[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 167 (Thursday, December 16, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2170-E2172]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     BRIEFING ON ``SAUDI ARABIA: FUELING RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AND 
                              EXTREMISM''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. TRENT FRANKS

                               of arizona

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 16, 2010

  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Madam Speaker, I would like to submit the 
following for the Record:

 Remarks of Maria McFarland, Deputy Washington Director, Human Rights 
                                 Watch

       In the last couple of years, Saudi King Abdullah has 
     received praise in some circles for having taken a few 
     cautious steps in support of religious tolerance through his 
     Interfaith Dialogue Initiative. But that initiative has been 
     limited to international settings.
       Within Saudi Arabia, repression of religious freedom 
     continues unabated, particularly with respect to Shia 
     Muslims. Saudi textbooks, including those used abroad, 
     include material that promotes hostility toward the Shia 
     creed and other religions and may in some cases justify 
     violence. The right of non-Muslims to worship in private is 
     subject to the whims of the local religious police. Public 
     worship of faiths other than Islam remains prohibited as a 
     matter of policy.
       Shia Saudis, who make up an estimated 10-15 percent of the 
     population, are the group most affected by repression of 
     religious freedom. Shia face systematic exclusion in 
     employment, as well as discrimination in religious education 
     and worship.
       In some cases, this discrimination amounts to persecution. 
     Professing Shia beliefs in private or in public may lead to 
     arrest and detention. Saudi Shia visiting the holy shrines in 
     Mecca and Medina regularly face harassment by the Wahhabi 
     religious police. A government promise to update the vague 
     law outlining religious police jurisdiction and powers has 
     remained unfulfilled for three years.
       In al-Ahsa' province, the governor, Prince Badr bin Jilawi, 
     has repeatedly had Shia citizens arrested and detained on his 
     authority and in violation of Saudi criminal procedure law 
     simply for praying together in private or publicly displaying 
     banners or slogans or wearing clothing associated with 
     certain Shia rituals. In late January or mid-February, six 
     young Shia of al-Ahsa', between 19 and 24 years old, were 
     detained on Prince Badr's orders because of their peaceful 
     exercise of their religious beliefs. As of mid-September, 
     they remained in detention without charge or trial despite a 
     limit of six months for pre-trial detention under the Saudi 
     criminal procedure code. The Saudi government has yet to take 
     meaningful steps to stop these abuses or bring to justice 
     those responsible.
       Shia face officially sanctioned discrimination in the 
     judicial system too. There has been no progress in affording 
     Shia outside of the Eastern Province with courts for personal 
     status matters to conclude marriages and adjudicate divorces, 
     inheritances, child custody disputes, and such matters. This 
     affects the so-called Nakhawila, Twelver Shia in Medina, and 
     the Ismailis in Najran province as well as a small group of 
     Zaidi Muslims in Jizan and Najran provinces. There is no 
     separation of secular from religious law in Saudi courts, and 
     all Shia, including in the Eastern Province where they have 
     their own personal status courts, must follow Sunni law as 
     interpreted in Saudi Arabia. Shia are sometimes not allowed 
     to testify in court.
       Saudi officials who engage in anti-Shia speech rarely face 
     any reprimand for doing so. For example, on December 31, 
     2009, Shaikh Muhammad al-`Arifi, the government-paid imam of 
     the Buradi mosque in Riyadh, as well as Salih bin Humaid, 
     Saudi chief judge, visited frontline troops in southern Saudi 
     Arabia fighting Yemeni Huthi rebels, who belong to a branch 
     of Shiism, albeit different from that of most Saudi Shia. Al-
     `Arifi can be seen in photos wearing camouflage, firing 
     weapons, and preaching to soldiers. Press reports said al-
     `Arifi stressed the necessity of jihad (holy war) and 
     commended the soldiers for performing their national and 
     religious duty. Upon returning to Riyadh, al-`Arifi, in a 
     sermon on Friday, January 1, 2010 condemned the Huthi rebels 
     and called Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani--an Iranian living in 
     Iraq, who is the highest religious authority for many Saudi 
     Shia-an ``obscene, irreligious atheist.''
       Meanwhile, Saudi authorities have taken steps to silence 
     Shia critics. Saudi domestic intelligence agents have been 
     holding Munir al-Jassas, a Shia who criticized state 
     repression against the Shia online, in detention without 
     charge for over a year. On June 22, 2008, authorities 
     arrested Shia cleric Shaikh Tawfiq al-`Amir, after he spoke 
     out in a sermon against a May 30 statement signed by 22 
     prominent Saudi Wahhabi clerics, in which they called the 
     ``Shia sect an evil among the sects of the Islamic nation, 
     and the greatest enemy and deceivers of the Sunni people.'' 
     Of the 22 signatories, II were current government officials 
     and 6 were former government officials.
       In its annual reports on religious freedom on Saudi Arabia, 
     the United States Department of State has consistently and 
     accurately documented severe repression of religious freedom 
     and systematic violations against certain groups, including 
     especially the Shia. Yet, while the United States has for 
     years designated Saudi Arabia as a Country of Particular 
     Concern, it has failed to take meaningful steps to promote 
     reform in Saudi Arabia. The United States has continually 
     waived sanctions provided under the law, and aside from 
     issuing the annual report, has remained mostly silent in 
     public on the subject.
       The United States has also applauded King Abdullah's 
     Interfaith Dialogue Initiative (IDI) as evidence of greater 
     promotion of religious tolerance. Cynical observers would see 
     the IDI as a promotional tour of Western countries designed 
     to soften Saudi Arabia's image of an exporter of religious 
     hatred. Uncritical supporters of the initiative claim it as 
     evidence that the kingdom is opening up.
       Whatever its motivation, the fact remains that this 
     initiative abroad has had no policy repercussions at home. 
     Saudis recognize domestic state-controlled media reporting on 
     the IDI as an official campaign, and it only serves to 
     highlight the stark contrasts between ideals upheld abroad 
     and the harsh reality of repression at home. If the United 
     States is serious about promoting religious tolerance in 
     Saudi Arabia, it cannot remain content to publish a report 
     once a year about religious repression or to praise Saudi 
     Arabia for symbolic commitments to religious tolerance. 
     Instead, it must take a clear, public stance on Saudi 
     Arabia's systematic repression of religion and press the 
     Saudi government to undertake effective institutional reforms 
     to end discrimination and repression on the basis of religion 
     in that country.

