LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
March 23/2010

Bible Of the Day
John 7/30-36: " They sought therefore to take him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 7:31 But of the multitude, many believed in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, he won’t do more signs than those which this man has done, will he?” 7:32 The Pharisees heard the multitude murmuring these things concerning him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. 7:33 Then Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer, then I go to him who sent me. 7:34 You will seek me, and won’t find me; and where I am, you can’t come.” 7:35 The Jews therefore said among themselves, “Where will this man go that we won’t find him? Will he go to the Dispersion among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 7:36 What is this word that he said, ‘You will seek me, and won’t find me; and where I am, you can’t come’?”

Free Opinions, Releases, letters, Interviews & Special Reports
The UN Gives an Award Named After a Murdered Man to One of His Murderer's Best Friends/By Barry Rubin/March 22/10
Pakistan simply sees no reason to stop supporting terrorists/By Ashley J. Telli/March 22/10
No one is untouchable/Now Lebanon/March 22, 10
Syria’s war on March 14/By: Hanin Ghaddar/March 22/10

Latest News Reports From Miscellaneous Sources for March 22/10
Clinton urges Israel to make difficult choices for peace/Now Lebanon
PFPL-GC says Palestinian arms outside refugee camps are for resisting Israel/Now Lebanon
Sison Lauds Suleiman, Says U.S. Won't Allow its Goals to Come at Lebanon's Expense /Naharnet
3-D Filming of Hariri Crime Scene /Naharnet
Syria Returns to Lebanon through Refugee Camps' Security Door /Naharnet
Lebanon to Mull Libya Summit Invitation/Naharnet
LF, MP, Antoine Zahra says not enough time to adopt municipal electoral reforms/Now Lebanon
Lebanese University Teachers Go on Strike/Naharnet
Wives of Fatah Islam Prisoners Stage Sit-In/Naharnet
Jumblat: I'm Still Trying to Understand Proportional Representation Elections/Naharnet
Countdown to Municipal Election Fate Begins as Deadline Ends/Naharnet
Hizbullah Urges Arabs to Help Obtain Info on Sadr's Fate/Naharnet
Netanyahu: Hizbullah Violates 1701/Naharnet
Heartbroken Saudi to be Handed over to Riyadh Authorities Soon/Naharnet
Rival Political Sides Clash with Sticks in Bekaa, Gunshots Heard/Naharnet
Baroud Urges Police to Curtail Stone-Crushing, Quarry Violations/Naharnet
Decomposed, Beheaded Body Found in South/Naharnet
Assad's Lebanon/Jerusalem Post
Berri arrives in Ankara for Arab-Turkish dialogue/Daily Star
STL 'probe' of Hizbullah members can create strife/Daily Star
Aoun christens new church hall in hometown Haret Hreik/Daily Star
Moussa confirms Lebanon has received summit invite/Daily Star
Tawheed head Wahhab maintains attack on Sleiman/Daily Star
Jordan promises more trade deals with Lebanon/Daily Star
MEA profits hit hard by unfair competition/Daily Star
Lebanese economy expected to grow slower than 2009 at 6 percent/Daily Star
Khalifeh confirms aid for Sidon's state hospital/Daily Star
First lady honors volunteers at childrens' center for Mothers' Day/Daily Star
American cartoonist says future of trade in doubt/Daily Star
Baalbek saved from floods by UNDP programme/Daily Star
Lebanon's neglected liquid treasure just trickles away/AFP

The UN Gives an Award Named After a Murdered Man to One of His Murderer's Best Friends
By Barry Rubin*
March 22, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/gloria/2010/03/un-gives-award
If you want a good example of the ridiculous, shameful ironies in the terrible era we're living in here it is. The UN-Habitat organization, part of the United Nations, has initiated a Rafik Hariri Memorial Award. The award is named after the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated by Syria in February 2005.
The first winner is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Of course, Erdogan is an Islamist who is an ally of Syria, the murderer of Hariri.
Why did Erdogan get the $200,000 award? According to the announcement, the reason is that he organized the first conference of mayors that led to the creation of a worldwide organization of mayors, thus creating another round of meetings so that the budgets of cities can be spent on plane fare and luxury hotels for mayors to travel around the world. How's that for making the lives of urban people better?
Apparently, the fact that Erdogan is closely cooperating with the people who killed Hariri, after whom the award was named, did not strike the panel as ironic.
And of course Erdogan has also taken Turkey into alignment with Iran and Hizballah, the other forces which are trying to control Hariri's country and against whom the late prime minister fought.
Meanwhile, the UN-sponsored investigation of Hariri's murder has come to a dead halt and probably will never be pushed forward by that international organization.
By the way, the panel giving the award was headed by former UN Under Secretary General, Mervat Tallawy, an Egyptian who, I'm told, was known to express doubts as to whether Usama bin Ladin was really responsible for the September 11 attack on New York.
I think granting an award to the close friend of those who murdered the man it's named after, a backer of those who he fought against, and who is aiding those seeking to take over his country definitely qualifies for being granted our own award for ironic and disgraceful behavior.

STL 'probe' of Hizbullah members can 'create strife'
By Dalila Mahdawi
/Daily Star staff
Monday, March 22, 2010
BEIRUT: A UN-backed tribunal set up to probe the killing of former Premier Rafik Hariri could “instigate trouble” after summoning Hizbullah members, a former minister said Saturday.
Wi’am Wahhab, leader of the Druze opposition Tawheed Movement and a close Syria ally, claimed investigators from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) had in the last few days questioned several Hizbullah members over the 2005 assassination of Hariri. “Problems could occur in the country because the investigating panel will create strife,” Wahab told Al-Jadeed TV, calling on Premier Saad Hariri to “avoid the trap set up by the tribunal.” Wahhab’s allegations were neither confirmed nor denied by the STL media spokesperson Radhia Achouri, who has repeatedly told The Daily Star her office does not comment on media reports.
Achouri also said she would not remark on an An-Nahar report claiming that 11 STL investigators had recently arrived in Beirut to continue questioning witnesses.
But she told Naharnet last Wednesday the STL “always had” investigators in Beirut. Meanwhile, Hizbullah MP Nawwaf Moussawi told Al-Jadeed his party “does not comment on everything that has to do with the tribunal,” though he added Hizbullah would “comment in due course.” Media reports in the past have frequently tried to implicate Hizbullah in Hariri’s killing. A number of reports published by the German magazine Der Spiegel in the last year have claimed that special forces from Hizbullah planned and executed Hariri’s murder and that it was involved in cocaine smuggling across Europe. French daily Le Monde also published reports claiming Hizbullah had taken photographs of the STL headquarters in The Hague and that Der Spiegel’s claim the group had orchestrated the killing were “trustworthy.”
MP Robert Ghanem said Sunday that even if the STL had questioned Hizbullah officials, it did not necessarily mean they were responsible for Hariri’s death. “We are careful about Lebanon’s interests … so we should not accuse anyone of treason since the case is about justice and uncovering the truth,” he told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.
The former prime minister was assassinated on February 14, 2005, along with 22 other people in a truck bombing as his convoy passed through Beirut’s seafront.
The STL was established by a UN Security Council resolution in 2007 to prosecute suspects in his assassination. Unlike most other tribunals, it applies Lebanese law to acts of terrorism, gives a greater active role to its judges, allows for trials in absentia, and employs a pre-trial judge with considerable authority. In the STL’s first annual report, released earlier this month, tribunal President Antonio Cassesse said he believed the court would move to prosecution within 12 months. In April 2009, four Lebanese generals, held since 2005 without charge in connection with Hariri’s killing, were released from prison. The STL currently has no suspects in custody and has yet to issue any indictments. Despite this, over 280 interviews have taken place since March 2009 and “significant progress” has been made in building a case against Hariri’s killers, Cassesse said in the report. – Additional reporting by Wassim Mroueh

