Community of the Impoverished

There are an estimated thirty-five such communities in the United States, the closest one to our Nation’s Capital located in Falls Church, Virginia less than nine miles from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, and less than twenty miles from Dulles International Airport (IAD) in Sterling, Virginia. They are Jamaat ul-Fuqra (JuF) (Arabic: Community of the Impoverished), an Islamist paramilitary organization based initially, in Pakistan and, since 1980, in the U.S. The Group’s founder and leader, Mubarik Ali Jilani Hasmi , is the Pakistani cleric WSJ reporter Danny Pearl was en route to interview at the Village Restaurant in downtown Karachi, Pakistan on January 23, 2002 when he was kidnapped, and nine days later beheaded, by his Islamist captors.

Jilani (alternately ‘Gilani’) founded the U.S. arm of Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Brooklyn, New York during his first visit to the U.S. in 1980. Since then, U.S. Fuqra jamaats (Arabic: assemblies or communities) have attracted many Muslim converts, including prison converts, swelling the Islamist militia’s size to an estimated 3,000, predominantly African-American, members. The group is currently headquartered in Hancock, New York.

A September 2004 National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) research report listed tax evasion; money laundering; worker’s compensation fraud; insurance fraud; bank fraud; wire fraud; marriage fraud; identification fraud; weapons violations; providing material support to terrorists; hazardous materials license fraud; and, immigration law violations among crimes for which Jamaat ul-Fuqra members have been prosecuted. Some Fuqra militiamen have been charged with conspiracy to commit capital murder. The list of Fuqra member prosecutions constitutes fourteen of the NW3C report’s ninety-four pages.

Other than distinguishing Jamaat ul-Fuqra as a magnet for recidivous ex-cons, white collar crime is not the group’s most worrisome enterprise. Basic training for Fuqra recruits has included AK-47 assault rifle, machine gun, rocket launcher, mortar and explosives training. Jamaat plebes have also been mentored in terrorism’s more nefarious methods included kidnapping, murder of hostages, sabotage, subversion, and urban warfare.

A partial list of JuF compounds in the U.S. (hat tip to The Foxhole ) includes: Deposit, NY; Hancock, NY (national HQ); Springfield, MA; Philadelphia, PA; Hyattsville, MD; Bethany, WV; Dover, TN; York County, SC; Augusta, GA; Commerce, GA; Macon, GA; Marion, AL; Houston, TX; Talihina, OK; Coldwater, MI; Buena Vista, CO (raided and shut down by CO authorities in 1992); Baladullah, CA (leader convicted of embezzling $1.3-million in 2006; compound abandoned); Oak Hill, CA; and Onalaska, WA.

The existence of Jamaat ul-Fuqra and similar groups in the United States is a matter of serious concern for federal, state and local law enforcement organizations, many of which maintain dossiers on militant groups that they distribute to partners and individuals with “a need to know.” This information is often withheld from the general public for a variety of reasons, particularly when disclosure might compromise an active investigation or prosecution. Nevertheless, forewarned is forearmed and infidels living within rocket or mortar range of JuF compounds ought to know about them as soon as reasonably possible, if for no other reason than to enlist their support.

A February 19, 2009 Human Events article by the indispensable Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch points out that Jamaat ul-Fuqra wasn’t on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) , even though “Justice and DHS [were] obviously aware of what [was] going on.” CBS News acquitted itself with equal fecklessness in its reporting, according to Spencer, by ridiculing Christian Action Network’s (CAN) compelling, two-years-in-the-making video documentary on JuF that had premiered in Washington, D.C. the week before. The CAN documentary included damning video of Fuqra militia engaged in urban warfare exercises, footage the CAN investigative team captured at great risk to themselves by crossing the perimeter of many JuF compounds. True to form, CBS News ignored the compelling CAN video footage and emphasized the documentary’s “incendiary” content instead.

With the exception of FOX News and the Blogosphere, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been largely ignored by Big Media. Despite numerous Internet postings exposing the group’s proclivity for terrorism, dedication to Islamic jihad, and Fuqra members’ aggregate criminal history, most Americans have never heard of the organization.

So what’s the big deal about 3,000 Islamist militiamen out of an 81% urban-dwelling U.S. population of 312 million?  Well, it depends on which “house” you live in. In Islamic jurisprudence there are two. Anyone who isn’t Dar al-Islam (Arabic: “house of Islam”) is, by definition, Dar al-Harb (Arabic: “house of war”). All “infidels” (i.e. non-Muslims) are harbis which puts most Americans in the camp of “the enemy” Jilani and his cabal are “fighting to destroy.” “Live and let live” devotees should know that there are no “noncombatants” in Islamists’ twisted “rules of engagement” as the barbarous murders of Danny Pearl by self-identified members of The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty (NMRPS) in 2002 and Smadar Haran Kaiser’s family by Palestine Liberation Front terrorists in 1979 attest.