               Remarks of Mansour Al-Hadj, Editor, Aafaq

       At the outset, I would like to say that my paper is based 
     on my personal experience as someone who was born and grew up 
     in Saudi Arabia, and has always been concerned about Saudi 
     Arabia--since it's my homeland and also since I have been 
     monitoring the Saudi media closely for the last four years as 
     co-founder of the liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq, of 
     which I am currently editor-in-chief.
       There is great conflict and tension between liberals and 
     conservatives in Saudi Arabia--but it is unfortunately a fake 
     war, because both sides are working for the government--that 
     is, the House of Saud. Both the liberals--who are actively 
     writing articles for government-owned newspapers or appearing 
     on government-owned TV channels--and the conservatives--who 
     are active in mosques and on websites and who are also 
     appearing on government-owned TV channels--are well aware of 
     their limits and of the red lines that they must not cross.
       The one red line that neither conservatives nor liberals 
     dare to cross is talking or writing anything about political 
     reform or the rights of religious minorities. Those who 
     refuse to follow these limits are banned from writing in 
     Saudi newspapers, and many of them are imprisoned and/or 
     prohibited from leaving the country.
       Saudi liberals are very hesitant to question the illegal 
     arrest and persecution of reformers. One such case, that went 
     completely unreported in Saudi Arabia, is that of Hadi Al-
     Mutif, an Ismai'i Shi'ite who has been imprisoned since 1993, 
     serving what is by now the longest prison sentence ever in 
     Saudi Arabia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Also, not a 
     single Saudi newspaper reported on the arrest of Mokhlif Al-
     Shammari, a Saudi human rights activist accused of annoying 
     others for posting online articles criticizing radical 
     sheikhs who call for the eradication of the Shi'ites.
       Saudi liberals have never advocated for the reformers who 
     openly demand political and constitutional reform--such as 
     Ali Aldumaini, Matrook Al-Faleh, and Abdallah Al-Hamid, who 
     are officially banned from writing in Saudi newspapers and 
     from traveling outside the country. The liberals do not dare 
     to question the brutal punishments of beheading, amputation 
     and flogging carried out by the Saudi authorities. They avoid 
     writing about the plight of the Shi'a minorities whose 
     mosques are repeatedly shut down and whose imams are arrested 
     for conducting prayers in their homes. They never dare to 
     call for a new and modern interpretation of the Koran, never 
     dare to advocate for gays' and lesbians' right to not be 
     punished or even killed for something they could not choose. 
     All of these issues are on the other side of the red line 
     that they cannot cross.
       Last month, Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha al-
     Huwaider was interviewed by the LBC (Lebanese Broadcasting 
     Corporation)