Sison Lauds Suleiman, Says U.S. Won't Allow its Goals to Come at Lebanon's Expense
Naharnet/U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison reiterated "support for a strong and independent Lebanon" during talks with President Michel Suleiman at Baabda Palace on Monday, the U.S. embassy said in a statement. Sison conveyed to Suleiman U.S. "support for a strong and independent Lebanon" and for the efforts of the president and the Lebanese government "to build peace and stability" in the country, the statement said. The ambassador also lauded Suleiman for his leadership and commitment to his country's people. "Sison noted the U.S. commitment to the ongoing diverse and successful partnerships between the United States and Lebanon in the areas of economic growth and military and law enforcement assistance, totaling over $1 billion since 2006," the statement said. The ambassador also reiterated that Washington will not allow its goals in the region and efforts to engage Syria come at the expense of its deep commitment to Lebanon and the Lebanese people, nor will it support the forced naturalization of Palestinians. According to the statement, Sison expressed hope that the Lebanese government will continue to exercise its legitimate authority over all of Lebanon. Finally, she said Washington was fully committed to the full implementation of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 13:39

Former Obama Aide New Head of AIPAC
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu/Arutz Sheva
Lee “Rosy” Rosenberg, a jazz recording industry veteran capitalist who accompanied U.S. President Barack Obama on his campaign trip to Israel two years ago, takes over on Sunday as the new president of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Rosenberg also served on the president’s national campaign finance committee. The new AIPAC president hails from Chicago, the home state of President Obama, and also is on first-name terms with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor.
Steve Rosen, a former 23-year, high-ranking AIPAC official, told the Chicago Tribune, “I don't think AIPAC has made any secret of the reality that his friendship with the president played a role in Rosy's rise. He's a guy who works very hard at fundraising [and] in the political arena. It was not as if he was plucked out of nowhere. He paid his dues. But I'm sure nobody was blind to the fact that he's from Chicago.“
Rosenberg is known as an expert in bringing in big money from powerful people who generally are not outwardly committed to Israel.
AIPAC claims more than 100,000 members and is considered the most powerful Jewish lobby in Washington. It opens its annual three-day conference Sunday and will hear addresses from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Their relationship has been sorely tested the past two weeks because of American and Arab opposition to Israel’s building for Jews in long-established Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem that were resorted to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
“The fact that he [Rosenberg] and the president have had a relationship helps now,” Illinois Democrat Rep. Mike Quigley told the Tribune.
Rosenberg’s ventures have included real estate, a music recording company, and high-tech startups and investing in jazz documentaries.
He replaces Michigan-based David Victor, who recently signed an AIPAC letter asking Congress to “demand” that the Obama administration "enforce existing sanctions law and impose crippling new sanctions on Iran."

3-D Filming of Hariri Crime Scene
Naharnet/A U.N. investigation team has begun filming a three-dimensional scene of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the Saint George area, the daily Al-Liwaa reported Monday. Al-Liwaa said the team will also listen to witnesses, conduct interviews and collect information under the escort of Lebanese troops and police.
It said the team will continue work until March 29. But pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat said the 11-strong investigation team, dispatched from Special Tribunal for Lebanon Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare's office, will on Monday begin filming a 3-D crime scene in Saint George. It said the team has been taking "ordinary photographs" of the crime scene and that 3-D filming will only start on Monday. Al-Hayat said the team will also review past testimonies given by witnesses before the U.N. investigation committee. It said international investigators will also listen to dozens of new testimonies of witnesses in the Hariri case. Citing well-informed sources, Al-Hayat said the investigation team has already begun a re-survey of the major crimes of political nature that have taken place in Lebanon after Hariri's assassination. Al-Akhbar newspaper, for its part, said Monday the Prosecutor-General's Office has ordered 18 Lebanese people, Hizbullah members likely among them, to appear at Bellemare's office to give their testimony as witnesses. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 10:28

Syria Returns to Lebanon through Refugee Camps' Security Door
Naharnet/Syria was reportedly set to make a comeback to Lebanon in its new role to help rein in the security situation across Palestinian refugee camps throughout the country. The daily Al-Akhbar, which carried the report, said Syria, Lebanon as well as some Palestinian figures have received several messages from the West warning against the outburst of violence in refugee camps in Lebanon. The letters, according to the daily, have demanded that Syria help contain the situation in Lebanon refugee camps. Damascus expressed readiness to meet the West's demand, but requested an amendment to the structure of Lebanon's security in order to make security institutions "cooperative and responsive" to the Syrian leadership. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 09:16

