Posted by Christine Brim Oct 23rd 2010 at 4:45 am in Defense and Foreign Policy, Featured Story, Fox News, NPR, PBSThe news about NPR firing Juan Williams is opening the eyes of many in the media and public to the extraordinary rules of censorship that CAIR, other Muslim Brotherhood groups, and the “Establishment Left” impose to restrict free speech. But it’s not just NPR that responds to CAIR’s political pressure which may in itself be a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. On October 9, 2010 – less than two weeks before NPR fired Williams on October 21 – the federally-funded sister agency Public Broadcasting System (PBS) sent Joel Schwartzberg, Senior Editor of PBS Interactive to be a presenter at the CAIR Leadership Conference preceding their 16th annual national banquet.
Here’s a copy of the 36 page CAIR program for the conference and banquet (or click on the image below – 4 MB file size). Page 4 lists Schwartzberg in the 9:15 -10:45 a.m. session (Room B): “Becoming a Dynamic Public Speaker (Room B).” Page 6 provides Schwartzberg’s biography under the title “CAIR Leadership Conference Trainers 2010.”
There’s more. PBS sent Schwartzberg to train “CAIR Leadership” knowing that CAIR had advertised the conference for several weeks listing the #1 reason to attend as, “You’re tired of seeing Islam defamed and want to do something about it.” Click on the image below to view the entire saved pdf of the conference promotional web page:
To make this clear: PBS sent Schwartzberg to train “CAIR leadership” at a conference held specifically to “do something about” the alleged problem of “Islam defamed.” The use of the concept of “defamation” of Islam should be a red flag alert to Congressional funders of PBS: CAIR’s conference publicity followed the instructions of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to enforce Shariah blasphemy and defamation laws in the U.S. – in this case, with the support of publicly funded PBS staff.
For years, the OIC has been trying to pass a law through the U.N. that would criminalize any “defamation” of Islam, defined as blasphemy within Shariah law itself. In the 2008 Organization of Islamic Conference “Ten Year Plan,” the OIC’s 56 Islamic state members resolved to, “Emphasize the responsibility of the international community, including all governments, to ensure respect for all religions and combat their defamation…endeavor to have the United Nations adopt an international resolution to counter Islamophobia, and call upon all States to enact laws to counter it, including deterrent punishments.” For Juan Williams, those “deterrent punishments” became what CAIR had demanded of NPR in the CAIR press release – “professional consequences” – when NPR fired Williams.
One more item: At that same October 9 CAIR meeting where PBS’ Schwartzberg presented, CAIR announced a new department devoted to opposing “Islamophobia.” They had previously received $325,000 from the Organization of Islamic Conference to oppose “Islamophobia” in America – presumably with those “Ten Year Plan” deterrent punishments. Their attack against Williams was presumably one of the first influence operations of that new “Islamophobia” department.
Let’s review the policy issues here:
Your tax dollars partly fund the big-budget PBS, that sent Schwartzberg to train “CAIR Leadership” at a conference that had a primary goal of imposing shariah blasphemy (defamation) laws in America. PBS has a background of proselytizing for Islam with their “documentary” Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet” and of course, for blocking distribution of Frank Gaffney’s 2006 documentary about the Muslim establishment’s opposition to Muslim reformers, Islam versus Islamists.
Your tax dollars also fund the Department of Justice, where prosecutors named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism finance trial in history, and where another team of prosecutors apparently are conducting a Grand Jury investigation of CAIR. Your tax dollars also pay for the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, where the judge just gave the greenlight to a fraud case brought against CAIR by African-American and Pakistani-American families, in spite of CAIR’s losing efforts to get it dismissed.
So you have an investment here, as a taxpayer and as a citizen. If you’re a member of Congress, you also have a duty to uphold your oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” And since that Constitution has a First Amendment protecting free speech, here’s a question to add to your list for the hearings on the 2012 appropriations budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and NPR:
Is it U.S. policy to fund organizations like CPB and PBS, that then send employees to train Muslim-Brotherhood, Hamas-associated groups like CAIR to improve their “leadership” abilities to impose shariah defamation laws in America? Because that is what happened on October 9, 2010.
And then less than two weeks later, PBS’s sister organization NPR fired Juan Williams after CAIR called for them to “address” Williams’ “irresponsible and inflammatory” comments with “professional consequences.”
