Mideast Expert Phares: Jihadists Want Mosque to Provoke

[Patricia M. McBride]

It certainly was something I thought especially since they are put one of these mosques near all the sites where they have attacked another country (Victory mosques). I have also included the information about this man as he is very credable (see below the article). Pat

Tuesday, 31 Aug 2010 12:42 PM

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By: David A. Patten

Jihadists are excited about the inflammatory statement the proposed mosque and community center would make just two blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, says terrorism expert Walid Phares.

In an exclusive Newsmax.TV interview, the best-selling author and Newsmax contributor says the Park51 site holds much symbolic importance for Islamic extremists.

"The jihadists, in general terms, they're very excited about the issue because they understand it has a political ramification," Phares says. "If you read their comments, they talk about the fact it has a name that was viewed in the past as the capital of the caliphate."

Proponents of the mosque, formerly known as the Cordoba project, say "Cordoba" refers to an era of relative tolerance and prosperity during Muslim rule of Spain's Iberian peninsula around 1,000 A.D.

Opponents say Cordoba actually refers to a period of Muslim triumph over once-Christian lands. They point out the ancient Cordoba mosque was built on the site of a Christian church.

"Now it is going to be done, even though symbolically, in New York," Phares says. "They are excited about it because that is a leading phenomenon for mobilization, for indoctrination, and for an eventual clash."

However, moderate Muslims have a quite different view of the project, Phares says. They see the location as obviously provocative, he says.

"In the middle, you have moderates, who are saying, 'We need not basically to engage in this provocation. Why do we need to do it? There are so many other locations where we can establish any mosque that we want, because America is about religious freedom,'" Phares tells Newsmax.

Still other Muslims balk at the project because of its estimated cost of more than $100 million, he says.

"Putting that much petro dollars in one location when you have disasters around the region, while mosques have been destroyed in Pakistan and other places, it doesn’t make sense for many of these Muslims and Arabs," says Phares, a medical doctor and author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad.”

Phares also tells Newsmax that President Obama would be wrong in his prime-time Oval Office speech on Iraq Tuesday to declare the end of hostilities in Iraq.

"That is not the case because al-Qaida is still around," says the Fox News contributor. "It is going to continue with this campaign. And the Iranian regime still has a lot of activities between Baghdad and Basra."

Other highlights from the Newsmax interview with Phares:

• Setting a deadline for the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan is a mistake. "All the logic of having a deadline for us to withdrawal or to deploy doesn't work with Jihadists," Phares says.
• Perhaps because of political correctness, the Obama administration has "basically failed" to identify its jihadist enemies in the Middle East. "Unfortunately there were memos issued by high ranking officials of the administration last year in which it says, 'We are not fighting a global war on the terrorists. We are actually not even fighting the jihadists.'" Not properly identifying the threat makes it impossible to "recognize the ideology behind that threat," he says.
• The real war taking place against extremists is ideological. Phares urges the administration "to correct its strategies, to redefine who we are fighting, to engage in a war of ideas, to make sure we have partners in this region with whom we can fight this war of ideas. Otherwise, we could be fighting it militarily but the Taliban, the Khomeini, and others, are producing more and more, younger and younger generations of jihadists. That war of ideas we have not even begun to wage."
• Phares does not hold out hope that the upcoming talks between Israelis and Palestinians will bear much fruit. "As long as Iran is ordering Hamas and Hezbollah to bring down any peace process, any political process, I think no envoys, the senator [Mitchell] now or any envoys in the future, can really cut a deal," he says.
• Iran's nuclear threat also involves the development of long-range missiles and a powerful anti-aircraft system. These elements limit the time the Israelis have to decide whether to attack Iran.
• "They are on a clock," Phares says. "The Israelis are on a clock that is different from the United States and the rest of the international community."

link to article: http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Walid-Pharesground-zero-mosqueji...

Dr. Walid Phares

Director, FDD's Future of Terrorism Project Dr. Walid Phares is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Middle East history and politics, global terrorist movements, democratization and human rights. Dr. Phares also leads the foundation's Future of Terrorism Project, which considers how the Jihadi-Islamist threat will mutate over time and what can be done to defend against new, more deadly strains of terrorism. Dr. Phares is the author of ten books on terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad, was published in March, 2008. His previous work, War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy, was published April, 2007. His book, Future Jihad, Terrorist Strategies Against America, has been listed on Foreign Policy magazine's best selling titles for three months. The new paperback international edition Future Jihad, Terrorist Strategies against the West was published in November of 2006. In addition, Dr. Phares serves as a Fox News Channel Middle East Contributor. A fluent English, French, and Arabic speaker, he is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, CNN, the BCC, al-Jazeera, al Hurra, al-Arabiya, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, Global TV, and hundreds of radio programs. Previously Dr. Phares served as a terrorism analyst for MSNBC. He writes frequently for academic publications and newspapers, including Global Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, International Journal of Security Studies, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, and Chicago Sun Times. A frequently consulted expert, for more than two decades Dr. Phares has been called upon by European Commissioners, European Parliament members, as well as French, British, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Cypriot legislators, officials and Diplomats. He has served as an expert for the Dutch Government on Terrorism. He has also testified to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Middle East and South East Asia, the House committees on international relations and Homeland Security and regularly conducts congressional, State Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice briefings. Dr. Phares is also a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, a policy institute based in Brussels that is dedicated to defending democratic values, promoting freedom and addressing the ideologies of terrorism. Dr. Phares is an Adjunct Professor at National Defense University School for National Security Executive Education (SNSEE). From 1993 to 2006, Dr. Phares was a professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has also held teaching positions at Florida International University and the University of Miami. He holds degrees in law and political science from Saint Joseph and the Lebanese Universities in Beirut, a Masters in international law from the Universite de Lyons in France, and a Ph.D. in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami in the United States.

Media

In the Media

Print & Online
The Lebanon Border And Hezbollah's War Footing, The Daily Caller (08/06/2010)
Iran's Global Terrorist Reach, inFocus (07/23/2010)
The Jihad Against Uganda, FoxNews.com (07/12/2010)
United Nations Covers for Terrorist Buildup, The Washington Times (05/28/2010)
American Interests Targetted by Iran and Al-Qaeda, Energy Publisher (05/24/2010)

[Patricia M. McBride]

No joke, John. Agreed. I don't understand why, when they hate us, we are helping them do anything. Look at the folks in Pakistan; they had a disaster and said taking help from us was like taking poison. Well, gosh, then don't take it. I know there are good Muslims and bad muslims, but their holy book declares war on all Christians and allows them to lie to anyone to get their way. Muslims are infiltrating every country in the world (by design) and will soon take over some, and we should not be giving them money to do anything and most especially not for their mosques, since we do not donate to other religions for their churchs abroad. And let's hope we aren't just giving them the money and counting on them to only spend it on mosques.

[Patricia M. McBride]

John, he says not, but why would you defend this knowing, as he must, what the truth is. And another thing that is of concern to me is all the money we are spending to restore mosques all over the world when we supposedly don't have the money to secure our borders, and we are deficit spending on just about everything. Obama truly has all of his priorities in the wrong place (like what's new huh?).