Lebanon to Mull Libya Summit Invitation
Naharnet/Lebanon will consider an official Libyan invitation to the Arab League summit scheduled to convene in Tripoli March 27-28. Arab League chief Amr Moussa on Sunday said Libya extended an official invitation to President Michel Suleiman to attend the Arab League summit. He said the invitation was handed over to Lebanon's Ambassador to Egypt and Arab League delegate Khaled Ziade. Moussa said he attended the invitation handover at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Arab League in Cairo. The Lebanese Cabinet is due to meet to discuss the invitation and take a decision in this regard, Moussa added. "I've done my duty. It is in everyone's interest to ensure a decent Arab presence at the summit," Moussa said in remarks published Monday by the daily Asharq al-Awsat. An-Nahar newspaper said Lebanon will take time to think about a response to the invitation. It said Lebanon will only take a decision at the next Cabinet session. Al-Liwaa daily, for its part, said Lebanon is likely to assign Ziade to attend the summit.
Suleiman has said he will not attend the summit following demands by the Shiite community to boycott the meeting. Shiites have been demanding Lebanese authorities to boycott the summit over the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr. Sadr -- who is still regarded by Lebanon's Shiite community as a key spiritual guide -- vanished on August 31, 1978, and the circumstances of his disappearance are still a mystery. He was last seen in Libya. In 2008 Lebanon issued an arrest warrant for Gadhafi over the disappearance of the imam while he was in Tripoli with two companions, who also went missing with him. Libya has denied involvement in Sadr's disappearance, saying he left the country for Italy. But the Italian government has always denied he ever arrived there. In 2004, however, Italian authorities returned a passport found in Italy belonging to the imam. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 12:04

Lebanese University Teachers Go on Strike
Naharnet/Lebanese University (LU) Contract Teachers staged a one-day work stoppage Monday across its branches. They also carried out a sit-in at 11am outside the LU Central Administrative building to reclaim their right to return to a full-time contract. LU professors insisted that the university president submits their list of demands to the education minister so that Cabinet would take up the issue. Meanwhile, the Executive Board of the Teachers Syndicate urged participation in a strike to be held on Tuesday, which has been called by the Association of Secondary Teachers. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 13:02

Wives of Fatah Islam Prisoners Stage Sit-In
Naharnet/Wives, mothers and children of Fatah al-Islam inmates staged a sit-in outside the Justice Palace in Beirut on Monday amid heavy security measures. They called for speedy trials of their beloved ones before moving to the military court building to protest over similar demands. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 12:35

Jumblat: I'm Still Trying to Understand Proportional Representation Elections
Naharnet/Druze leader Walid Jumblat said that he was still trying to understand what exactly means "proportional representation elections.""Perhaps it is better to hold that municipal elections this time be held under the old law with the absence of a party system that allows application of proportional representation," Jumblat said in remarks published Monday by the daily As-Safir. He denounced the campaign against President Michel Suleiman. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 09:52

Countdown to Municipal Election Fate Begins as Deadline Ends
Naharnet/Countdown to the final stage which will decide the fate of municipal elections begins as a deadline for completing a draft law on municipal polls ends Monday. The Administration and Justice Committee and the Finance and Budget Committee will meet in Nejmeh Square anew on Monday as the 15-day deadline to submit the draft law on municipal elections ends March 22. Head of the Administrative and Justice Committee MP Robert Ghanem, however, said the ultimatum was considered more of an "urge" rather than dropping the issue. In remarks published Monday by the daily An-Nahar, Ghanem expressed hope that the draft law will make "real progress" this week.
He uncovered Speaker Nabih Berri's intention, once back from an official visit to Turkey, to call committee heads concerned to a meeting to determine next steps. Head of the Finance and Budget Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan, also in remarks published by An-Nahar Monday, said out of the 134 articles of the draft law the Committee was able to limit the debate to three clauses. Kanaan expressed his belief that this method will help speed up the process. Pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper, meanwhile, believed that most parliamentary blocs were looking for an "appropriate exit" that would lead to the postponement of municipal elections scheduled for this spring. It quoted parliamentary and ministerial sources as saying that most of the major parliamentary blocs appear to favor postponement of municipal polls. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 08:15

Hizbullah Urges Arabs to Help Obtain Info on Sadr's Fate
Naharnet/Head of Hizbullah's Loyal to the Resistance parliamentary bloc MP Mohammed Raad said Lebanon should bear a "big national responsibility" toward uncovering the fate of Imam Moussa Sadr. In an interview published Monday by the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai, Raad said "Arabs must address the problems that hurt Arab solidarity.""Hizbullah, AMAL (movement) and the family of Imam Sadr demand that his fate be uncovered," Raad said. "This is not a very difficult thing for Arab states to do," he thought. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 11:25

Netanyahu: Hizbullah Violates 1701
Naharnet/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hizbullah of weapons smuggling and of violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701.
During a meeting with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel was exerting "great efforts" to achieve peace with the Palestinians as well as the return of Israeli Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas on 25 June 2006. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 09:09

Heartbroken Saudi to be Handed over to Riyadh Authorities Soon
Naharnet/The Lebanese army intelligence will soon hand over Saudi citizen Mohammed Jawad al-Issa to authorities in Riyadh after investigation revealed that the man was not a Mossad agent, a high-level security source told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat. The army discovered that al-Issa is suffering from psychological problems and came to Lebanon from Jordan after he received an emotional trauma following his break-up with a Palestinian girl, the source said. The heartbroken Saudi, who was studying medicine in Jordan, was arrested on Wednesday in south Lebanon along the border with Israel. Lebanese security forces nabbed al-Issa, 26, at the border town of Kfar Kila as he apparently tried to draw the attention of nearby Israeli troops. A Lebanese security official told Agence France Presse on Thursday that al-Issa told police that he thought if he cursed and insulted the Israelis, they would open fire and kill him, and that way he would at least die an honorable death. Beirut, 22 Mar 10, 10:39

Rival Political Sides Clash with Sticks in Bekaa, Gunshots Heard
Naharnet/A clash with sticks and stones erupted Sunday between rival political sides in the Bekaa town of Taalbaya, local media reported. They said a personal dispute developed into a fight between families belonging to opposing political parties. The Lebanese army rushed to the scene after gunshots were heard. NO casualties were reported, however. The Voice of Lebanon radio station said Lebanese troops launched raids at the suspects' houses and several men believed to be responsible for the violence were arrested. Beirut, 21 Mar 10, 19:36

Clinton urges Israel to make difficult choices for peace
March 22, 2010 /US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Israel on Monday to make "difficult but necessary choices" for Middle East peace but promised her "rock solid" support for its security. In an address to be delivered later in the day to the annual policy conference in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Clinton pledged that the United States would not "compromise its commitment" to prevent Iran getting a nuclear bomb. However, according to advance excerpts of her speech, she also cautioned that a new round of UN sanctions would take time. During the day, Clinton was due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington to deliver his own address to the key pro-Israel lobby ahead of White House talks on Tuesday. Clinton in her draft speech to the AIPAC said the path to peace "requires all parties – including Israel – to make difficult but necessary choices." "The status quo is unsustainable for all sides. It promises only more violence and unrealized aspirations," she said.
Clinton promised that the drive for peace would not in any way compromise Washington's commitment to the security of the Jewish State, amid mounting concern in Israel at the failure of diplomatic efforts to rein in Iran's controversial nuclear program. "For US President [Barack] Obama, for me, and for this entire administration, our commitment to Israel’s security and Israel’s future is rock solid.” "Guaranteeing Israel’s security is more than a policy position for me. It is a personal commitment that will never waver," she said. "In addition to threatening Israel, a nuclear-armed Iran would embolden its terrorist clientele and would spark an arms race that could destabilize the region. This is unacceptable.” "So let me be very clear – the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." Clinton said that Washington was determined to secure agreement at the UN Security Council for a fourth round of sanctions that would show Iran's leaders that "the only choice is to live up to their international obligations.""Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite. It is taking time to produce these sanctions, and we believe that time is a worthwhile investment for winning the broadest possible support for our efforts."-NOW Lebanon