[[Page E2171]]

     ``No Censorship'' show, with airing scheduled for October 
     2010. However, the show has not yet aired. Observers said 
     that a high-level Saudi official ordered LBC not to broadcast 
     Wajeha's interview, in which she talked about women's right 
     to drive cars in Saudi Arabia, the plight of the Shi'a 
     minorities in the country, the male guardian system, and the 
     unjust punishment of Saudi reformers. Wajeha is banned from 
     writing in Saudi newspapers.
       Last week, the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah refused to publish an 
     article by female university professor Fawziyah Abdallah Abu 
     Khaled. In her article, Abu Khaled called the government to 
     allow those who oppose its policies to be part of society and 
     for it to stop persecuting and criminalizing them. She wrote: 
     ``Peaceful opposition is part of the social power of any 
     society, and it should not be handled with hostility, 
     eradication, or constant persecution.''
       The only people who enjoy freedom of expression are the 
     radicals--as long as they do not call for Jihad against the 
     House of Saud. Sheikh Abdel Rahman Al-Barak has called many 
     times for the killing of Shi'ites and many Saudi liberals, 
     and issued a new fatwa stating that the U.S. is the real 
     enemy of the Muslims and that Jihad cannot be superseded by 
     international conventions.
       You might ask, what about the launch of the Saudi national 
     dialogue, the establishment of King Abdullah University of 
     Science and Technology, the appointment of the first female 
     vice minister for women's education, the municipal election, 
     the interfaith conferences organized by the Saudi government 
     to which Christians and Jews were invited, and the recent 
     ruling restricting the right to issue fatwas to senior 
     religious leaders.
       The national dialogue has accomplished nothing; the new 
     university is a closed and isolated institution for 
     international students and a very few Saudis that is aimed at 
     producing Saudi engineers and doctors, not at encouraging 
     unfettered research, and certainly not to produce new and 
     modern interpretations of the Koran that are peaceful and 
     that respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This 
     university is one of dozens of Islamic universities in Saudi 
     Arabia. The appointment of Noura Al-Fayz as the first female 
     member of the Saudi Arabia Council of Ministers means 
     nothing--she still cannot drive a car, travel by herself, go 
     jogging or engage in other sports, choose her own husband, or 
     receive decent child support if she divorces. Regarding the 
     election, we all know that women were not allowed to vote; 
     and the interfaith conferences will remain meaningless until 
     a church is built in Saudi Arabia and Christians are allowed 
     to worship freely. As to the restriction on fatwas, no one 
     pays any attention at all; new fatwas are issued on a 
     daily basis.
       The House of Saud has used its oil wealth to control 
     people's lives. Whether conservative or liberal, ultimately 
     people need to put food on the table, and as long as almost 
     everything in the kingdom is controlled by the government, it 
     will be very difficult to both cross red lines and make a 
     living. That is how the House of Saud maintains its game of 
     balance.
       I understand this on a very personal level; I have seen how 
     people struggle to swim upstream under totalitarian regimes. 
     What I cannot understand, however, is how a country like the 
     U.S. that has always championed human Rights and religious 
     freedom has been unable to free a young man who has been 
     imprisoned for 17 years because of his religious belief as an 
     Isma'ili Shi'ite. I can only hope that the House of Saud is 
     not aiming to play the game of balance internationally--
     because I have heard that a $60 billion arms deal is in the 
     works.

