From Atlas Shrugs:
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
PAMELA GELLER, WND COLUMN: EXCUSING SHARIAH AT CPAC
My weekly commentary on CPAC 2012: Islamic Law in America is up at WND. Read it.
DEFENDING THE WEST
Excusing Shariah at CPAC
Exclusive: Pamela Geller exposes pair on group's board opposing anti-jihad efforts
CPAC 2012 was last weekend. For the fourth year in a row, I did what the Conservative Political Action Conference refuses to do: Cover the central issue of our time, the issue that ought to be center-stage, prime time at CPAC: jihad.This year yet again, the puppet masters, Grover Norquist and Suhail Khan, managed to keep jihad and Sharia off the CPAC schedule – except for the event hosted by my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). Once again, our event was SRO, packed. The room was hot as hades (I suppose Grover Norquist had turned up the heat), but that did not stop the sweaty crowd from participating and staying for the full two-hour presentation. On an ominous note, three people wearing Americans for Tax Reform ID tags were taking pictures of the faces and name tags of the people attending our event. ATR is Grover’s organization.I have been organizing events at CPAC since I first brought Geert Wilders to the conservative confab back in 2009, but this was our most powerful one yet. The only coverage of our landmark event in defense of freedom, however, was from the anti-freedom, pro-jihad left. Islamic supremacists and their quisling apologists in the leftist media immediately tried to twist the meaning of remarks by one of our speakers, James Lafferty. They accused Lafferty, founder and chairman of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force, of applauding the destruction of mosques. Lafferty set the record straight in a statement he sent me: “I do not condone or encourage any criminal act or vandalism against any mosque. I am a firm believer in the rule of law and the protections our Constitution provides for the free exercise of religion – and that means all religions.”In reality, this was a gathering of patriots. The crowd gave a standing ovation to retired Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jesse Nieto, whose son was killed in the jihad attack on the USS Cole. Nieto filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court after base officials barred him from driving his truck onto Camp Lejeune or any other military base because it was festooned with counter-jihad decals. Robert Spencer referred Nieto to attorney Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center, one of our keynote speakers. Muisesued on his behalf and won.
Our other keynote speaker, J. Christian Adams, is the heroic former Justice Department lawyer who blew the whistle on the Obama DOJ’s refusal to prosecute the Black Panther voter intimidation case. He spoke about the deeply ingrained Islamophilia within Eric Holder’s department and its energetic efforts to enforce special Shariah privileges for Muslims – such as the notorious case in which the DOJ sued a school district for denying a first-year teacher’s outrageous request for 19 days off so that she could go to Mecca on the hajj.Another highlight of CPAC was a wild exchange between an obviously unhinged and dishonest Suhail Khan and Robert Spencer and me. Spencer initially approached Khan with an invitation to debate. Khan responded with lies and invective, growing progressively more unhinged, especially when I joined the fray. Watch the video: Khan looks like a criminal caught in the act of a crime.This all happened because earlier that day, at an ironically entitled panel called “Conservative Inclusion 101,” Khan told an audience member that Spencer didn’t know what he was talking about, and that was why Spencer was not asked to speak or included in their “inclusion” panels and meetings. So Spencer, when he saw Khan in the hotel lobby, approached him, stuck out his hand (Khan refused to shake it) and offered to debate. Khan then started flinging these hysterical lies and accusations; he said that on Sept. 21, 2011, the ACU board unanimously banned Spencer and me from CPAC and specifically named Ambassador John Bolton as having agreed to this. Khan is a baldfaced liar. Bolton called the claim “ridiculous.”The day after CPAC ended, the leftist site Think Progress published a related ACU Board resolution, and sure enough, Khan was lying: It makes no mention of Spencer or me. But I am more intrigued with the question of who on the conservative side is leaking to the uber-left media. There is a mole at the senior level of the ACU, in bed with uber-leftists at Think Progress. Who is the enemy within our ranks? They are obviously more at home with the uber-left than the right. They knew the left would do their bidding against our own people. Think about that. The ACU board should be refreshed with new, solid conservatives. Why isn’t membership on the ACU Board rotated – why don’t Norquist or Khan ever move off the Board? Their histories are deeply compromised.Further, at his event Khan distributed the most egregious libel against Jewish law and whitewash of Shariah: an article claiming that Shariah was just like Jewish law and thus Jews should not oppose its spread in the U.S. The article didn’t point out that Jewish law doesn’t force itself on anyone, unlike Islamic law. The Quran says that “there is no compulsion in religion,” but there is compulsion in Islamic law – unlike Jewish law. And Jewish law doesn’t assert authority over non-Jews, while Islamic law does assert authority over non-Muslims. It didn’t deal honestly with the fact that Islamic law is a comprehensive political program at variance with democratic freedoms.
Read the rest here.
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