PFPL-GC says Palestinian arms outside refugee camps are for resisting Israel
March 22, 2010 /The purpose of Palestinian arms outside refugee camps in Lebanon is to resist Israel, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFPL-GC) official in South Lebanon Abu Wael Issam said during a press conference on Monday. The PFPL-GC and Lebanon, through dialogue, are working on reaching an understanding on all political issues, added Issam, who is also a member of PFPL-GC’s central committee. Issam said his party is ready for calm and constructive dialogue and supports regulating weapons in refugee camps to pressure the international community into implementing UN Security Council resolutions. He also reiterated that the PFPL-GC will not allow the use of Palestinian weapons against the Lebanese people.-NOW Lebanon

Syria’s war on March 14
Hanin Ghaddar, March 20, 2010
Now Lebanon
With international attention turned elsewhere, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is eyeing an opportunity to slip back into Lebanese politics. (AFP photo/Louai Beshara)
The Syrian regime is obviously feeling nostalgic for the 29 years it ruled Lebanon between 1976 and 2005, for ever since its humiliating withdrawal, it has been trying to engineer a “return”.
Syria’s partners in crime are in Iran and Hezbollah, and, after the meeting in Damascus in late February between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, a plan is underway. Lebanon has fallen off the west’s radar, and Damascus has seen an opportunity to jump back in. In doing so, it is also trying to destroy whatever is left of the spirit of March 14, 2005.
Druze Leader MP Walid Jumblatt has left the March 14 bloc and is pleading for an invitation to visit the Syrian president. The late 2009 Saudi-Syrian rapprochement imposed a strategic, albeit fragile, ceasefire between Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Damascus, while Hezbollah and Syria’s other Lebanese proxies are taking advantage of the new era of Syrian influence to consolidate their own power bases.
However, not everyone has embraced the new shift in power, and there are pockets of “resistance”: Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea; what remains of March 14; the Internal Security Forces, which has succeeded in remaining outside Hezbollah’s control; and President Michel Sleiman, who is still trying to play the role of a consensus president, in stark contrast to his predecessor, Emile Lahoud, who was as pro-Syrian as a head of state could be.
The Syrian regime would love to get rid of these “thorns” and is probably behind a series of vicious political and media attacks on Geagea, Sleiman and the ISF head Ashraf Rifi. By isolating Geagea, taming Sleiman, and trapping the ISF, Syria will have created a Lebanon similar to the one it left in 2005.
Campaigns against these main targets will also target other political figures who worked against Syrian interference since 2005, such as former PM Fouad Siniora, Sunni Grand Mufti of the Republic Sheikh Mohammad Qabbani, and those pro-Hariri and Future Movement politicians indicted by the Syrian judiciary earlier this year. Indeed, the whole March 14 bloc, including those who helped in its creation, is in the crosshairs.
A national unity government, formed despite the clear majority achieved by March 14 at the polls on June 7, 2009, is apparently not enough. Neither is a ministerial statement that was drafted under duress and that gives legitimacy to Hezbollah’s arms. Jumblatt’s decision to leave March 14 was also not enough; ditto Hariri’s visit to Damascus. The goal, it appears, is to destroy March 14, its leadership and its achievements, including the international resolutions on Lebanon.
March 14 has shown it will not go down without a fight. There was strength and unity at this year’s February 14 rally, attended mainly by Christians and Sunnis, and it is this unity that Syria wants to undo, with the Lebanese Forces, headed by Geagea, as the obvious target. If they can isolate Geagea, Hariri will be weakened.
Syria would prefer to keep Hariri as a Sunni rather than a national leader. According to the regime in Damascus, strong Sunni national leadership in Lebanon cannot be tolerated as it might reach out to Syria’s Sunni majority. A Hariri, isolated from Geagea and let down by Jumblatt, would in all likelihood cave in to Syrian influence. Elsewhere, a weakened Geagea would benefit Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun, whose support base is currently in decline in the face of Geagea’s rising power among Christians.
The campaign against Geagea is taking place on different levels. March 8 media and politicians do not miss an opportunity to attack him each time he criticizes Hezbollah’s arms or defends state institutions. It is a message to Geagea and his allies that his regular denunciations of Hezbollah’s arsenal, his calls for border demarcation and strong and independent state institutions are unacceptable. It is also a message to the Lebanese that all political figures, media or state institutions that gained independence after 2005 must return to Syrian-Iranian control or suffer the consequences. But all the while, the Lebanese Forces is growing and becoming more organized. In universities, syndicates and on the community level, the LF is by far the strongest Christian party. Its rhetoric today avoids clichés and slogans and tends to focus on the serious dangers facing Lebanon as a whole, not only its Christian support base.
Its leadership has made great strides in enhancing the party’s image on the national level, and Geagea is today more than just a Christian leader. His rising popularity means a powerful ally for Hariri, and the Syrian-Hezbollah axis is not comfortable with this development. In the absence of international attention on Lebanon, Syria and Iran are using the opportunity to crush a movement that represented a chance of genuine statehood. Until there is another sea change in regional politics, one that hopefully restores Lebanon to the international community’s agenda, March 14 faces a bitter fight for survival.
*Hanin Ghaddar is managing editor of NOW Lebanon