Remarks of Nina Shea, Director, Hudson Institute's Center for Religious 
                                Freedom

       Last Sunday, a December 2009 cable that was cited by the 
     New York Times but has not yet been posted by Wikileaks says 
     that Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni 
     militant groups such as Al Qaeda.
       America's top financial-counterterrorism official, Treasury 
     Undersecretary Stuart Levey, believes there's a strong link 
     between education and support for terror. As he wrote in the 
     Washington Post last June, to end support for such terror, 
     among other steps: ``we must focus on educational reform in 
     key locations to ensure that intolerance has no place in 
     curricula and textbooks. . . . [U]nless the next generation 
     of children is taught to reject violent extremism, we will 
     forever be faced with the challenge of disrupting the next 
     group of terrorist facilitators and supporters.''
       Saudi Arabia is one such ``key location.'' The kingdom is 
     not just any country with problematic textbooks. As the 
     controlling authority of the two holiest shrines of Islam, 
     Saudi Arabia is able to disseminate its religious materials 
     among the millions of Muslims making the hajj to Mecca each 
     year. Such teachings can, in this context, make a great 
     impression. In addition, Saudi textbooks are also posted on 
     the Saudi Education Ministry's website and are shipped and 
     distributed free by a vast Sunni infrastructure established 
     with Saudi oil wealth to many Muslim schools, mosques and 
     libraries throughout the world. In his book The Looming 
     Tower, Lawrence Wright asserts that while Saudis constitute 
     only 1 percent of the world's Muslims, they pay ``90 percent 
     of the expenses of the entire faith, overriding other 
     traditions of Islam.'' Others estimate that, on an annual 
     basis, Saudi Arabia spends three times as much in exporting 
     its Wahhabi ideology as did the Soviets in propagating 
     Communism during the height of the Cold War. From the 
     Netherlands and Bosnia, to Algeria and Tunisia, to Pakistan 
     and Afghanistan, and to Somalia and Nigeria, nationals of 
     these countries have reported that over the past twenty to 
     thirty years local Islamic traditions are being transformed 
     and radicalized under intensifying Saudi influence. The late 
     President of Indonesia Abdurrahman Wahid wrote that Wahhabism 
     was making inroads even in his famously tolerant nation of 
     Indonesia.
       To understand why Jim Woolsey and other terrorism experts 
     call Wahhabism as it spreads through the Islamic diaspora 
     ``kindling for Usama Bin Laden's match,'' it is important to 
     know the content of Saudi textbooks. They teach, along with 
     many other noxious lessons, that Jews and Christians are 
     ``enemies,'' and they dogmatically instruct that that it is 
     permissible, even obligatory, to kill various groups of 
     ``unbelievers''--apostates (which includes Muslim moderates 
     who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which can 
     include Shias and Sufis, as well as Christians, Hindus, and 
     Buddhists), Jews, and adulterers. The texts also teach that 
     the ``punishment for homosexuality is death'' and discusses 
     that this can be done by immolation by fire, stoning or 
     throwing the accused from a high place.
       Under the Saudi Education Ministry's method of rote 
     learning, these teachings amount to indoctrination, starting 
     in first grade and continuing through high school, where 
     militant jihad on behalf of ``truth'' has for years been 
     taught as a sacred duty. The ``lesson goals'' of one of the 
     text books is to have the children list the ``reprehensible'' 
     qualities of Jewish people and another, that Jews are pigs 
     and apes.
       Reformist Muslims can also be labeled as ``apostates,'' and 
     thus they can be killed with impunity. In the opening fatwa 
