World Public Forum Conference Saves Mount Athos From Tourists and Women

An official English-language website of the Russian Orthodox Church has details of a recent conference on the subject of Mount Athos:

A conference on ‘The Contribution of Mount Athos to Europe’s Religious and Intellectual Tradition’ was held on July 8-9, 2011, in Salzburg, Austria. It was organized by the Dialogue of Civilizations world public forum. Among the participants were Mr. Walter Schwimmer, former general secretary of the Council of Europe, Princess Katarina of Serbia, Great Britain, Prince George Yourievsky of the Romanov Family, Switzerland, representatives of the Friends of Mount Athos, Oxford, the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, the Amsterdam Center for Eastern Orthodox Theology, public and governmental bodies, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, business and scientific communities, as well as clergy from the Churches of Russia, Georgia, Greece and other Local Orthodox Churches and brethren from monasteries on the Holy Mount Athos.

The conference was opened by Mr. V. Yakunin, president of the Dialogue of Civilizations.

Yakunin runs Russia’s railways, and he is known as a confidant of Vladimir Putin and as a keen promoter of Orthodoxy. Like other events organised by the Dialogue of Civilizations World Public Forum, the conference appears to have been erudite and international, although not entirely disinterested:

…During plenary and section sessions, participants spoke in one voice for the preservation of Mount Athos’s unique status, the need for comprehensive legal defence of the principle of ‘avaton’ whereby women are not allowed to the peninsula, against turning the Holy Mount into a free tourist zone or a place of commercialization and pointed to the tendency of interference in the internal life of the monasteries.

Mr. Schwimmer, who is chairman of the international coordinating committee of the Dialogue of Civilizations forum, stated that ‘the Holy Mount Athos is important for the cultural heritage of the whole world but in the first place for the spiritual and intellectual heritage of Europe. For this reason it is necessary to protect this place and to involve various forces in Europe and the world in this endeavour’.

Mr. Jan Figel, chairman of the Christian Democratic Movements in Slovakia and former Euro-commissioner for science, education and culture, said, ‘We [in the European Union] have a common market, a common currency but we still have failed to avoid a crisis… The importance of Christianity in Europe is enormous, and Christians have a clear system of values. Europe will be beautiful if the mosaic is united, not split into East and West’.

Other participants included Archimandrite Ephraim, abbot of the Vatopedi Monastery; there has been little need to worry about the monastery’s prospects under his tenure, given his remarkable ability to negotiate profitable land-deals. Further details of the conference can be found on the WPF website, under the heading “Europeans to Salvage Mount Athos”. According to the blurb:

…There are voices in the European Union that favour turning Mount Athos into a tourist area, with unrestricted access for all kinds of visitors. That would be yet another step towards the “mcdonaldization of the society” (J. Ritzer), reducing it to the universal standardization that makes the world more controllable and predictable, but deprived of the “multiplicity in unity” which is characteristic of a viable, dynamically evolving culture.

The “Dialogue of Civilizations” is a project of the “World Public Forum”, which in turn was an initiative of an Orthodox organisation, the Center of the National Glory of Russia and St. Andrew’s Foundation. Back in March, Yakunin presented a prize on behalf of the Dialogue of Civilizations to Nursultan Nazarbayev, two weeks before Nazarbayev was re-elected as President of Kazakhstan with 96% of the vote. It should be remembered that in 2007 Time described the Russian Orthodox Church as Russia’s “main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument”; further, the Russian Church has been keen to promote itself as the international defender of Orthodoxy, and to sideline Bartholomew, the Patriarch of Constantinople.

The conference does not appear to have involved Yakunin’s WPF co-chairman, Nicholas Papanicolaou. Papanicolaou, as I’ve blogged here, is part of the neo-Pentecostal end of the US Christian Right.

Trial of Ugandan Pastors over “Sodomy” Accusation Continues

News from Uganda, where the trial is underway of several pastors who stand accused of conspiring to injure the reputation of a rival minister with a false allegation of “sodomy” (although “male rape” would be be a better description of the details of the accusation). The pastors are Martin Ssempa (of “Eat Da Poo Poo” fame), Solomon Male, Michael David Kyazze, and Bob Kayira (some sources conflate the latter two into “Bob Kyazze”); their alleged victim is Robert Kayanja. This is a saga that has been on-going for some time; I wrote a blog post on the subject back in 2009.

