“Near East” dominates U.S. foreign aid budget

The Congressional Research Service published a report on Jan. 6 with a title dreadful enough to guarantee that nobody will read its contents.  Buried within “State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs: FY2012 Budget and Appropriations” was this chart on U.S. foreign aid distribution by region:

Note that the smallest amounts of foreign aid go to Christian Europe, Buddhist East Asia, and Catholic Latin America.  The largest amounts go to Africa and South and Central Asia (88 percent of which is for Afghanistan and Pakistan only), and the region that will get the most in FY2012 is the “Near East,” which is mostly Islamic.

Israel will get a share of the Near East aid, but Muslim countries will get major chunks of outlays for Africa and Asia.

The FY2012 budget would provide aid of a billion dollars or more to five countries.  One is Israel; the other four are Islamic.

We’re not just funding “both sides of a conflict.”  We’re giving money to those who are hostile to America in a time we can least afford it.

 

2011: Folly of funding the Arab Spring

The year 2011 will be remembered for the Arab Spring, and it will only look worse as the fog clears.  We saw the power vacuum created by the ouster of Arab leaders.  Now we see the filling of the vacuum by Islamist elements bent on imposing sharia law, subjugating their non-Muslim minority populations, and putting peace agreements with Israel into a paper shredder.  What’s worse—we bankrolled it.

Whether it was Pres. Obama’s insistence on a massive G8 stimulus package for the Islamic world or Hillary Clinton’s halal food distribution to the Libyan rebels, 2011 is one for the record books in terms of funding the very same menacing global force that we’ve been fighting since 9/11.

Here are 2011′s low points of squandered, taxpayer-originated Western aid money to a region falling under the shadow of the Muslim Brotherhood:

• $135 million in U.S. financial aid to Libyan rebels and their newly forming Islamist government
• €70 million ($90 million USD) from the European Commission humanitarian aid department (ECHO), €20 million from Sweden, over $15 million from the U.K. in aircraft and ships, and other EU member aid for a sum of $195 million in total European aid to Libya
• Most notably, $20 billion in aid and loans for Egypt and Tunisia from the taxpayers of the G8 economies
• France provided at least “40 tonnes of weapons” to Libyan rebels
• For Tunisia, U.S. aid to the tune of $2 million in “Transitional Initiative” funds; and an additional $5 million to support “civil society” groups to peddle their influence with the new Islamist government
• Federal grants to facilitate remittance programs to Tunisia and Libya
• Pentagon officials announced in November that U.S. arms deals with Egypt will continue even though Egypt will most likely not honor its peace treaty with Israel

Supporters of the funding will say that this is helping to promote “reform” in the Arab world.

But recall that the Taliban itself was originally seen in the 1990s by several observers as a “reform movement” that would purge Afghanistan of its violent history of rival warlords that competed along ethnic, tribal, and regional lines.  There are many to this day (including State Department employees in private) who say we shouldn’t be worried about the Taliban because they’re more concerned with controlling Afghanistan than they are in exporting terrorism.

But the simple fact of 9/11, which the Taliban enabled by playing handmaiden to Al Qaeda, disproved the delusional concept that Islamist government presents no risk to the West.

We paid for the new Islamist regimes, and it’s time we demand a refund.

The case for conditional aid

All week we’ve been covering the debate between House Republicans and the Obama administration about the right level of foreign aid to the Middle East.  A long, but well-written piece from Voice of America on Aug. 8 sums up the main arguments on each side.  The quotes from the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano are common sense and spot-on:

US Debt Struggle Puts Middle East Aid Commitments in Question

Against backdrop of Arab Spring, lawmakers, experts ponder how to best invest in countries’ political futures

When lawmakers in the U.S. Congress began discussing how much foreign aid to give Middle East countries in 2012, their own debt crisis loomed large. Republicans in the House of Representatives proposed big cuts in overall American commitments. Yet the Arab Spring lifted the democratic hopes of millions in the Middle East and has presented Congress with bigger questions about how to invest in the political futures of Egypt, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, for example.

When Congress returns from a month’s recess in early September, lawmakers will look again for reductions in international aid. They do so at a crucial time when many countries may need assistance in their transition from revolution to democracy.  Budget reductions will still be discussed, but global social and political objectives remain the driving force. Analysts say it will be hard for lawmakers in Washington to decide which countries in the Middle East are going to be good democratic bets.

