Straight Platform Politics

What a Choice: Capitalism or Islam – Part 2

Even though the U.S. government can legally prevent foreign Muslims from entering the country to attend the Hizb ut-Tahrir conference, that’s not enough. The conference presents a homeland security risk. See Part 1

Bob Blitzer, who headed the FBI’s first unit on Islamic terrorism, said that the danger of having such a conference is in the results of exposure to HT’s extremism. Attendees may become fired up, go home, and then commit violent acts anywhere in the U.S.

A former member of HT, Maajid Nawaz, has stated that the HT ideology certainly leads to violence. Its members have been arrested for inciting national, racial, religious, and ethnic strife in countries around the world.

The group is regarded as such a threat to governance that it has been banned in most of the Arab countries in the Middle East; it also has been banned in many non-Arab Muslim countries. Both Germany and Russia banned the Hizb ut-Tahrir in 2003.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has decided to come out of hiding in the U.S. Hopefully Oak Lawn, a community southwest of Chicago, has beefed up its police force. Hopefully Homeland Security is on alert.

Islam is not a choice for America.

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What a Choice: Capitalism or Islam – Part 1

Some people view Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation) as an international extremist movement; others view it as a global Islamic political party. Either way it is not well received by many countries, especially those in the Middle East.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) seeks to establish a global Islamic state – a Caliphate. It operated secretly in the U.S. but this has recently changed. It will be holding a public conference in a suburb of Chicago on July 19 titled “The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam.”

Capitalism or Islam: that’s quite a choice. And it is telling that HT views Islam not only as a religion but also as an economic system. So it’s not surprising that HT rejects both religious freedom and economic freedom.

Hizb ut-Tahrir promotes orthodox Islam and Marxist-Leninist economics and opposes democracy as a form of government. It promotes anti-Semitism and opposes the state of Israel It demands military training for males 15 years and older in order to be ready for jihad – the holy war.

The U.S. government has not listed it as a terrorist organization because there are no clear ties between HT and any recent acts of terrorism or violence. There is also no proof that it financially supports terrorist groups. The U.S. government does monitor HT and can legally prevent foreign Muslims from entering the country to attend the conference.

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Waterboarding In The News – Part 1

Fact or Fiction

Much is being said about the CIA’s use of the interrogation technique called waterboarding. Some people think this technique is a form of torture and should not have been used on the terrorists held by the United States. But, in all the debate, what is fact and what is fiction?

Contrary to what has been implied in the news media and in the web/blog arena, waterboarding was not routinely used and was not used on most of the detainees. It was used on three prisoners between 2002 and 2003.

It has been widely reported that two detainees were waterboarded 266 times—Abu Zabaydah, 83 times in August 2002, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 183 times in March 2003. Fact or fiction?

The International Committee of the Red Cross sent a confidential report to the Acting General Counsel to the CIA dated Feb. 14, 2007. It is stated in that report that the ICRC met with each detainee in private in October and in December 2006 at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) (located on the southeast corner of Cuba). .

Abu Zabaydah told the ICRC that he experienced the waterboarding technique during five interrogation sessions, one or two times per session and in one session it was used three times. That amounts to 8-10 times. These sessions supposedly took place in Afghanistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (per ICRC: Khaled Shaik Mohammed) told the ICRC that he  experienced waterboarding twice during five different sessions. That is 10 times. The location of these sessions was not identified by country.

These two detainees revealed this personal information to the ICRC during private meetings in 2006, three to four years after the incidences took place. Based upon the 2007 confidential report of the ICRC, the currently and often quoted numbers of waterboarding incidences, 83 and 183, are fiction.

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