??? (From a 32 yr business owner)
"Do you hold the people you work with, live with in your neighborhood, go to church with, perhaps you even are family with (and maybe even yourself) to the same exacting standard of perfection? That must be fun"
L S K
Hmmm. Yes. I hold myself and my loved ones to a higher standard when it comes to adultery than Newt GINGRICH holds himself to--for example, I've never told my spouse that he's a jaguar and I don't want a jaguar, I want a chevrolet. Have you?? Have you held yourself to a similar standard as Newt GINGRICH when it comes to adultery? How fun that must be for your family, and for your children, particularly, if you have.
Please note that I grew up among Christian conservatives who LOVE a good adultery/redemption story. However, even the Christian conservatives I grew up with know that NEWT is not that redemption story. He's as pure an opportunist as you can find in our current political scene.
Do you want to attack my friends and family for not bowing down before sham that is Newt?
It's also hilarious that a man who thought adultery was important enough (and lying about that adultery--which Newt also lied about his adultery both to his wife and to the Congress until he couldn't get away with it any longer) to impeach a president, is shocked and outraged that anyone would ever question his adultery and lying about it when asking whether or not he has the character profile worthy of being president.
I could go on.
And yet, if it weren't for Newt's lack of conscience, and the people who admire this lack of conscience in him, Newt Gingrich never could be where he is in politics today.
What have coworkers and neighbors got to do with it? Are they running for office on a platform of 'restoring morality' to the country? It's not a question of holding Newt to unreasonable standards, it's a question of holding him to those standards that he himself has proclaimed to be important. How can you vote for a man who won't live by the standards he intends to impose on you?
So, you are saying that Newt should just give up on supporting conventional marriage as a matter of official policy of state and society only because he is personally imperfect at marriage? Which you arbitrarily describe as "political corruption" (instead of the personal corruption that it really is)? Perhaps you are happily married, perhaps not. But I think that a strange criterion to disassociate politically from the man, given the man's view of public policy on the subject of marriage. You need to rethink your view on the subject.
Newt may be a hypocrite to some, but as LaRochefacauld said, "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue." Newt's wife #2 is not fond of him, and she's obviously tried to skewer him. What makes you believe SHE is telling the truth? Other than the possibility that you believe that all scorned women tell the truth? If true, that is a very poor skewed judgment that you should leave out of your political calculations this year. Because Barack the Usurper needs to be beaten by someone who can govern the country.