Curbed ambitions

President Barack Obama set the stage for strong Middle East commitments before an audience of Foreign Service officers on May 19, just two weeks after the killing of Osama bin Laden. “The effort begins in Egypt and Tunisia, where the stakes are high, as Tunisia was at the vanguard on this democratic wave, and Egypt is both a longstanding partner and the Arab world’s largest nation,” the President said.

Obama later proposed $50.9 billion

House GOP against aid to Hamas

…Putting them squarely at odds against the Democratic administration…

Not to mention that America is going broke.  What a novel proposal that the U.S. must certify that foreign aid doesn’t go to terrorist organizations before it is distributed!  From the Washington Post on Jul. 21:

House moves to restrict U.S. foreign aid

By Mary Beth Sheridan

House Republicans sought to put their stamp on U.S. foreign policy Wednesday by advancing a bill that would slash federal payments to the United Nations and other international bodies and slap restrictions on aid to Pakistan, Egypt and others.

With the bill, the House Foreign Affairs Committee sought to rein in some of President Obama’s policies and to slice $6.4 billion from his $51 billion request for 2012 for the State Department and foreign operations.

The measure’s passage was a foregone conclusion because of the panel’s Republican majority. Even if it passes the full House, though, the bill is expected to be dead on arrival in the Senate, where the Democratic majority is preparing a State Department authorization bill of its own.

Still, the bill could signal to lawmakers how to shape the appropriations bill, a separate piece of legislation that determines where the money actually goes.

The committee’s measure mandates that security assistance be provided to Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority only if the Obama adminstration certified that no members of terrorist organizations or their sympathizers were serving in their governments. That was aimed at Islamist groups such as the Palestinian organization Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — which have political power but are on the U.S. terrorism list — and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is expected to do well in Egypt’s upcoming elections. It is not considered a terrorist group.

Weenie sheikh endorses plunder, sex slavery

Sheikh Abu Ishaq al-Hoeweyni

A cross-eyed sheikh says plundering infidel countries will restore Islamic economies plus provide perks like fresh sex slaves.  This tidbit comes from Gates of Vienna as the sheikh recently sought to “clarify” similar statements he made years ago.  The Koran indeed contains a sura entirely on how to divvy up the spoils of war once an infidel group is conquered.  The profiteer Muhammad supposedly would not personally accept zakat, but he always took a cut from the war booty.

Three weeks ago (June 11th), there was an item in the news (and video) about an Egyptian Sheikh Hoeweyni, who made the following statements:

We are in the era of jihad. The era of Jihad has come to us and jihad in the path of Allah is a pleasure. It’s a real pleasure. The companions (of the Prophet) used to compete to (perform jihad).

That we are in poverty — is it not due to our abandonment or jihad? But if we could conduct one, two, or three jihadist operations every year, many people would become Muslims Throughout the earth. And whoever rejected this da’wa, or stood in our way, we would fight against him and take him prisoner, and confiscate his wealth, his children, and his women — all of this means money. Every mujahid who returned from jihad, his pockets would be full. He would return with three or four slaves, three or four women, and three or four children. Each head, multiply by 300 dirhams, or 300 dinars, and you have a good amount of profit. If he were to go to the West and work on a commercial deal, he would not make that much money.

Whenever things became difficult (financially), he could take the head (i.e. the prisoner) and sell it, and ease his (financial) crisis.

Huwaini actually made these scandalous assertions some eighteen years ago. But because they were only recently exposed, and he was invited to “clarify” his position on Hikma TV last week. Amazingly, though he began by saying his words were “taken out of context”, he nonetheless reasserted, in even more blunt language, that Islam justifies plundering, enslaving, and raping the infidel. (Al Youm 7 has the entire interview, excerpts of which I translate below.)

According to Huwaini, after Muslims invade and conquer a non-Muslim nation — in the course of waging an offensive jihad — the properties and persons of those infidels who refuse to convert or pay jizya and live as subjugated dhimmis are to be seized as ghanima or “spoils of war.”

Huwaini cited the Koran as his authority — boasting that it has an entire chapter named “spoils” — and the sunna of Muhammad, specifically as recorded in the famous Sahih Muslim hadith wherein the prophet ordered the Muslim armies to offer non-Muslims three choices: conversion, subjugation, or death/enslavement.