No one is untouchable
March 22, 2010
Now Lebanon/Syria mouthpiece Wiam Wahhab (Dalati and Nohra)
Cometh the hour; cometh the man. In this case the hour is a period in which a Syrian regime feels it can turn the screw on what it sees as a wobbly Lebanon, a country stripped of the international cover it enjoyed in 2005 and one with a majority alliance in disarray. The man is pro-Syrian “politician” Wiam Wahhab, whose Faustian pact has ensured that his legacy will forever be associated with doing Damascus’s bidding.
The leader of the largely irrelevant Tawhid Movement and a former journalist, whose unstinting allegiance to Syria was rewarded with a ministerial portfolio in Omar Karami’s short-lived 2004-2005 administration, is once again being deployed as a scatter gun by his masters.
Last week, Wahhab controversially called on Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to resign, while on Sunday he finished off his one-two combination punch by warning that there would be trouble if investigators for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon poked their noses where they shouldn’t by questioning Hezbollah members about the February 14, 2005 bomb blast that killed former prime minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others.
“A problem could take place in the country because the investigating panel will create strife,” Wahhab warned us on al-Jadeed TV over the weekend, advising Prime Minister Saad Hariri to “avoid the trap of the international tribunal.”
Hezbollah said nothing. Why should it when it has Wahhab and his soap box at its disposal? This way the message is sent while the party maintains the dignified silence its supporters would approve of. Only Hezbollah MP Nawaf Moussawi offered, also to al-Jadeed TV, a terse “We don't comment on everything related to the international tribunal.”
And yet March 8 has a proud history of throwing its toys out of its collective pram when it is challenged, most famously on May 7, 2008, when in response to the government decision to dismantle its illegal telephone apparatus and sack senior security personnel at Beirut airport it felt were too close to Syria, Hezbollah, Amal and the SSNP took over West Beirut in a bloody action that was nothing short of an attempted coup.
It was clear that March 8 considered the perpetuity of the Resistance more important than the authority of the state, and the message to the government back then was clear: go after Hezbollah and its infrastructure at your peril.
Now new red lines are being drawn. With Syria back at the table and in the game, it is time to respond to the whispers that were around for years, but which in May 2009 became murmurs with the publication of an article in the German magazine Der Speigel that pointed the finger at Hezbollah involvement in the Hariri killing.
Whether the Der Spiegel story was a political plant or the result of thorough reporting, Hezbollah has not been formally indicted. Nonetheless, its members are by and large Lebanese nationals, patriotically out of the top drawer, so there should be no reason why they should shy away from investigation. It would be unfortunate if the party, once again, cited security reasons for not collaborating with an investigation that seeks answers to a crime that traumatized a nation, and, that if push came to shove, it reacted in the same way it did two years ago by cocking its weapons.
If the message to Saad Hariri is that he should, for the sake of internal stability, not insist the investigators look too deeply into the murky world of Hezbollah, the counter message is equally robust: that the tribunal always has investigators in Beirut, that it is an ongoing inquiry, that there has been no sudden increase in activity, and that the investigation is not an international tool to bring down the Resistance.
In the Lebanon we all strive for, no one is untouchable.

Aoun christens new church hall in hometown Haret Hreik
By The Daily Star /Monday, March 22, 2010
BEIRUT: Saint Joseph Church in Haret Hreik in the southern suburbs of Beirut saw the opening Sunday of a new hall commemorating the saint in the presence of Beirut Maronite Archbishop Boulos Matar and head of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun. The hall was opened to honor the patron saint of Aoun’s hometown of Haret Hreik, and several political and religious figures attended the ceremony presided over by Matar. Following the 1975-90 Civil War, Haret Hreik became a Hizbullah bastion. Prior to the summer 2006 war with Israel, it used to house the party’s headquarters, including the residence of Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. During his sermon, Matar said opening the hall was a symbol of renewed love between members of the community and of renewed trust in Lebanon. “We will not accept anything less than a love that unites the people to their country Lebanon,” he said.
He then asked the Lebanese to unite and preserve the values of their country and most importantly to trust each other. Aoun, meanwhile, stressed the importance of reconciliation and said: “Easter is coming and we cannot go to prayer without reconciling with our friends and neighbors.” He added that only major mistakes were solid reasons for disagreement between Christians and called for dialogue as a means to settle differences. “Conflicts are resolved through dialogue, not through blood and not anything else,” he said. Aoun especially addressed his speech to Christians, saying the Christian faith called for tolerance and love. – The Daily Star

Moussa confirms Lebanon has received summit invite
By The Daily Star
Monday, March 22, 2010
BEIRUT: Arab League chief Amr Moussa said Lebanon’s Ambassador to the league Khaled Ziyaded has received an invitation for Lebanon to attend the Arab Summit in Tripoli, Kuwait’s news agency KUNA reported on Sunday. KUNA quoted Moussa as saying that Libya’s Ambassador to the Arab League Mohammad Taher Sayala has submitted to his Lebanese counterpart an invitation from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to President Michel Sleiman to attend the summit. Moussa had paid a visit to Beirut last week hoping to resolve a diplomatic dispute with Libya over the disappearance of an influential Lebanese cleric 32 years ago. Sadr, together with his two companions Abbas Badreddine and Mohammad Yaqoub, disappeared during an official trip to Libya in August 1978. The Lebanese widely accuse Gadhafi of being behind the the men’s disappearance, but Tripoli denies the allegations. Libya has repeatedly claimed that Sadr, the spiritual and political leader of the Movement of the Deprived in Lebanon (Amal), had already left for Italy before going missing. Rome has maintained Sadr never arrived there, though in 2004 the Italian authorities returned a passport found in Italy belonging to the cleric. The row over Sadr’s disappearance prompted Libya to close its embassy in Lebanon. Gadhafi, who has not visited Beirut since Sadr vanished, was indicted by the Lebanese authorities along with six other Libyans in August 2008 for the imam’s disappearance.
Moussa said Lebanon’s Cabinet would discuss the Libyan invitation in its next session. – The Daily Star

