In the letter to Governor Brownback, Zuhdi Jasser, President of AIFD, urged the governor to sign the new legislation into law.  AIFD acknowledged that “this legislation is vital to protecting the sanctity of the American legal system.”

Most important, AIFD soundly rejected the tired and predictable “Islamophobia” charges often leveled by CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front organizations against anyone who supports the freedoms of our Constitution over the oppression of sharia.  In the letter, AIFD stated, “Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups such as CAIR and other Islamist surrogates in the U.S. are trying their best to portray any opposition to manifestations of shari‘ah law as ‘racism’ and ‘discrimination against Muslims,’ but at AIFD we denounce this as fear-mongering and a playing of the race card, which only serves to mask the Islamists’ highly politicized agenda.”  Read the letter here: AIFD Letter to Governor Brownback

A few years back, I wrote a book called “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.” It was about being on the “front lines,” so to speak, of the battle against Muslim terrorism. I put “front lines” in quotes because, though the terrorists saw themselves as fighting a doctrinally ordained war of armed combat, we were treating them as mere criminals — such that our idea of a battlefield was the federal courthouse, and our idea of a commander was, well . . . me.

Misapprehending the dimension of the challenge — that it was war, not crime — was only one part of the story. The real willful blindness was government’s failure to examine the nature of the challenge. This, of course, involves the question of why things happen. To duck that question was reckless. A failure to understand the terrorists’ rationale made it impossible to grasp how pervasive the security problem was, how likely it was that additional mass-murder plots were in the offing, what kinds of targets were vulnerable, and what should be done to try to prevent attacks.

Still, things were better 20 years ago. If the book were to be written about today’s counterterrorism approach, I’d have to call it Compulsory Blindness: A Surrender to Violent Extremism.

See, however wayward our approach in the Nineties may have been, it was still possible to tell the truth, to fashion an accurate depiction of the phenomenon. To be sure, in the Clinton years, there was plenty of feel-good “Religion of Peace” drivel coming out of the White House, the State Department, and Main Justice. But back then, willful blindness was the familiar, tacit kind of conscious avoidance: Officials who should have known better passively avoided learning basic, uncomfortable facts. For the most part, though, they did not affirmatively obstruct those who were more industrious.

No one, for example, stopped me from eliciting sworn testimony from FBI agents and other experts that the concept of “jihad” stemmed from classical Islamic doctrine, and that its original meaning involved armed combat against unbelievers in order to fulfill the divine injunction to spread Islam. Regardless of what the politicians were saying in Washington, no one tried to stop us, in our New York courtroom, from proving that the terrorists had been animated by a supremacist ideology that was firmly rooted in Islamic scripture. No one prevented me from pointing out to the jury that the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman), whose various physical maladies rendered him unable to carry out terrorist acts, was nevertheless empowered to command the terrorist organization, solely because of his mastery of Islamic jurisprudence.

I marched into the courtroom every day for nine months and proved that there was an undeniable nexus between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims. The Blind Sheikh, the jury was allowed to learn, was not a fringe lunatic; he was a globally renowned scholar of sharia whose influence over a spate of international jihadist organizations was based on his doctorate from al-Azhar University, the world’s most influential center of Islamic thought. And when I demonstrated the straight-line, undeniable logic of the evidence — that scripture informed the Blind Sheikh’s directives; that those directives informed his terrorist subordinates; and that those subordinates then committed atrocities — the government gave me the Justice Department’s highest award.

Today, I’d be ostracized. No longer is the government content to be willfully blind. Today, it is defiantly, coercively, extortionately blind.

Here is a brief summary of what we accomplished this past month:

• Presented arguments and evidence during a four-hour hearing on a request for a preliminary injunction in a New York federal court in AFDI v. MTA, the case in which the New York transportation authority refused to allow an anti-jihad ad to run on city buses. Read more here.
• Filed an opening brief in U.S. Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit in Dixon v. University of Toledo, the case of a Christian woman fired by the University of Toledo for expressing her personal viewpoint on homosexuality in an op-ed in a local newspaper. Read more here.
• Filed a motion for summary judgment in Northland Family Planning Clinic v. Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, Inc., the case of an abortion clinic suing a pro-life group for using parts of the clinic’s promotional video to expose its pro-abortion deception. Read more here.
• Presented oral argument before a 3-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Murray v. United States Department of Treasury, AFLC’s constitutional challenge to the federal government’s financial bailout of AIG, which promotes sharia-compliant insurance products. Read more here.
• Filed a reply brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Dariano v. Morgan Hill Unified School District, the case in which several California high school students were banned from wearing American flag t-shirts at school on May 5, 2010 because the school’s Mexican students were celebrating Cinco de Mayo. Read more here.
• Served subpoenas on the Islamic Center of Tulsa in Captain Paul Fields v. City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the case in which a Tulsa police captain was disciplined for refusing to attend a mandatory pro-Islam event at a local mosque. Read more here.
• Spoke at the “Islamic Law in America” conference hosted by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in Dearborn, Michigan. Read more here.
• Filed a response to the Department of Justice’s notice of filing a motion to dismiss in Priests for Life v. U.S. Department for Health and Human Services case, the case in which Priests for Life is challenging the mandate that requires religious organizations to provide insurance plans that include coverage for contraception, sterilization, abortifacients, and related education and counseling or incur substantial penalty fines. Read the response letter here and read more about the case here.
• Conducted numerous interviews with local and national media regarding our important work
• Conducted ongoing discovery and other litigation matters
• Released four “Faith and Freedom Report” video alerts and posted ten blog entries on various issues