Huwaini said that infidel captives, the “spoils of war,” are to be distributed among the Muslim combatants (i.e., jihadists) and taken to “the slave market, where slave-girls and concubines are sold.” He referred to these latter by their dehumanizing name in the Koran, ma malakat aymanukum — “what your right hands possess” — in this context, sex-slaves:

You go to the market and buy her, and she becomes like your legal mate — though without a contract, a guardian, or any of that stuff — and this is agreed upon by the ulema.

“In other words,” Huwaini concluded, “when I want a sex-slave, I go to the market and pick whichever female I desire and buy her.”

“Liberal” Egyptian prez candidate pledges jizya

“Christians in Egypt,” he explains, “live better than Muslims in the U.S.”  The jizya is a sign of justice to spare Christian necks.

Wealth through violence

From the outset of Islamic history, the religion has enriched itself through violence.  This Egyptian Muslim promises us that the tradition will continue:  from Translating Jihad via Jihad Watch on May 31:

Egyptian sheikh says poverty in Islamic world can be solved by jihad and plundering the Infidels

Where did Sheikh Abi-Ishaq al-Huwayni get these ideas? Why, from Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, of course. Umar, the second caliph, said: “I advise you to fulfill Allah’s Convention (made with the Dhimmis) as it is the convention of your Prophet and the source of the livelihood of your dependents (i.e. the taxes from the Dhimmis.)” That is, subjugating the dhimmis and bleeding them dry is to be the source of the Muslims’ livelihood.

“Egyptian Shaykh: Jihad Is Solution to Muslims’ Financial Problems,” from Translating Jihad, May 31:

In this short audio file, prominent Egyptian Salafi Shaykh Abi-Ishaq al-Huwayni explains that Muslims’ financial difficulties are due to the fact that they have abandoned jihad. [...]Transcript:

We are in the era of jihad. The era of jihad has come over us, and jihad in the path of Allah is a pleasure. It is a real pleasure. The companions (of the Prophet) used to compete to (perform jihad). The poverty that we’re in—is it not due to our abandonment of jihad? But if we could conduct one, two, or three jihadist operations every year, many people throughout the earth would become Muslims. And whoever rejected this da’wa, or stood in our way, we would fight against him and take him prisoner, and confiscate his wealth, his children, and his women—all of this means money. [...]

Read it all.

Post-Mubarak Egypt embraces sharia finance

Gee, who’d have seen this one coming?  “The Muslim Brotherhood is for Islamic finance because it is related to religion.”  Egypt will promote sharia finance and, undoubtedly, jizya and zakat for jihad.  Sounds like Pakistan at the time of the Taliban’s creation.  From Reuters via the Gulf Times:

Egypt could become thriving centre of Islamic finance 
Reuters/Dubai/Cairo
 
Covered head-to-toe in a black abaya embroidered with red and yellow flowers, Amal Abbas waits for her turn to place a deposit at Cairo’s Al Baraka Egypt Bank, one of Egypt’s two fully-fledged Islamic banks.

Although Egypt is considered the birthplace of Islamic finance, which adheres to Islamic principles banning interest and speculative trading, its growth has lagged due to past corruption scandals, while the previous government sought to enforce a more secular financial system.

But after the Egyptian revolution toppled Hosni Mubarak and his government, Muslims like Abbas are embracing Islamic banking, raising the prospect that Egypt could become another thriving centre of Islamic finance.

“I prefer Islamic finance, it keeps me far from usury and I feel my money is blessed,” said the 50 year-old research centre manager at the Mohandessin branch of Al Baraka Egypt Bank.

“My husband has been dealing with mainstream banks for more than 30 years and all his projects failed because they were funded by unblessed money.”

According to a 2009 report by consulting firm McKinsey, Islamic banking only accounts for 3% to 4% of Egypt’s $193bn banking industry. That compares with 46% in the UAE.

“In a post-Mubarak era, the urgency of rebuilding and changing things will clash with the absence of resources and lack of money,” said Ibrahim Warde, adjunct professor at The Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University.

That will likely present an opportunity for Islamic finance houses in the Gulf region, which now serves as the industry’s global hub.

“Egypt is going to look towards the Gulf for money and it’s going to have to offer Islamic options to maximise investments.”

Cairo-based National Bank for Development, which is converting into a full-fledged Islamic bank, is already 49%-owned by Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank. Al Baraka Egypt is in fact a unit of Bahrain’s Al Baraka Bank.

There’s also keen interest in Egypt for Islamic insurance, or takaful, which makes up 5% of Egypt’s $1.45bn insurance market but is expected to grow dramatically, according to a March report by Islamic consultancy BMB Islamic.

