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Economy

A Caliphate of Toxic Assets

2009-06-29

Of particular interest to those of you who dabble -- or work -- in financial investing. For the rest of us, it's good to understand one of the major weapons employed by those who choose to be our enemies. Click on the title to go read the whole thing. When a pro-terrorist organization announces its intention to launch a financial jihad against the West, it is well worth learning their methods. More significant than the promotion of a religious pseudo-financial scheme is the possibility their largely unregulated practices could release a new wave of toxic assets into the wider economy and trigger a series of small-scale Enrons. The Muslim organization Hizb Ut Tahrir capitalizes on Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna's 20th century derivative, encouraging followers to build a parallel financial structure. Al-Banna envisioned the resultant Shari'a-compliant finance as a “back door” into Western financial markets and institutions through which to supplant liberty and prosperity with Islam. Muslim clerics including MB spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi promote Shari'a finance as generally safer than Western investments, a diversification method to steady personal assets -- and a stable economic system that should replace capitalism. Call it “financial replacement theology,” if you wish. In July, Hizb Ut Tahrir plans to launch its U.S. arm with a huge Chicago “Khalifah conference” heralding the coming Caliphate and global Islamic supremacism. After 9/11, Germany and Sweden outlawed Hizb Ut Tahrir. In July 2005, Pakistan's then-president Pervez Musharaf warned Britain not to tolerate its continued U.K. presence. But in the U.S., Hizb Ut Tahrir has proudly announced intentions to replace capitalism with Islam. Major banks from Citigroup, HSBC, Chase, Bank of America and Lloyds TSB -- probably unaware of the etymology of Islamic finance -- established subsidiaries offering Shari'a-compliant products. Mutual funds at Principal Financial Group, UBS, Amana Funds and SEI Investments, among others, followed suit. Especially late last year as the devastating toll of sub-prime mortgage lending mounted, clients were assured that Islamic banking -- in many respects a dangerous financial fad -- was much safer than other banks and investment houses. Yet bad economic news has not escaped the supposedly secure Islamic investing sector. Islamic securities can also (like all other asset classes) go into default, moreover. Holders of East Cameron Partners LP's “safe,” asset-backed Islamic bonds (sukuk) now line up before a Louisiana bankruptcy judge with all the other hapless creditors of the Texas-based Easter Cameron Oil and Gas Co. that filed for Chapter 11 reorganization last October.

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Europe

Radical PvdA Councillor Refusing to Resign

2008-01-27

Follow up to that story. ROTTERDAM - Labour (PvdA) politician Bouchra Ismaili is refusing to resign. She is ignoring requests from her party to step down because she lied about signing a petition of the radical Muslim organisation Hizb Ut Tahrir. Ismaili, a Muslim immigrant of Moroccan origin, is a PvdA member of Rotterdam's Charlois district council. Last week, she wrote in an e-mail to a citizen: "You filthy idiot. WE ARE HERE TO STAY hahahahahahhahah DROP DEAD". The email contained reams more similar remarks and urged the man to convert to Islam. Ismaili's email was a reply to an email in which the citizen, Jos Parbleu, had confronted the council member with statements by Okay Pala, a spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir Nederland. Pala had said in newspaper De Telegraaf: 'We do not agree with freedom of expression, as we reject democracy' and 'what you need is a big bomb attack!' The PvdA leadership in Charlois did not consider it necessary to boot Ismaili out. But meanwhile, during a meeting of Charlois district council, it has become clear that Ismaili also signed a petition from Hizb Ut Tahrir and lied about it. The Hizb ut Tahrir petition stated: "It is time to rid ourselves of a culture that damages our Islam." Initially, Ismaili denied emphatically that she signed the petition. But when opposition party Liveable Rotterdam (LR) produced a printout of the Internet page with her signature, she had to admit it. Ismaili said after being unmasked by Liveable Rotterdam that she felt ashamed because she had "embarrassed the Muslim community in the Netherlands." Both Ismaili and her PvdA colleagues rushed out of the building after the meeting and declined to comment further. Yesterday, the PvdA decided after all that Ismaili should resign because she lied. But a spokesperson for Ismaili stated she was not prepared to leave the Charlois council. The PvdA cannot force her to resign. Hizb Ut Tahrir is banned in Germany due to its extremist and anti-Semitic character, but not in the Netherlands. The national PvdA did not want to comment.

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Down Under

Former Jihadi warns Australia & Britain on jihadist doctors

2007-07-06

A former Islamist radical has warned that a key extremist group operating in Australia and the UK numbers many doctors and engineers among its leadership. Ed Husain was raised in a traditional Muslim home in London in the 1980s and by the age of 16 he was active in three fundamentalist organisations, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group which advocates jihad in the name of Islam. Yup, that's what they do allright. Hizb ut-Tahrir is currently legal in Australia and in Britain, where new Prime Minister Gordon Brown says he is looking at adding it to the country's list of proscribed organisations. Wouldn't think it would take Gordo that long to make a decision. Perhaps he has to consult with Gorgeous George. "My only criticism of the reports coming out of Australia is that you've correctly identified sections within Wahhabism to be a problem," Mr Husain, who has now renounced radicalism, told ABC TV's Lateline program. "But we must also remember that Australia is also now home to one of the most extreme Islamist organisations, not Islamic, Islamist organisations known as Hizb ut-Tahrir. "That organisation functions in Australia and its leadership takes its call and its literature and the London based Hizb ut-Tahrir. "So that's a threat in the making that I think your policy-makers and people in the media need to identify and educate the wider Australian population about. "On a final thought, even here [in the UK] the leadership of Hizb Ut Tahrir, as well as the leadership of Wahhabist organisations, are filled with engineers and doctors." Police are questioning eight people with links to the medical profession, including Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef, in connection with the botched car bomb attacks in London and Glasgow. Mr Husain said Islamist radical organisations around the world had many highly-educated recruits. "The vast majority of Islamist organisations right across the world from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Jamaat Islami in the Indian subcontinent have their rank and file filled with people who are highly educated in medicine and engineering facilities from some of the finest universities in the world," Mr Husain continued. "Their identities are very complex. Being a doctor is a means to an end. "Many of these people were asked to become doctors simply because that's what their parents wanted them to be. Many of these young Asian people born and raised for the first time here in Britain and their parents have a strong influence. Among Arabs and Asians there's a preference for doctors, lawyers and engineers. Their being doctors is default, it's not a career choice for them that they've deliberately made out. "It just so happens that while they're at university, while they are isolated from mainstream communities and while they have this identity crisis, they're recruited into extremist organisations at a very young age."

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