Tawheed head Wahhab maintains attack on Sleiman
‘He should resign, He is unable to fulfill his promises of eradicating corruption’
By Wassim Mroueh
Daily Star staff
Monday, March 22, 2010
BEIRUT: Tawheed Movement head Wi’am Wahhab reiterated Saturday calls for Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to resign. “The late Egyptian President Jamal Abdel-Nasser resigned, so why doesn’t Sleiman?” asked Wahhab, who is a close ally of Syria. “Where is the problem if he wasn’t able to fulfill his promises of eradicating corruption and guaranteeing transparent administrative appointments?” Wahhab’s Saturday comments sparked a new wave of criticism from politicians of the parliamentary majority.
In an interview with Al-Jadeed TV, Wahhab criticized Lebanon’s politicians, who “devoted two hours of the Cabinet session to respond to what I said, instead of addressing major problems from which the country is suffering.” “I can’t understand the reason for this intellectual terrorism against me,” Wahhab added, ruling out any Syrian influence in his recent position towards the Lebanese president.
“I stated my personal opinion and I don’t represent the voice of Syria, Hizbullah, [Christian opposition leader Michel] Aoun or even the opposition, but simply the Lebanese citizen’s voice,” he said. Those defending Sleiman were “hypocrites,” he said. “Be sure that I like and respect Sleiman much more than you. If you really like the president, then you should work on restoring his prerogatives,” Wahhab said, branding the dialogue committee a “conspiracy project.” “I wanted to be calm today, but after the response by the president, and describing what I said as ‘silly work,’ I would like to tell him that he signed a decree granting two members of the Al-Hashem family the right to sell water from the Nahr al-Ruweiss well in the Byblos area,” he said.
Wahhab also asked Sleiman if it was legal to appoint his relative Farid Sleiman to a post at the Casino du Liban, noting that the president should be involved in more pressing tasks.
After calling on the president to resign for not fulfilling his promises, Wahhab voiced his readiness to visit the presidential palace in Baabda “to make all my remarks to the president.” He said he wouldn’t ask for an appointment at the presidential palace but he would have no problem in going there if a mediator arranged a visit.
Wahhab challenged Lebanese Forces (LF) leader Samir Geagea to employ a statistics company to find out which of the two was more popular. “I am sure I will win by 60 percent, otherwise I will step down from political life,” he said. In response to Wahhab’s remarks, Geagea noted that campaigns targeting the president and the Internal Security Forces (ISF) were intended to force Sleiman to resign and to undermine security and democracy in Lebanon. “They don’t seek the resignation of the president but the presidency,” Geagea told visitors at his home in Maarab. “They don’t target the ISF but internal security, and they’re not attacking the US but Lebanon. They want the resignation of the presidency, freedom, democratic systems, diversity, stability, and they want us to go back to enslavement. The time of enslavement is over,” Geagea said.
MP Antoine Saad also slammed Wahhab’s campaign against Sleiman, saying that it was aimed at undermining internal consensus. “The presidency has national, political and Christian immunity and we don’t accept targeting it by any side,” he said. “President Sleiman was elected based on Lebanese consensus and not through forced renewal like what happened with former President [Emile] Lahoud,” Saad added, referring to the former president who altered the Constitution to prolong his term in office.
Phalange MP Elie Marouni similarly condemned the campaign against Sleiman, especially as “Lebanon is facing the problem of whether to participate in the upcoming Arab summit and as the president tours in different countries to bolster Lebanon’s position outside.”
After meeting with Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, LF MP George Adwan said the campaign against Sleiman targeted the independence of Lebanon and efforts made by Sleiman and Premier Saad Hariri to enhance Lebanon’s position as an independent state.
Asked about Sfeir’s position regarding the campaign against Sleiman, Adwan said the patriarch believed empowering the president and the presidency was a critical factor in the establishment of a strong and independent Lebanon.
Meanwhile, head of the Lebanese Democratic Party (LDP) MP Talal Arslan underlined the need to discuss Lebanon’s political system and its serious flaws at the dialogue table. “Without reforming the political regime to tackle upcoming challenges, we can’t talk about major achievements of the dialogue,” Arslan said while receiving delegations from various areas in Mount Lebanon. “The state we entrust to apply a defense strategy embracing the army, resistance and people should rely on an advanced political system adopting the resistance and its experience in defending Lebanon in an unprecedented way, and should be supported by a political system capable of accommodating this wide diversity in the Lebanese political life,” he said.

Obama Punished Israel by Diverting Anti-Iran Bunker Bombs
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Arutz Cheva/Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States this week will include a demand that U.S. President Barack Obama release previously-promised bunker-busting bombs, the Times of London reported Sunday. The bombs could be used in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are buried deep underground. The Iranian Fars news agency has quoted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the Bushehr nuclear facility will be online by the summer. The United States has diverted 387 bombs to an island in the Indian Ocean following the latest diplomatic clash between Israel and the United States over the proposed Ramat Shlomo hosing project in Jerusalem, according to several news sources.
President Obama's "punishment" for Israel’s continuing to plan building projects indicates he intends to go full-speed ahead with his and his advisors’ strategy that solving the decades-old Arab-Israeli struggle is the key to stability in the entire Middle East. So far, the only concessions he demands are from Israel. According to the thinking of the American government, a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders would spark the Arab world’s recognition of Israel as well as a united American-Arab front against a nuclear Iran and Taliban-Al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. A different theory for the diversion of the bombs is that President Obama is holding on to the option that the United States, and not Israel, would attack Iran if it obtains nuclear capability. Scotland’s Sunday Herald last week quoted Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London as saying, “They [the United States] are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran. U.S. bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.”

Netanyahu Draws the Line: We Build in Jerusalem as in Tel Aviv
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Arutz Cheva/Israel will make it clear to the Obama administration that “there is no difference between building in Jerusalem and building in Tel Aviv," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at in his opening remarks to the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday morning. “Our policy on Jerusalem is the same as in the past 42 years.'”His remarks are in sharp contrast to the Obama administration’s stand that does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem that was restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War. Congress has stated in legislation that it recognizes a “united Jerusalem."However, the Prime Minister also said that he wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ”In the coming talks, every side can bring up issues in which there are disagreements,” meaning the “core issues” of the status of Jerusalem and the Arab world’s demand that Israel allow the immigration of millions of Arabs claiming that Israel is home by ancestry. The Prime Minister said his letter also stated, “The solution of the basic problems are between us and the Palestinian Authority and can be solved only though direct peace negotiations.” Israel previously has refused to discuss the core issues until agreement is reached on other issues, such as continued incitement by the PA and the ongoing terrorist attacks. Agreeing that each side can bring up any subject it wants apparently is one of the concessions from Israel that Secretary Clinton has demanded. However, the Prime Minister’s statement serves as a warning to the Obama administration that Israel will not accept a dictated agreement. Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to Washington, told American media on Saturday that an American effort to force an agreement on the PA and Israel would be like "forcing somebody to fall in love.”