Thomas Paine once said that those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it. We can assure you that the American Freedom Law Center is working tirelessly to defend our precious freedoms, and we again thank you for your support. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.

The topic of Muise’s speech was “Civilization Jihad: A Threat to Life & Liberty.” He discussed AFLC’s ongoing litigation efforts to fight the pernicious effects of sharia law on our constitutional freedoms in the United States. He also pointed out Yerushalmi’s recent study which found that over 80% of U.S. mosques provide their worshippers with jihad-style literature advocating the use of violence against non-believers. Indeed, the term “civilization jihad” was not coined by anti-Islam activists; rather, it was coined by the Muslim Brotherhood and described by this radical organization as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”

An observer commented via Pamela Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugs:

I was fortunate to be able to watch the Conference streaming on ABN and it was everything Ms. Geller describes here and more. Every speaker had a unique perspective to bring to the fight for human freedom and dignity. I was particularly gratified to hear Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center for the first time and I found it very heartening to learn of their successes and also of their optimism about pending and future litigation. The U.S. Constitution is far from dead and it is our mightiest bulwark. He also answered a question I asked on another thread here, where I wondered had the Dearborn “Leaving Islam?” bus ads ever run. The last legal news on Atlas was, I think:

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/09/afdi-v-smart-again-fighting-against-sharia-in-american-courts-taling-dearborn-bsck-to-court.html

Muise made it clear that First Amendment or not, the legal powers that be are taking their damned time on this one, probably (and this is my guess) because they know they are going to lose, and they DON’T LIKE FREE SPEECH.

We know several causes worthy of support because they protect our precious liberty, but this is another one with a proven record of real-world success, not to forget:

http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/

On Glenn Beck’s April 26 radio show, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, said of the Muslim Brotherhood, “I think this is the number one issue facing our country right now. People have no idea how far, how deep, how wide the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the upper echelons here in the United States.”  Additionally, she recently told CBN, “President Obama is more responsible for the rise of Sharia in the Middle East…He’s excited the Islamists to embrace Sharia not only in the Middle East, but here in the United States”

Also today, Bill Gertz, in his weekly Washington Times column Inside the Ring reinforced the concerns about Muslim Brotherhood influence on the Obama administration, stating, “The video includes a detailed section on “Team Obama” that identifies six people working close to or inside the Obama administration that the course says are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood or similar Islamist groups through numerous front organizations.” Gertz added, “Publication of the online course comes as Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly ordered a review of U.S. military training material with the goal of purging allegedly anti-Islamic content, the online portal Danger Room reported Tuesday… A military source critical of Gen. Dempsey’s move said the chairman’s action is a politically correct effort to “make our professional military education fit a narrative, not objective inquiry.”

The press conference generated national media interest, with interviews with Frank Gaffney on Fox and Friends and Hugh Hewitt.

If you missed the press conference, please view the video highlights:

• Course Trailer
• Course Overview
• Introduction to Muslim Brotherhood Course
• Frank Gaffney: “Civilization Jihad” is more dangerous than violent jihad
• Lt. Gen. Ed Soyster: “Our leaders live in a world that no longer exists”
• Frank Gaffney: “Muslim Brotherhood sedition should be prosecuted in U.S.”
• Question and Answer

If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the complete Course at http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/

In short, the DOJ is making the absurd argument that Priests for Life cannot show any harm so they lack standing to challenge the HHS Mandate; and even then, the harm will not occur until the future (2014), so the case is not ripe for the court to review.

What is obvious here is that the Obama administration is desperately trying to avoid the merits of this lawsuit and a ruling that this mandate violates the fundamental religious liberties of all Americans, and more specifically, Priests for Life in this case.  Rest assured, we will not allow Obama and his administration to get away with this attack on our fundamental rights.

Suffice to say, our legal team is all over this.  We have seven days to respond to the DOJ’s letter.

On April 14, Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., of Peoria, Illinois, delivered a courageous homily at Mass during “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith.” Bishop Jenky said, “This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings—could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.”

Forty-nine members of the Notre Dame faculty denounced Bishop Jenky in a Letter to the University President, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Richard C. Notebaert. The Letter called on them to “definitively distance Notre Dame from Bishop Jenky’s incendiary statement.” The signers, said the Letter, “feel” that Bishop Jenky should resign from the University’s Board of Fellows.