Salama Islamic Arab Insurance’s chief executive Saleh Malaikah said last month that demand for its products in Egypt have grown significantly since the revolution.

According to data from Bankscope and Thomson Reuters, Egypt could see Islamic finance assets grow to $10bn in 2013 from $6bn in 2007.

Challenges remain, given the less than encouraging history of Egypt’s Islamic finance industry.

Millions of Egyptians were stung by ponzi schemes in the mid-1980s, when a number of money management companies touted Islamic investments at returns above local interest rates.

A new post-Mubarak administration is expected to show more interest in Islamic finance, despite concerns that a growing Islamic finance industry could also provide political support for Islamic opposition groups in the country of 80mn.

Egypt will need to adopt Islamic banking as one tool to appease politically active Islamic groups or face a barrage of criticism for adhering to the previous regime’s hard line against the industry, said Humayon Dar, chief executive of consultancy BMBIslamic.

“Egypt is a religiously sensitive country. There are a number of families and small savers who wouldn’t want to use the conventional system,” he said. “If there’s a movement towards interest-free banking, that would draw deposits.”

Grassroots support is already emerging among conservative Muslims. Manal al-Moursi, another bank customer at Al Baraka Egypt Bank, said Egyptians are turning to Islamic finance, in part, to show their support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, was long persecuted as the main challenger to the ruling National Democratic Party in parliament and was one of the most vocal protesters during the demonstrations that toppled Mubarak on February 11.

With the dissolution of the NDP and growing acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood in mainstream politics, experts say Islamists will have increasing influence in the new Egypt and Islamic finance will serve as one way to propagate Islamic values and gain supporters.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is for Islamic finance because it is related to religion,” said Mohasseb Refaat, deputy manager at Bank of Alexandria. “They will promote the idea so long as it is in their benefit.”

Refaat said the industry is likely to gain more footing in Egypt if the Brotherhood secures a significant number of seats in the 508-member parliament in September. One leading Brotherhood figure said the group could field candidates for as many as 49% of the seats.

Even secularists calling for less religion in society may make a pre-emptive attempt to promote Islamic finance ahead of elections to reach a wider group of constituents.

“Secularists will see supporting Islamic finance as a way of stealing the thunder of the Islamists by giving people an outlet to express their religiosity,” Warde said. “We’ve seen that strategy in other markets such as Iraq and North America. Even groups that were opposed to political Islam looked to Islamic finance as a way of preventing extremism.”

Britain and France, for example, have changed regulations to accommodate Islamic transactions. And Malaysia, with its thriving dual system of conventional and Islamic finance, has been the biggest success story in the industry, serving as a model for new markets looking to offer Islamic products.

Decades of lost growth, however, have left Egypt lacking proper financial regulation to accommodate Islamic financial instruments such as Islamic bonds, or sukuk.

The head of the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority (EFSA) said last year Egypt would issue its first regulations governing sukuk in the second half of 2010 and later delayed further to the first quarter of 2011. That deadline has passed as well as the government restructures and plans now appear in limbo.

Experts say the government will need to issue debt guidelines for sukuk issuance and remove tax barriers that make Islamic transactions commercially unviable in order to draw foreign investment from oil-rich Gulf countries.

And the revolution may spell a willingness among Egyptians to embrace alternatives, particularly if they can derive benefit from it for some of the social ills that sparked the protests.

Under the Mubarak regime, critics said the rich benefited from lending and other business opportunities while the poor were plagued by unemployment and low wages. Malik said Islamic finance with its focus on interest-free financing and ethical investments would appeal to the common man.

Muslim Brotherhood: fight inflation with Islam

Talaat al-Shennawy, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Dakahlia Governate, has announced that rising prices can be combated by following the laws of Allah.

Perhaps nobody has informed the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that perhaps most dutifully orthodox Islamic country–Iran–has the most Islamized sharia economy in the Middle East, and is currently suffering from rampant inflation.  It has become so bad that Iran will simply decapitate three zeroes from their currency in order to “reduce” inflation (see here and here).

Or the Muslim Brotherhood is perfectly aware of Iran’s experience, but attributes their economic failures to their heretical Shia existence.