     of a Saudi government booklet distributed to educate Muslim 
     immigrants in 2005 by the Saudi embassy in the United States, 
     the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (a cabinet level government 
     post) responded to a question about a Muslim preacher in a 
     European mosque who said ``declaring Jews and Christians 
     infidels is not allowed.'' The Grand Mufti accused the 
     unnamed European cleric of apostasy: ``He who casts doubts 
     about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his own 
     infidelity.''
       The intellectual pioneer of takfiri doctrine is the 
     medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Tamiyya. He is cited as a moral 
     guide in the Saudi textbooks--including in the newly edited, 
     heavily redacted texts used in the Islamic Saudi Academy, a 
     school operated in Fairfax County, VA, by the Saudi embassy. 
     Students of Saudi high school textbooks are instructed to 
     consult his writings when they face vexing moral questions. 
     West Point's Center for Combating Terror found that Ibn 
     Tamiyya's are ``by far the most popular texts for modern 
     jihadis.''
       Saudi foreign-affairs officials and ambassadors do not 
     dispute the need for education reform. Their reactions, 
     though, have alternated over the years between insisting that 
     reforms had already been made and stalling for time by 
     stating that the reforms would take several years more to 
     complete, maybe banking on the hope that American attention 
     would drift.
       Four years ago, the Saudis gave a solemn and specific 
     promise to the United States. Its terms were described in a 
     letter from the U.S. assistant secretary of state for 
     legislative affairs to Sen. Jon Kyl, then chairman of the 
     Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and 
     Homeland Security: ``In July of 2006, the Saudi Government 
     confirmed to us its policy to undertake a program of textbook 
     reform to eliminate all passages that disparage or promote 
     hatred toward any religion or religious groups.'' 
     Furthermore, the State Department letter reported that this 
     pledge would be fulfilled ``in time for the start of the 2008 
     school year.''
       Saudi Arabia has failed to keep its promise to the United 
     States. One Wikileak cable from the U.S. embassy reports that 
     Saudi education reform seems ``glacial.'' In its newly 
     released 2010 annual report on religious freedom, the State 
     Department itself asserted, albeit with diplomatic 
     understatement, with respect to Saudi Ministry of Education 
     textbooks: ``Despite government revisions to elementary and 
     secondary education textbooks, they retained language 
     intolerant of other religious traditions, especially Jewish, 
     Christian, and Shi'a beliefs, including commands to hate 
     infidels and kill apostates.'' (emphasis added.)
       Meanwhile, Saudi royals have stepped up their philanthropy 
     to higher education around the world, for which they have 
     garnered many encomiums and awards. Hardly a month goes by 
     without a news report that one of the princes is endowing a 
     new center of Islamic and Arabic studies, or a business or 
     scientific department, at a foreign university. The king 
     himself recently founded a new university for advanced 
     science and technology inside Saudi Arabia.
       These efforts have bought the royal family much good will, 
     but they should not distract our political leaders from the 
     central concern of the Saudi 1-12 religious curriculum. This 
     is not the time for heaping unqualified praise on the aging 
     monarch for promoting ``knowledge-based education,'' 
     ``extending the hand of friendship to people of other 
     faiths,'' promoting ``principles of moderation tolerance, and 
     mutual respect,'' and the like (phrases with which our 
     diplomatic statements on Saudi Arabia are replete).