The faculty Letter claims that Bishop Jenky “described President Obama as ‘seem[ing] intent on following a similar path’ to Hitler and Stalin.” They accuse Bishop Jenky of “ ignorance of history, insensitivity to victims of genocide, and absence of judgment.” The astonishingly simplistic and defamatory character of those accusations can be appreciated only by looking at what Bishop Jenky actually said:

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room. In the late 19^th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany. Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20^th Century. Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama—with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

The immediate antecedent of that last quoted sentence refers to the fact, which not even a liberal academic could deny, that Hitler and Stalin, like Bismarck and Clemenceau, “would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.” It was not “incendiary” but simple truth for Bp. Jenky to say that the trajectory of the Obama regime is along a “similar path” in regard to “education, social services, and health care.” His faculty detractors misread Bishop Jenky’s homily, assuming that they actually read it before they distorted and denounced it. The strident tone of their Letter, moreover, draws into question their own judgment and balance.

Bishop Jenky properly drew attention to the impending dangers to religious and personal freedom. The Obama regime, the leader of which was elected with 54 percent of the Catholic vote, is substituting for the free economy and limited government a centralized command system of potentially unlimited jurisdiction and power. Its takeover of health care was enacted against the manifest will of the people, in disregard of legislative process and by a level of bribery, coercion and deception that was as open as it was unprecedented. The HHS Health Care Mandate imperils not only the mission of the Catholic Church but also the right of conscience itself.

The faculty Letter outrageously claimed that Bishop Jenky’s limited and appropriate reference to Hitler and Stalin showed his ‘insensitivity to victims of genocide.” The Hitler record, however, is relevant in another respect. It provides an example, comparable to the Obama record, of the rapid concentration of executive power by a legally installed regime. Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30. Over the next few weeks he consolidated his power. The decisive event was the Reichstag’s approval of the Enabling Act on March 23, 1933, by which it ceded full and practically irrevocable powers to Hitler. That was the point of no return. The Enabling Act received the needed two-thirds vote only because it was supported by the Catholic party, the Centre Party. (Eliot Barculo Wheaton, The Nazi Revolution: 1933-35 (1969), 286-93; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959), 88, 276-79). The gullible Catholics voted themselves and the German people into persecution. America’s Catholics may be about to follow their example. With good reason, Bishop Jenky prayed: “May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.”

Bishop Jenky deserves appreciation for so urgently reminding Catholics of their civic duty. He spoke the Truth as a Bishop ought to speak. And his judgment and courage reflect the finest tradition of a Notre Dame that has gone missing. Pray for Bishop Jenky, for Notre Dame, for our Church and for our country.

The case, Murray v. United States Department of Treasury, et al., was brought by Yerushalmi and Muise, who are representing Kevin Murray, a taxpayer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because at the time of the government bailout, which began in September 2008 and is ongoing, AIG was ― and still is ― the world leader in promoting sharia-compliant insurance products.

The three-judge panel that heard the case included Senior Judge Alan E. Norris, a Reagan appointee; Judge Eric L. Clay, a Clinton appointee; and Judge Richard Allen Griffin, a George W. Bush appointee. Should the court issue a negative ruling, AFLC is prepared to take it up on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A prominent American lawyer who co-founded the American Freedom Law Center and has acted as chief counsel for the American Freedom Defense Initiative, amongst other groups.  He has arguably done more than anyone to spread the anti-Muslim agenda at a local level in the United States. In 2011 the New York Times named Yerushalmi as “The man behind the anti-Shariah movement,” which has been enacted into law in three US states and has been introduced in over twenty other state legislatures.

Also featured in the report are AFLC Advisory Board Member Andy McCarthy (who comments upon the distinction in National Review) and AFLC clients Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

While AFLC is not honored per se by this recognition, we do recall the old military adage: “If you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target.”

School officials claimed that the students’ pro-America message was objectionable, because “this is their [i.e., Mexicans’] day,” referring to Cinco De Mayo, “an important day in [Mexican] culture.”

AFLC Senior Counsel Robert Muise, along with co-counsel, filed a civil rights lawsuit in June 2010 on behalf of three of the students.  But in November 2011, a federal judge presiding in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California held that the school officials did not violate the Constitution by restricting the students’ patriotic speech. As a result, AFLC appealed this decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  And as AFLC notes in the reply brief:

Students do possess constitutional rights on a public school campus—a conclusion that can only be changed by the Supreme Court— and the government—in the form of school officials here—must abide by the proscriptions set forth in the First Amendment—proscriptions that are not mere platitudes to be cast aside to avoid discomfort that might accompany competing and contentious political viewpoints.

Unfortunately, in California schools, the American flag – a symbol of respect for the Nation – is considered secondary to the nationalistic pride of Mexicans and other forms of multiculturalism. In sum, our public schools are turning into “enclaves of totalitariansim,” which is why AFLC is on the front lines fighting for our American freedoms.