Pakistan simply sees no reason to stop supporting terrorists
By Ashley J. Telli
Daily Star
Monday, March 22, 2010
As the search for stability in Afghanistan intensifies, the threat of violence and a wider conflagration in the region is growing. In an effort to secure a dominant position in Afghanistan and to blunt India’s rise, Pakistan has mobilized militants and terrorists on both sides of its borders.
While the Afghan Taliban fighting the military forces of the United States and, more generally, those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization continue to enjoy Pakistani support, Islamabad has exchanged its previous policy of supporting anti-Indian insurgencies with that of supporting terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, the organization that mounted the deadly assault against the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. With tension persisting between the two South Asian rivals, such a tactic not only increases the prospect of major war between New Delhi and Islamabad, but, given Lashkar-e-Taiba’s growing reach, it could well have global consequences.
The disruption of the India-Pakistan peace process, which has remained frozen since the time of the Mumbai attack, is due principally to Pakistan’s unwillingness to bring to justice the Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership, which has enjoyed the support of the country’s powerful intelligence organization, Inter-Services Intelligence. After almost two decades of punting, many Pakistanis today – academics, policy analysts, and even government officials – concede that the fomenting of insurgencies inside Indian territory has been a main component of Pakistan’s national strategy. However, this late admission only comes long after Pakistan’s military establishment has moved to replace its failed strategy of encouraging anti-Indian insurgencies with the more lethal approach of unleashing terrorist groups against its neighbor.
Since its formation in 1947, Pakistan has sought to stir up insurgencies inside India. The earliest efforts in 1947 and 1948 centered on provoking insurrections in Jammu and Kashmir in the hope that an internal rebellion would permit Pakistan’s seizure of this disputed state.
These efforts failed miserably. Through three major conflicts between Pakistan and India, the people of Kashmir remained loyal to New Delhi. After Pakistan’s defeat in the war of 1971, Islamabad attempted to stoke other secessionist movements, this time not to make any territorial gains but merely to avenge its military humiliation. But this effort, too, was beaten back by the Indian state. Finally, in 1989, when the first genuinely Kashmiri uprising against New Delhi broke out, Islamabad quickly threw its support behind the insurgents who were led by the secular Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. The revolt, however, was overpowered by the Indian Army by 1993 – and this defeat brought about the momentous change in Islamabad’s strategy against India.
Flushed with confidence flowing from the success of the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the 1980s, Pakistan sought to replicate in the east what it had managed to do in the west, namely bring about the defeat of a great power larger than itself.
Using the same instruments as before – radical Islamist groups that had sprung up throughout Pakistan – Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence pushed into Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in 1993 by backing combat-hardened individuals alien to the area who were tasked with inflicting large-scale murder and mayhem.
Throughout this period, Pakistan’s traditional strategy of fomenting insurgencies against India gave way to a new approach, namely, fomenting terrorism (an instrument that most Pakistanis still refuse to acknowledge). No longer would Pakistan rely on dissatisfied indigenous populations to advance Islamabad’s interests; instead, vicious bands of Islamic terrorists, most of whom had little or no connection to any existing grievances with India, would be unleashed indiscriminately to kill large numbers of civilians.
From 1996 on, these attacks were deliberately extended at the behest of Inter-Services Intelligence throughout India. Of all the myriad terrorist organizations involved, none enjoyed greater state support than Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has since then sprung to international attention because of the bloodbath in Mumbai. However, the group had been active in South Asia since 1987, first in Afghanistan and thereafter in India.
Of all the terrorist groups that Inter-Services Intelligence has sponsored over the years, Lashkar-e-Taiba has been especially favored because its dominant Punjabi composition matches the predominant ethnicity that is found in the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani intelligence services. At the same time, the group’s puritanical form of Salafism has undergirded its willingness to engage in risky military operations throughout India. Many of those inside Inter-Services Intelligence are deeply sympathetic to Lashkar-e-Taiba’s vision of recovering “lost Muslim lands” in Asia and Europe, as well as of resurrecting a universal Islamic Caliphate by using the instrument of jihad.
Although Pakistan’s propaganda machine often asserts that Lashkar-e-Taiba is a Kashmiri organization that is moved by the Kashmiri cause, it is in fact nothing of the sort. The 3,000-odd foot soldiers who make up its fighting cadre are drawn primarily from the Pakistani Punjab. India’s intelligence services today estimate that Lashkar-e-Taiba maintains some kind of presence in 21 countries worldwide with the intention of supporting or participating in what its leader, Hafeez Saeed, has called the perpetual “jihad against the infidels.” Consequently, Lashkar-e-Taiba’s operations in and around India, which often receive the most attention, are only part of a larger campaign that has taken Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives and soldiers as far afield as Australia, Canada, Chechnya, China, Eritrea, Kosovo, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the UK, and even the US.
Given the organization’s vast presence, its prolific capacity to raise funds worldwide, and its ability to conduct militant activities at great distances from its home base, Lashkar-e-Taiba has become the preferred instrument of Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistan’s ongoing covert war against India. This includes the campaign that Pakistan is currently waging against the Indian presence in Afghanistan, as well as against the counterinsurgency efforts of the United States in the country. Active Lashkar-e-Taiba operations in Pakistan’s northwestern border areas also involve close collaboration with Al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the so-called Haqqani network, and a group called Jamiat al-Dawa al-Quran wal-Sunna.
Thanks to these activities and others worldwide, Washington has now reached the conclusion that Lashkar-e-Taiba represents a threat to the national interests of the United States. This threat the Americans regard as second only to the one posed by Al-Qaeda. In fact, however, the Lashkar-e-Taiba threat probably exceeds the latter by many measures.
Based on this judgment, US President Barack Obama has told the Pakistani president, Asif Zardari, that targeting Lashkar-e-Taiba would be one of his key conditions for a renewed strategic partnership between the United States and Pakistan. Thus far, however, the Pakistani military, which still effectively rules Pakistan even though it does not formally govern the country, has been unresponsive. The military prefers, instead, to emphasize the threat that India supposedly continues to represent for Pakistan – thereby implicitly justifying the continued reliance of Inter-Services Intelligence on terrorism, even as it has demanded further assistance from the United States.
Such a demand is intended to inveigle the US into Pakistan’s relentless competition with India. The Pakistani military’s dismissal of Obama’s injunctions regarding Lashkar-e-Taiba has been driven at least partly by its belief that all warnings coming from the United States are little more than examples of special pleading on behalf of India.
Since assaulting India has become quite a satisfying end in itself for Pakistan, the Pakistani establishment has shown no incentive whatsoever to interdict Lashkar-e-Taiba. To the degree that Inter-Services Intelligence has attempted to control the terrorist group, it has mainly done so to prevent excessive embarrassment to the group’s sponsors in Pakistan, or to avert serious crises that might lead to a war between Pakistan and India. However, when one moves beyond these aims, the Pakistani military has no interest in dismantling any terrorist assets that it believes can serve it well.
Military leaders in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani military is headquartered, have not only failed to understand that the concerns of the United States about Lashkar-e-Taiba derive fundamentally from Washington’s growing conviction that the group’s activities worldwide make it a direct threat to the United States; they also continue to harbor the illusion that Pakistan’s current strategy of unleashing terrorism will enervate India, will push it to disengage from Afghanistan, and that it will weaken stabilization efforts by the United States in the country. Such a strategy is designed to make Islamabad the kingmaker in Kabul, and in this way determine the future of Afghanistan.
This ambition promises to become just one more in the long line of cruel illusions that has gripped Pakistan since the country’s founding.
**Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Reconciling with the Taliban? Toward an Alternative Grand Strategy in Afghanistan.” This commentary is reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu). Copyright © 2010, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Yale University.