After abducting and beheading Pearl, his Islamist executioners divvied up his body and buried the Jewish journalist’s severed head and dissevered body, ten pieces in all, in a shallow grave in Gadap, about thirty miles north of Karachi. Kaiser’s account (The World Should Know What He Did to My Family) of the equally-gruesome murders of her husband and two daughters appeared in the Washington Post on May 18, 2003 under the title, “The World Should Know What He Did to My Husband” (section B, B02):

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day.  My Husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border.  Around midnight ... four terrorists [from Lebanon], sent by Abu six miles south of the Lebanese border.  Around midnight ... four terrorists [from Lebanon], sent by Abu Abbas … landed in a rubber boat on the beach [and] burst into our building … Outside, we could hear the men storming about.  Desperately, we sought to hide … I went [into the crawl space over our bedroom] with Yael in my arms … Danny grabbed Einat and [dashed] out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat.  They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael … [I, knowing] if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed … kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe … the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach … one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see.  Then he smashed my little girl’s skull in against a rock with his rifle butt … By the time we were rescued from the crawl space … Yael, too, was dead.  In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The murders of Danny Pearl and Smadar Haran Kaiser’s husband and two daughters are not anomalies on Islamists’ endless rap sheet. Putting a COEXIST bumper sticker on one's will accomplish nothing; only conversion to Islam will.

Fast forward to Wednesday, October 27, 2010, the day jihadist Farooque Ahmed of Ashburn, Virginia was arrested by the FBI. Before Ahmed’s arrest, FBI surveillance had determined that he was an al-Qa'ida spotter providing support to the international Islamist terror network’s plan to bomb multiple targets in the Washington area. Dr. Walid Phares, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C. and Director of FDD’s Future of Terrorism Project says Ahmed’s multi-site bombing plan reflects an ominous emerging trend in jihadi strategy in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Phares also noted that the Ahmed case is consistent with his research and analysis findings which suggest a strategic, coordinated targeting of U.S. urban centers by jihadist groups operating inside our borders.

Use “coordinated” in conjunction with “targeting of U.S. urban centers” suggests that JuF is not the only U.S.-based Islamist group intent on using terrorism as a means of claiming America for Allah. In fact, there are several as a perusal of the Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation (NEFA Foundation) website makes readily apparent. This suggests that other groups like Jamaat ul-Fuqra got the same urban jihad memo that Ahmed did. Islamist groups like JuF exist for one overarching purpose—Jihad, and they will not remain latent forever.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra and similar groups are emboldened by U.S. authorities’ reluctance to shut them down, even when their stated ambitions are ample justification for doing so. Furthermore, Dar al-Islam interprets equivocation as weakness and weakness in Dar al-Harb is provocation to Dar al-Islam. Jihadist groups are seizing on America’s lack of resolve to increase their foothold and expand their operations in the United States.

A dangerous ideology-driven movement aided and abetted by bromidic public policy and superficial journalism, has been steadily accruing power and leverage within our legislative, legal, educational, military, national security and industrial establishments for decades while America fights herself out on preventing terrorism.  Now in our tenth year since 9/11, many are just discovering that Islamist ideology is the animating principle behind Islamist terror and Islamists’ efforts to supplant our way of life with Shari’ah. The fact that the post-9/11 decade was only the first of fifteen-rounds in an epic fight for Western Civilization's survival is enough to make anyone want to throw in the towel. We might even want to shut our eyes like CBS News did, tap our heels together, and chant “Islam is a religion of peace” until ul-Fuqra goes away. If only.

Chanting “hopey-changey” platitudes might have worked in the Land of Oz, but Jihad is no allegory and “Islam” as “a religion of peace” is wishful thinking, wastes precious time and provokes our enemies. It is only a matter of precious time before Jamaat ul-Fuqra militiamen or members of some other Islamist terror group apply the training they have received, in a U.S. city.

We dare not demean this holy trust

Yesterday, October 30, 2010, was the 275th birthday of Founder and 2nd U.S. President, John Adams. Almost one year to the day before he added his signature to the Declaration of Independence, on July 7, 1775, John Adams penned these sobering words in a three-page letter to his beloved Abigail:

Your Description of the Distresses of the worthy Inhabitants of Boston, and the other Sea Port Towns, is enough to melt an Heart of stone. Our Consolation must be this, my dear, that Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.” [italics mine]

Our right to vote as American citizens is a gift bestowed by Almighty God; but it is more than a right or a privilege. Jesus said, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” (Luke 12:48) The right to vote is also a holy trust given each of us by a righteous God who holds us accountable for our stewardship of that right. As an ordained minister and former pastor of five years myself, I am confident that clergy who neglect their duty to teach their flocks proper stewardship of the right and duty to vote will suffer stricter judgment.

Most of us could not tell how many times we have uttered Jesus’ words in “the Lord’s Prayer,” “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” And yet for some of us, our voting habits undermine the answer to that prayer. We demean our vote when we vote for candidates who favor unrighteous causes such as abortion or same sex unions. We must not treat voting as an optional, inconsequential, or unnecessary exercise or God will withdraw the privilege.

The Book of Proverbs tells us that “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34) With so much, indeed, our liberty at stake in Tuesday’s election, it is unthinkable that any able-bodied Christian would not vote, much less vote for unprincipled candidates or candidates who support expansion of government’s role in our personal lives. If we exalt ungodly men by our vote, it reproaches Christ and debases His Church.

