Posted By Seth Mandel On November 4, 2010 @ 9:00 am
The next generation of would-be Muslim leaders hopes to ride a wave of anti-Semitism and promises of eradication of the Jewish nation to power. And though in most cases the American governing class avoids publicly supporting them, there is one exception: Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is about to receive an official visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Anwar’s anti-Semitism is classic and unabashed; he thinks there are “Israeli intelligence personnel in the Police IT unit,” that Jews are controlling Malaysian foreign policy on Iran and “the Palestinian question,” and that his opponents have close ties to the “Zionist regime”–always the Zionist regime–and helped start a think tank for one of the Islamic world’s oldest terrorism organizations, among many other examples.
On the one hand, this is par for the course in the world of Muslim geopolitics. Egypt’s real opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood, purveyors of Islamic terrorism for more than 80 years, spawning Hamas in the 1980s. In Iran, Ahmadinejad’s opposition was led by Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who as prime minister two decades ago jumpstarted Iran’s nuclear program and has been an avid supporter of terrorism against Israel.
In Jordan, the opposition parties formed a coalition called the Executive Committee for Confronting Normalization with Israel to protest any and all, well, normalization with Israel. The only opposition the Russian leadership has to worry about is the Caucasus Emirate, a self-declared Islamist separatist government in the North Caucasus that has been able to direct terrorist attacks in the heart of Moscow, and who speak of defeating the Jews and even send terrorists to Israel’s borders to carry out that threat.
And although the Left has been romancing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups, there has been nothing quite comparable to the public embrace Ibrahim has received.
In 1998, Anwar–who had served as deputy prime minister and finance minister to Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad–began challenging his mentor’s policies and was swiftly ousted from the government and put on trial for his troubles. This seemed to inspire an epiphany, and the new Anwar began advocating economic, judicial, and federal liberalization–exactly what Western ears love to hear.
He was invited to teach for a year at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The deans there and his peers on the faculty must have been reading Ibrahim’s Web site, the home page of which declares him to be “the voice of democracy in Malaysia” alongside a picture of him unselfconsciously raising his fist in the air and smiling. A speaker of truth, he must be; a warrior for freedom and modernization–isn’t that what a “good Muslim” is supposed to say?
Yes, it is, say Paul Wolfowitz and Al Gore, who teamed up to write a Wall Street Journal op-ed in August to defend Anwar from trumped-up charges back home:
“Our views of Anwar Ibrahim have been formed completely independently of each other. We do not always agree with his views on foreign policy, but we do agree that as a political leader, statesman and intellectual, Mr. Anwar possesses qualities that encourage hope for the future. These qualities include lucidity and openness to debate and engagement; commitment to principles of accountability and good governance; and a serious concern for the future of his country and the world—not to mention his extraordinary courage in standing up for what he believes. We are convinced that he is committed to the values of pluralism, tolerance and freedom that are needed for Malaysia to flourish.”
But those who know the real Anwar probably spit out their morning coffee upon reading that paragraph. “Courage.” Commitment to “pluralism” and “tolerance.” He inspires in these men “hope for the future.”
But while Anwar kept up his ties with American statesmen, educators, and media figures, he did the same with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Just a few weeks ago, Anwar tweeted that he had just wrapped up a meeting with the IIIT–an organization that he co-founded in 1981 and of which he was still referred to as a trustee as recently as last year.
The IIIT is also widely understood to be a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, having been formed with the money and assistance from Brotherhood allies as an Islamist think tank. It has been under federal investigation since 2002 for its ties to terrorism; it published a book calling for terrorism against Israel, and it was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-funding trial of the Holy Land Foundation.
A trustee of a Brotherhood front that advocates and funds terrorism, who openly encourages and displays rank anti-Semitism–that’s who is invited to teach our prestigious graduate university programs and who has the governing class swooning.
Anwar Ibrahim is no better than most of the world’s Jew-hating terror supporters. He’s just treated better. Hillary Clinton is legitimizing not some obscure broker of Malaysian politics in an internal power struggle. She is signaling that the Obama administration, represented abroad by the Clinton State Department, has no problem with what Anwar really stands for: obliteration of the Jewish state and unending terrorism against the West.
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/11/04/1-18/
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