Yet another example of a federally-funded agency enforcing the OIC’s shariah defamation laws in the U.S., augmenting the OIC’s $325,000 payments already given to CAIR.
There’s only one thing left to ask: how soon can the 2012 federal funding for CPB, PBS, NPR, and related agencies be eliminated?
Bonus Feature – death to defamers, from Ground Zero Mosque’s Shariah Index Project leader: Juan Williams found out that CAIR and NPR believe in “professional consequences” for defamation of Islam. But shariah law calls for more serious penalties for defamation against Islam. One of the leading shariah experts on penalties for defamation and blasphemy against Islam was also a founding member of Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Rauf’s Shariah Index Project – Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Dr. Kamali might have imposed far more serious consequences on Williams.
Remember that CAIR wrote, in their promo for the October 9 conference, “You’re tired of seeing Islam defamed and want to do something about it,” and that the OIC called for “deterrent punishments” for defamation and Islamophobia. Let’s look at what those “deterrent punishments” are under the very best authoritative shariah law, as detailed in Kamali’s 1994 book “Freedom of Expression in Islam” here at amazon.com. Kamali’s shariah credentials are exemplary: professor of law at the International Islamic University of Malaysia where he has taught Islamic law and jurisprudence since 1985, a member of the royal academy of Jordan, a shariah advisor with the Securities Commission of Malaysia, etc.
Kamali’s “Freedom of Expression” includes many authoritative opinions endorsing the death penalty for blasphemy and defamation. Appendix V “The Salman Rushdie Affair” (pages 294-301) is a nuanced analysis within shariah legal concepts of how to legitimate the execution of Rushdie with greater authority: “No serious Muslim commentator has challenged the basic validity of the Ayatollah’s fatwa…” But it is his broader analysis of “deterrent punishments” that can be imposed on a non-Muslim that is theoretically applicable to Juan Williams – and indeed to all of CAIR’s targets. NPR, PBS, Joel Schwartzberg, and CPB appropriators in Congress have a professional obligation to know what Kamali and his colleagues actually declare as authoritative shariah law about “Freedom of Expression.”
“The Blasphemy of a Non-Muslim” is a short 2 page chapter (pages 235-236) in Kamali’s “Freedom of Expression” which I’m including here in entirety as a pdf (click on image below).
Kamali proposes three cases “where a non-Muslim may be involved in blasphemy against Islam.” The second case is the most relevant in terms of NPR and PBS implementation of their own – and the OIC’s – speech codes against defamation and blasphemy against Juan Williams. Kamali writes:
When a non-Muslim says something which, although part of his belief, is said in an offensive manner. An example of this is the incident which occurred after the call to prayer, when a Jew addressed the muezzin with the words ‘you lied’. The case here is similar to any involving a non-Muslim scorning an article of the muslim faith or any of the injunctions of God that are contained in the Quran. In this case, if the non-Muslim is a dhimmi, he loses his protected status and becomes liable to punishment.
In other words, when Williams said that he was nervous seeing a Muslim in traditional dress in an airplane, he lost his protected status as a liberal commentator, and became liable to punishment – which was swift punishment indeed. But Williams should count himself lucky that Kamali isn’t running NPR; Williams could have had only one option to save his life – to convert to Islam:
The jurists have differed, as stated earlier, on the admissibility or otherwise of repentance, but most regard it as admissible and hold that repentance may, in the case of a non-Muslim, consist of conversion to Islam…
Kamali goes on to discuss some shariah authorities who would treat non-Muslims such as Williams as a prisoner of war with options “to kill the offender or ask for ransom, and over whether or not to expropriate his property.” And as a fair and balanced view, Kamali also mentions more liberal approaches where an offender like Williams would have simply received a “deterrent punishment of ta’zir in the same way as when he commits other evil acts which are forbidden to him.”
A ta’zir crime is one without a mandatory punishment under shariah – one subject to the judge’s discretion, and possibly ranging from an admonition to death.
So it all comes full circle – Kamali, a close colleague of Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Rauf advocates death for defamation of Islam in his book “Freedom of Expression in Islam”; and news analyst Juan Williams, making a statement about Islam in a discussion of Bill O’Reilly’s comments on the Ground Zero Mosque, receives “deterrent punishments” administered by NPR, as demanded by CAIR, as instructed by the OIC.
At least they didn’t kill him or threaten his life.
Begin making the lists of questions for the hearings on this travesty of justice, and on so many others. It won’t be long now.
Big Journalism