Charles G. Finney, a prominent Second Great Awakening preacher, said the following about a Christian’s vote,

“[T]he time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics or the Lord will curse them ... Christians have been exceedingly guilty in this matter. But the time has come when they must act differently ... Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics. But I tell you He does see it - and He will bless or curse this nation according to the course they [Christians] take [in politics].”

Renowned Civil War era abolitionist leader, orator, writer, and statesman, the Rev. Frederick Douglas, himself a freed slave, characterized his political views thus:

“I have one great political idea … The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is … ‘Righteous exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people.’ This constitutes my politics, and the whole of my politics. The negative and positive of my politics.”

Wall Builders' website (http://www.wallbuilders.com) succinctly spells out guiding principles for the Christian voter, indeed, for any patriotic American citizen who is committed to the Founders’ ideals as enumerated in America’s Founding Documents. Please watch the “Voter Responsibilities” video linked on the website’s homepage and if you are a pastor, please show the video in your church service(s) tomorrow.

Will our vote on Tuesday count for righteousness and preserve our right to choose our future leaders, or will it be the our last that really counts? America hangs in the balance and this vote will be a referendum on the Church and its leaders.

Eligibility's Onus

In a criminal trial, a defendant carries the benefit of assumption meaning he needs no evidence to support his claim. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi) is said to rest with the prosecution.

Instead of putting of the onus on Barack Obama where it ought to be, our elected leaders, legal system and a decrepit, barkless, biteless, wino (watchdog in name only) media belittle or ignore American citizens who have a constitutional right to see the evidence they demand. This ambivalence toward a key provision in our Constitution by those charged with guarding and protecting it is a moral outrage and equates to tyranny! Article II, Section I, Clause 4 (the presidential eligibility clause), of the Constitution reads:

No Person except a natural born Citizen or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

Despite numerous legal challenges, accusations, and firsthand accounts that raise legitimate doubts about his place of birth, Barack Obama has not produced a state-certified copy of his alleged Hawaiian birth certificate. Instead, he has spent roughly two-million dollars in legal fees to prevent access to it when "pocket change" would settle the matter once and for all. To make matters worse, our Government, the courts, and the media have brushed-off many Americans' pleas for them to investigate the matter more thoroughly. It is fair to say that these institutions have ceded benefit of assumption to Barack Obama and placed burden of proof on birthers. To those who are willing to give Barack Obama a pass on his birth and education records I ask:

• What is Mr. Obama hiding?
• Has our compulsion to be a "color blind" society blinded us?
• Did electing America's first black president prove we are a post-racial society or gullible one?
• Which is more important, being a post-racial society or a free society?
• Are we wiser than the Constitution’s signers?
• Do we really want our troops, our sons and daughters, under the command of a foreign Commander in Chief?
• Are we willing to have our nation transformed into something our forbears would not recognize, by an impostor who has no generational affiliation with it or affinity for it?
• Are we willing to watch a man of dubious citizenship dismantle our way of life?
• Are the personal “benefits” unconstitutional governance might heap on us individually more valuable to us than the time-tested constitutional principles that have prospered us so prodigiously, despite the fact that we have violated many of them for decades?
• Do we want to be known as the generation who threw away the greatest, Providence-inspired form of government in history, in exchange for a promise by a Marxist usurper who rode in on a Trojan horse named “Hope and Change?” 

Since Barack Obama took office, America has bled liberty faster than the Deepwater Horizon has been gushing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. His administration’s policies are doing to America what crude oil is doing to our Gulf States. We cannot afford to wait until November 2010 to stanch the hemorrhaging; November may be too late. We must act now!

Experience has taught me not to flow with the current on issues others are ignoring because most people are wrong most of the time and what most people deem insignificant is often the locus of the crux of a matter. To date, everything conservatives have done to impede Mr. Obama's revolutionary agenda has been flatly ignored, but not the birth certificate issue; it is the one issue that concerns him enough to spend $1,000,000 to see that it doesn't see the light of day.

Granted, efforts to evict Barack Obama from the White House before November 2012 may fail, but if we shine the light of truth on his eligibility, we may put him on his heels and slow the advance of his progressive agenda. We might also reduce his chances of reelection in 2012. As an added benefit, we will educate the public on an important, though heretofore unneeded, Constitutional provision.

One of America's greatest Founders and second President, John Adams, once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” I would add that facts are sometimes frightening things because they make us face things we'd rather not. Has history not shown that sweeping truth under the rug is far riskier than facing it? Will we, like John Adams, defend what is true and just and virtuous about America, or will we allow truth and justice to be cast to the ground to prolong an illusory liberty?

Each state's Democratic Party is required to certify their Party's nominee as eligible to be President of the United States. Aspiring presidential candidates, on the other hand, are not presumed eligible to hold the office until someone proves otherwise; onus probandi rests with the presidential candidate who alleges his constitutional eligibility. Indeed, an aspiring presidential candidate must be presumed ineligible unless and until he produces evidence to support his claim. In other words, no birth certificate, no White House.