[[Page E2172]]

       The State Department needs to begin regular and detail 
     reporting on the remaining objectionable and violent passages 
     in Saudi government textbooks and to press in a sustained 
     manner for the kingdom to keep its 2006 pledge to us 
     regarding textbook reform. As USCIRF recommends, the 
     administration should also lift the indefinite waiver of any 
     action pursuant to the designation of Saudi Arabia as a 
     ``Country of Particular Concern'' under the International 
     Religious Freedom Act--the only ``CPC'' to receive an 
     indefinite waiver.
       In one of the Wikileaks cables written earlier this year on 
     Saudi King Abdullah to Secretary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador 
     James Smith makes the following observation: ``Reflecting his 
     Bedouin roots, he judges his counterparts on the basis of 
     character, honesty, and trust. He expects commitments to be 
     respected and sees actions, not words, as the true test of 
     commitment. . . .''
       Bedouin or not, we should start demanding the same from 
     him.

      Remarks by R. James Woolsey, Former Director of the Central 
                          Intelligence Agency

       I met on several occasions with the late President of 
     Indonesia, Abdurrahman Wahid, after his Presidency but while 
     he was leading the world's largest libertarian Muslim 
     organization, Nandlatul Ulama. What a truly magnificent man 
     he was. Nandlatul Ulama's members, as is the case for the 
     vast majority of Indonesia's Muslims, espouse essentially the 
     Enlightenment's embrace of reason and in particular it's 
     separation of the spiritual and secular realms. Indonesia's 
     traditions in this regard harken back hundreds of years, and 
     this country that contains more Muslims than any other does 
     not call itself a Muslim nation.
       There are hundreds of millions of such truly moderate 
     Muslims in the world, including a very substantial share of 
     those in the U.S. They should be regarded as our colleagues 
     and friends in trying to build a peaceful and prosperous 
     modern world. To use a very rough analogy to the Cold War 
     years, such truly moderate Muslims are something like the 
     Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists--George Orwell, 
     Helmut Schmidt--who were our colleagues in winning the Cold 
     War against a communist empire that called itself 
     ``socialist'' but whose essence was totalitarian.
       Of course terrorists, whether Muslim or not, are not our 
     colleagues and friends but our enemies through and through, 
     just as were the communists' instruments of violence such as 
     the Spetznaz. But some have come to believe that in the world 
     of Islam today these two groupings--moderate Muslims and 
     terrorists--are the only ones that exist. Sadly such is not 
     the case.
       During the Cold War there were non-violent totalitarians--
     such as many members of the American Communist Party--who 
     fervently worked for the triumph of communism and the 
     establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat but 
     utilizing non-violent means. So also today there are some 
     Muslim groups and individuals who work hard to replace our 
     Constitution with the totalitarian socio-political doctrine 
     that Islam calls shariah. Shariah has as its objective the 
     establishment of a world-wide caliphate--a theocratic 
     totalitarian state. Along the way to this objective adherence 
     to shariah entails accepting a set of doctrines that calls 
     for: death to apostates and homosexuals, brutal treatment of 
     women, rejection of democracy (and indeed all man-made law), 
     anti-semitism, and much else.
       In order to bring about the caliphate--the complete 
     rejection of Article VI of the Constitution--it is not always 
     tactically wise to utilize violence, or violent jihad. 
     Sometimes what Muslim Brotherhood writers call ``civilization 
     jihad'' is a shrewder tactic. It is well-defined in a 
     document, ``An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General 
     Strategic Goal for the Group'' entered into evidence in the 
     2008 case, United States v. Holy Land Foundation. The 
     document was written by Mohammed Akram, a senior Hams leader 
     in the U.S. and a member of the Board of Directors of the 
     Muslim Brotherhood in North America. The document makes it 
     clear that what is involved is a ``settlement process'' lead 
     by the Muslim Brotherhood that constitutes 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 so that it is eliminated. . . 
     .''
       In the Holy Land Foundation case, which dealt with 
     terrorist financing, it was established that a number of 
     Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as CAIR and ISNA, 
     though not indicted, were part of the terror-financing 
     conspiracy.
       In short, as during the Cold War, we need to understand 
     that the central distinction is between those who accept 
     democracy and the rule of (man-made) law and those who do 
     not. We were on the same side during the Cold War as 
     socialists George Orwell and Helmut Schmidt and both the Red 
     Army and Gus Hall were on the other. Today we can make common 
     cause with all Muslims who are neither planning to blow up 
     airliners nor working on ``eliminating and destroying the 
     Western civilization from within.''
       But we must not ignore those who are making such efforts or 
     be deterred from dealing with them just because they engage 
     in name-calling, such as labeling those who call them to 
     account as ``Islamophobes.'' Those who bravely stood up 
     against the Spanish Inquisition--whether Muslims, Jews, or 
     Christians--were not ``Christianophobes.'' We need to find 
     Constitutional means--drawings on our experiences during the 
     Cold War--to thwart the Islamist sabotage called for by the 
     Muslim Brotherhood document and to do so in such a way as to 
     protect the rights of those Muslims who are not engaged in 
     either violent jihad or ``civilization jihad'' against us.
       This will require us to think clearly about how to deal 
     with Saudi Arabia, our ally on some aspects of fighting 
     terrorism, but also the principal source of funding of a 
     major share of the terrorists who attack us and the teaching 
     of hatred that fuels the civilization jihad as well.
       Above all, we cannot begin to deal with these issues unless 
     we speak clearly. It is time to end the euphemisms and the 
     verbal dancing. One is hot accusing all Christians of burning 
     women at the stake if one examines how the Salem witch trials 
     grew out of some Puritan thinking. So too with totalitarian 
     offshoots of any religion, including Islamism. Islamists' 
     efforts to establish a caliphate and sabotage our 
     Constitution have to be called what they are--they are not 
     random acts of ``violent extremists.'' They are, for 
     Islamists, jihad. And they must be defeated.

                          ____________________