According to the New Vision:

A prosecution witness on Wednesday told court that he betrayed Pastor Robert Kayanja by alleging that he had sodomised him, after one of Kayanja’s accusers promised him a lucrative music deal. 

Ivan Akansiima, 24, told Buganda Road Court Grade One Magistrate Patrick Wekesa that local musician David Mukalazi made him the offer.

This comes in the wake of another New Vision report, from earlier this month, which told us that:

ANOTHER medical report has exonerated Pastor Robert Kayanja over allegations of sodomy. 

This is according to the testimony of a prosecution witness in the case, where six people are being accused of tarnishing Kayanja’s reputation.

It has also been reported that the court has heard the claim that another member of the accused – a state employee named Deborah Anitah Kyomuhendo (or “Dorothy Kyomuhendo” in some reports) – had been “sent” by the First Lady, Janet Museveni; this claim had been reported back in January, and is somewhat mysterious. In 2009, the New Vision described Kyomuhendo as

the woman who reportedly took Kayanja’s accusers to the Criminal Investigations Directorate in Kibuli on April 6…

The Police, sources said, wanted to know her involvement in the saga, in addition to claims that she promised the boys money if they framed Kayanja. State House on Monday denied that Kyomuhendo was their employee. 

Back in 2007, one report claimed that Mrs Museveni had in fact “locked up” two boys who had accused Kayanja in a “safe house”, and that she had “tried to negotiate with Sempa not to bring shame on the born again Christians by exposing Kayanja.”

A city magistrate court previously acquitted Kayiira and Kyazze in January.

There is an international dimension to all this: Kayanja has links with Benny Hinn and Paul Crouch, while Ssempa and Mrs Museveni used to be allied with Rick Warren (although once this became controversial Warren distanced himself from the association). Such is the climate of hysteria around homosexuality in Uganda that in 2010 Hinn was himself accused of sex with Kayanja in the notorious Red Pepper newspaper.

(Name variation: Martin Sempa)

NPR Looks at Improper Counter-Terrorism Training

On NPR, Dina Temple-Raston has a new piece on concerns over the quality of counter-terrorism training in the USA:

The man at the center of this story is 59-year-old Jordanian-American Omar al-Omari.

…One of the trainers in Ohio that day was a man named John Guandolo. He’s a former FBI agent and former Marine. According to people in the training class that day and Guandolo himself, a photograph of Omari with members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a local Muslim advocacy group, was put up on the screen. According to the people who were there, Guandolo and the other visiting trainers didn’t say outright that Omari was a terrorist, but they suggested that he had links to bad people — people who were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and even al-Qaida.

…Now, to understand why the accusations against Omari were so surprising, it is important to know that at the time he ran a key Muslim outreach program for the state of Ohio. What he was doing for the state’s Department of Public Safety was considered so effective, counterterrorism officials in Washington sent him overseas to talk about it.

…The next day, some people came to Omari’s defense. The head of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force and one of the FBI’s top agents in Ohio both arrived at the academy and assured the class that Omari wasn’t a terrorism suspect. 

Among those obviously unimpressed by Guandolo’s claim was Deputy Chief Jeffrey Blackwell of the Columbus Division of Police:

“I was shocked,” he said. “I was shocked that a person at Omar’s level in the state of Ohio in the Department of Public Safety would have his picture displayed by an anti-terrorism group. His reputation was impugned incredibly by the speakers.”

The same incident was discussed by Temple-Raston back in March,  following the publication of a report by Political Research Associates:

One case study: Columbus, Ohio. Richard Bash, the deputy chief of the city’s division of police, runs the department’s Homeland Security Division. Last year, the Columbus Police Department hired a team that included a retired FBI agent to help teach police and local officials how to understand and recognize possible signs of terrorism. It was supposed to be a two-day training course but was stopped after the first day.

“The class was stopped the second day because what we found, the information being relayed was not accurate,” Bash said….

He said they were basically stereotyping.

“That’s not the kind of information that is going to make our cops or federal officials smarter about terrorism,” said Sam Rascoff, a law professor at New York University who used to run intelligence analysis at the New York City Police Department.