It’s not unusual for Islamists to blame inflation on Western, infidel financial systems.  They believe that fiat paper currencies do not retain their value like the precious gold dinars used by the profiteer Muhammad.  If you don’t want to use our currency, Talaat, please, by all means, don’t, even though I’m willing to wager you have some Ben Franklins stuffed in your sock drawer.  And tell your agents operating in the U.K., U.S., and Canada to renounce any of the welfare benefits they are receiving from their host governments if denominated in their pesky, heathen currencies.

From Al-Masry Al-Youm (h/t Jihad Watch) on Apr. 27:

A Muslim Brotherhood member presented Islam as an economic solution during a conference in Daqahlia Governorate Tuesday. 

Talaat al-Shennawy, head of the Brotherhood’s Daqahlia office, said Egypt could curb price increases by following God’s rules.

Shennawy said the greatness of Islam lies in it being a comprehensive religion that embraces all fields of life. He said people should apply all Islamic orders rather than just the ones they like.

In apparent conflicting messages, the Brotherhood said during another conference in Minya that it does not want religion to govern the state.

“The Brotherhood will opt for a civilian state and is seeking a strong parliament, as well as municipal councils free of bribery and nepotism, that can address citizens’ needs,” said Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie.

Brotherhood member al-Sayyed Talaat also called on all Egyptians to participate in rebuilding the country and said the group is always ready for cooperation.

More anti-Copt jizya

Extortion, looting, abduction for ransom–all fancy words for Islamic style revenue collection that’s ongoing against non-Muslims in Egypt.  Now the Copts “have no more money to give.”  From AINA on Apr. 6 (h/t GoV):

…The terror started on January 28, when Ali Hussein assaulted Copt Khalil Suweiha and his family. Mr. Suweiha filed a report with the police in Deir Mawas but was forced to drop the charges after being threatened with death by Hussein and his 200-man armed gang.

Hussein then started extorting money from Copts and attacking their homes. They all had to withdraw the police reports they filed against him after being threatened.

On January 29, Hussein, broke into the house of another Copt (his name is withheld), raped his wife and mother after being restrained by Hussein’s men. He was too frightened to report the crime to the police after being threatened that his children would be killed, according to activist Mariam Ragy.

Alaa Yusuf Iskandar, 30, was kidnapped and his family paid a ransom of 200,000 Egyptian pounds to Hussein to set him free. Although the family reported the kidnapping to the police, no action was taken.

Hanna Samuel had his 12-year old son kidnapped on March 8; the well to do Coptic family paid a ransom of nearly 500,000 Egyptian pounds to free their child.

According to Shoukry, “Ali Hussein has set himself up as governor of the two villages despite the presence of two village mayors. He is practicing injustice and tyranny only against the Copts in the villages. He walks between Christian homes, carrying a weapon on his shoulder, followed by his brothers and cousins and more than fifty armed thugs from outside the villages.” He added that Hussein and his gang declared that they are the government of the Copts. The incidents of extortion, looting, crop destruction and kidnapping children for ransom have become so prevalent many families have left the villages as they have no more money to give him. “His despotism and tyranny reached the extent of imposing a curfew on the Copts from six o’clock in the evening to seven o’clock in the morning. Any Copt daring to break the curfew is beaten up and terrorized,” Shoukry said…

See prior anti-Coptic jizya coverage here.

Al-Zumar favors jizya on Copts

Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization leader Abboud Al-Zumar says nonchalantly that Copts in Egypt are to be subjected to the jizya.  It’s a very calm answer to a television interviewer’s question.  The nature of the answer shows that this is the default position of Islamists.  They don’t give a second thought to the unusual nature of the jizya.  They think it is perfectly normal and rational for the non-believers of a religion to pay a religious tax to support the propagation of that religion.  From MEMRI on Mar. 27:

Interviewer: “The Copts may be a minority, but they are still partners in this country. They have equal rights and obligations in this country.”

Abboud Al-Zumar: “That’s what we say too. They have the same rights and obligations.”

Interviewer: “But you are talking about Jizya, and about protecting them… Some of your ideas undermine the notion that they are equal owners and partners.”

Abboud Al-Zumar: “These things have many details and limitations. This does not apply when they do certain things in society… Society must protect them, which is why Islam prescribed the Jizya tax, which is parallel to the zaqat. The Muslims pay zaqat to the state, and the Copts pay the so-called jizya tax.”

Sadly, it is the jizya itself that eroded Coptic life centuries ago, and jizya has become a renewed reality in many parts of Egypt.  The ouster of Mubarak may lead to a new, formalized, nationwide jizya.