The Professor’s Islamist Call to Battle
Posted by Cinnamon Stillwell on Mar 22nd, 2010
and filed under FrontPage.
Sherman Jackson, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is a professor of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.
Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the
September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan Teach-in titled, “Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam,” that “the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam.”
But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.
Jackson made this abundantly clear at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society.” Jonathan Usher, who attended and wrote about the conference for Campus Watch, described Jackson’s speech as nothing less than “a call to battle.” As he put it, “It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.” According to Usher, Jackson
…believes that the Muslim and Western worlds are in conflict and competition, and that only one can end up dominant. Put simply, he wants to replace Western culture with Muslim culture.
…Jackson expressed a desire to be included in American society—but not if any sort of cultural sacrifice were required. He said that adapting to Western culture would lead to being a Muslim in name only and advocated defining America by Muslim standards and imposing cultural and intellectual supremacy. He urged Muslims not to follow Western cultural authority, but rather to achieve their own cultural authority from the inside, as part of the system.
…Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.
Moreover, Jackson has a history of making such radical statements.
He co-authored a 2000 online book titled, American Public Policy and American-Muslim Politics and published by the Chicago-based International Strategy and Policy Institute, whose mission is to “promote the correct understanding of Islam and Muslims in the United States.” Jackson’s coauthors were DePaul University Director of Islamic World Studies Aminah Beverly McCloud and State University of New York at Binghamton professor and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies Ali Mazrui. McCloud is a former board member of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a follower of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, while Mazrui’s bio notes that he is “one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s apartheid” and has also “argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy and supported its introduction in some parts of northern Nigeria.”
In the chapter, “Muslims, Islamic Law and Public Policy in the United States,” Jackson cites the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s influential theories about altering societies not through politics, but through cultural and educational institutions. Jackson proposes that American Muslims approach the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America.” As he puts it:
…it should be understood that once this is done, there are no Constitutional impediments to having these laws applied in the public domain. Muslims must be vocal and confident in articulating the public utility underlying the rules on things like riba [usury], adultery, theft, drinking, contracts, pre-marital sex, child-custody and even polygyny. This should all be done, however, in the context of an open acceptance of American custom (urf) as a legally valid source in areas where the shari’ah admits the reliance upon custom.
As for the gradual acceptance of the more horrifying aspects of Sharia law, Jackson notes that “it would be foolish to deny that the prospects for American acceptance of such institutions as stoning, or flogging or amputation are virtually nil, at least for the foreseeable future.” But he concludes on a note only an Islamist could find comforting:
…notions of what is cruel and unusual, of what is barbaric, of what is draconian (which is the real basis upon which America rejects these punishments) are a function of culture, not law. It is only through changes in American culture that American attitudes towards such things are likely to change. Thus, in the end, as in the beginning, we are brought face to face with the inextricable connection between American culture and Muslim self-determination. May God grant us the courage and the vision to rise to the task before us.
This call to gradually replace the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution with seventh century notions of justice is both frightening and morally repugnant.
Despite a record of expressing such extreme views, Jackson has made a name for himself as a moderate and a reformer. His success in this charade stems in part from his willingness to break from his peers and publicly discuss Islamic terrorism, its theological underpinnings, and the need for related reform. An article in the Wesleyan Argus quoted a November 2007 Jackson speech on “Jihad, Terrorism, and Modern Violence” at Wesleyan University:
‘Muslims in the West must be active and vocal in their condemnation of current violations of hirabah,’ he insisted, referring to the Sharia law that outlaws any act of publicly directed violence that spreads fear and helplessness. According to Jackson, hirabah more than covers today’s conception of terrorism. He discussed the moderate Muslim unwillingness to publicly decry acts of terrorism and attributed it to the desire to not be seen as ‘Uncle Toms.’
But Patrick Poole, writing for the American Thinker in September 2007, calls Jackson’s reasoning and motives into question. He describes Jackson as one of the earliest proponents of the “Islamic lexicon” and, in particular, an advocate for replacing the term jihad with hirabah in discussing Islamic terrorism. Poole and other skeptics allege that, in practice, this is nothing more than a semantic sleight of hand that serves to obscure the legitimization of terrorism within Islam and to further the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization-jihadist process.
Poole notes that Jim Guirard of the Truespeak Institute is the “foremost advocate for this approach,” and that Sherman Jackson is among the scholars he relies upon for his findings. Poole points to an unclassified memo from Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin in which Jackson is cited as one of Guirard’s contributors, along with fellow Middle East studies professors John Esposito of Georgetown University and Muqtedar Khan of the University of Delaware. Summarizing Coughlin’s findings, Poole concludes that,
…as Walid Phares and Stephen Coughlin have already revealed, many of the Western Muslim advocates of this new approach are directly tied to known Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the US. As Coughlin itemizes, Sherman Jackson is a “trustee” to the North American Islamic Trust, and affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, the first two of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the current Holy Land Foundation terror financing federal trial underway in Dallas, and the last was the original organizational wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. The hiraba-jihad terminology has also been endorsed by the Wahhabist Council for Islamic Education and the extremist mouthpiece Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That is telling in and of itself.
Jackson is also considered an expert on the intersection of Islam and African-Americans (he is himself an African-American convert to Islam). His 2005 book on the subject, Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection, was reviewed favorably by radical Islam apologist John Esposito, James H. Cone (the originator of black liberation theology and stated inspiration for controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” in Chicago), and DePaul professor Aminah Beverly McCloud. Beyond McCloud’s aforementioned affiliation with CAIR and the Nation of Islam, she played a pivotal role in influencing Washington, D.C. PBS station WETA’s decision to cancel its airing of the laudable documentary on moderate Muslims, Islam vs. Islamists, in early 2007.
Jackson’s career may be peppered with associations and endorsements from some of the worst apologists and radicals from the field of Middle East studies—and his involvement in the obfuscating “truespeak” movement points to even more troublesome ties with Muslim Brotherhood front groups—but, ultimately, it is his own words that prove the most damning. His stated agenda clearly has nothing to do with moderation or reform; it is quite simply that of an Islamist.
Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. She can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.