Improper counter-terrorism training is a subject that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months: as well as the Political Research Associates report (which – cough –  includes a quote from me), a critical article appeared in the Washington Post in December, and there was a lengthy article in the Washington Monthly in March which prompted an expression of concern from Joe Lieberman, in his capacity as Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, and from Ranking Member Susan Collins. And just last week, CNN investigated Walid Shoebat’s presence at a counter-terrorism training event in South Dakota.

It’s clear that the field of counter-terrorism training has provided career opportunities for a number of unsuitable individuals, to the detriment of professionalism and – ultimately – of public safety. When challenged, these individuals lash out with accusations of left-wing conspiracies or secret Muslim influence (I’ve been on receiving end of some of these – apparently I’m being financed by either George Soros or Hizb ut Tahrir, depending on which charlatan you talk to). However, Temple-Raston shows that real counter-terrorism professionals are also speaking out against improper and incompetent training.

Guandolo, meanwhile, was profiled by Right Wing Watch back in 2009, after he made an appearance on a radio show hosted by David Barton, the notorious “Christian nationalist” pseudo-historian who has come to general prominence thanks to endorsements from Glenn Beck and Mike Hukabee. Barton introduced Guandolo as “the guy who briefed the FBI on terrorism and radical Islamic terrorism” until “so many Islamic folks worked their way into the FBI” and “got him thrown out”; Right Wing Watch, however, quotes a 2009 article from the The Times-Picayune which explains that Guandolo in fact left the FBI following an “intimate relationship” with a government witness he was supposed to be protecting, leading to the collapse of a corruption case.

Guandolo is also involved with Frank Gaffney’s “Team B II Report” on Shariah – The Threat to America (discussed in the Washington Post article), and he has taken part in Colorado Christian University‘s Sharia Awareness Project, alongside the likes of Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin.

A further report from Temple-Raston, broadcast today, has details of an alternative approach to counter-terrorism in Miami, which has involved building relationships with local Muslims. It includes a quote from Wifredo Ferrer, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida:

“We have found that Muslim and Arab community members have been really helpful in informing us and disrupting plots against the United States… So it is really a win-win for both sides.”

Joel Richardson Defends Walid Shoebat

At WorldNetDaily, Joel Richardson has come to the defence of Walid Shoebat in the wake of last week’s investigative CNN report (see here and here). Richardson used to leave the occasional comment on this blog before he became famous as “Glenn Beck’s End-Times Prophet”, and although he promotes ideas which I consider to be foolish and objectionable he has always been personable and there is no reason to doubt his honesty.

Richardson is a long-time associate of Shoebat (they both promote the idea of a coming “Islamic Anti-Christ”, and Shoebat contributed to Richardson’s Why We Left Islam book), and he gives some more information about Shoebat’s “Rescue Christians” organisation:

Last year, I was personally involved in the advent of Walid’s Rescue Christians project. What began as a cry for help from a man in Pakistan became a major project that occupied both Walid and his manager for well over a year. I was also personally involved in this effort.

I spent hours on the phone vetting this man. I also spent multiple hours networking with Christian missionaries and safe houses in foreign countries with Walid and his manager, as they both worked tirelessly and thanklessly to help this man and his family. I heard the frustration in their voices when ministry after ministry would offer no more than a willingness to “pray about it.” And I can also testify that tens of thousands of dollars were spent by Walid and his foundation on this one family.

This is of course commendable insofar as it goes – but, as I wrote previously, why not approach  Open Doors or Release International, both of which are established Christian organisations that work in this area?

Further, Rescue Christians has made specific claims about helping specific families:

Qamar David’s family are regularly been threatened by the Islamic extremists, therefore they are kept in hiding by RC. Same in the Case of Rashid Emmanuel and Sajid Emmanuel and Fanish Robert.

As I noted here, the Emmanuel brothers were gunned down in court premises in July 2010. Robert died in police custody in September 2009 in circumstances that the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan described as “judicial murder”, while David died in suspicious circumstances in prison in February 2010. These are all cases which have received international media attention; it should therefore be possible for established and reputable groups that have been working on these cases (such as  Christian Solidarity Worldwide and International Christian Concern) to confirm that the above is true.

Richardson also addresses the ongoing controversy around Shoebat’s back-story as a former terrorist. While this was a main focus of the CNN reports, it remains something of a side-show as far as I’m concerned: the reason Shoebat should not be addressing counter-terrorism events is because his purported expertise is a farrago of nonsense, whatever his background might be. However, documenting Shoebat’s past authoritatively does seem strangely difficult.

Richardson has some details:

Another of Cooper’s charges was that Walid never spent any time in Mascubia Prison…

[W]hat is truly embarrassing is that another left-wing hit piece written only three years ago, which is easily available online, included an interview with another much closer relative who openly stated that Walid spent time in Mascubia Prison, exactly as Walid has said all along.

…First, “Walid Shoebat” is not even Walid’s actual legal name, and any reporter worth his salt would have known this. Second, if Cooper had simply done some simple due diligence, he would have easily found [Eileen] Fleming’s interview with Younis.

Actually, CNN did not state that Shoebat had not been in prison – just that records of it could not be found. However, Richardson’s point about Younis is a valid one.

Shoebat’s legal name is a continuing puzzle, though – and someone who puts testimony about their past at the centre of their claim to expertise ought to be more forthcoming. Shoebat claims that his legal name is his American mother’s maiden name, and that he refused to divulge it to CNN for reasons of privacy. But this is futile: from public statements Shoebat has made I was able to find Shoebat’s mother’s full name within a matter of minutes. There is no reason why Shoebat should not  just be straight about it.

As for Shoebat’s purported act of terrorism in the 1970s (planting a bomb at a bank), Richardson claims that there are general UN records of two explosions in the area that would fit with Shoebat’s story. He also accuses CNN of lying about checks it claims to have made, and of being in league with CAIR.

Quilliam Foundation Abused by Advertised “Former EDL” Speaker

Last week,  the moderate Muslim Quilliam Foundation announced a “roundtable” event, entitled “Former EDL Members Speak Out”; from the blurb:

…Despite the EDL’s prominence… relatively little is known about the group’s internal workings, its methods of recruitment, its overall strategy and its future plans. For the first time ever, Quilliam is able to bring together former senior members of the EDL who have renounced the group and are willing to speak out against it publicly and to answer questions about the organisation and their time inside it.

Speaker bios:

Harry Burns was formerly a senior member of EDL’s London division. Within London he helped to mobilise members and organise transport for demonstrations outside of London. He was also involved in the group’s logistics and its online activism, helping to run their youth website. He was present at many of their early London meetings.

Leighton Evans was a well-known foot soldier for EDL’s London division. In addition, he was an online activist for the group and helped to organise demonstrations and produce leaflets.

Alas, however, Evans has now made a posting to an anti-EDL Facebook group called “Exposing Racism“:

 i refused to go along with what the quilliam wanted me to do which was renounce the edl. i wont do that and it was never on the agenda in my email exchanges with ghaffar hussain. he said i’d be asked why i joined, what i did, why i left and what i think know. he then released that load of old bollocks which i was never party to.

Posting as the admin for another group, Evans opines further that Quilliam consists of “fuckers”, and that Hussain is a “cunt”.

I understand that Burns has also dropped out (although he’s refrained from attacking Quilliam); he recently emerged as the “leader” of a purported new anti-extremism group calling itself the “Anti-Extremism Alliance”. The East London Advertiser reported earlier this month:

Representatives from several organisations including anti-extremism body Quilliam Foundation and pro-integration group Muslim Voices are calling on Tower Hamlets Council to step in over the matter.

Harry Burn, leading the organisations, said: “I thought that we’d seen the back of these groups in Tower Hamlets. They portray a horrible message and most Muslims I know despise them. We are trying to get Muslims and non-Muslims to say no to any sort of extremism.”

Ghaffar Hussain, head of Quilliam’s outreach and training unit, called the hosting of the group in Tower Hamlets “very worrying”.

The proposed protest also gained the support of Peter Tatchell. It is perhaps significant that in the run-up to the event, a Facebook group called NiceOnesUK – where Burns posts as “Arry Bo” – disappeared from view, and the named organiser changed from Burns to Adam Barnett of One Law for All.

Evans and Burns are both close to Charlie Flowers, the abusive cyber-thug who has threatened to have his friends “slap” me “upside the cheek” (I got off lightly – Flowers has threatened someone else with a stabbing “in the face”). Flowers has over the past year or so insinuated himself into various moderate Muslim groups, which then provide him with a façade of credibility. Flowers has boasted about how he has brought different groups together, so it seems likely that he played a role here.

Although Flowers presents himself as a political activist, he’s actually a vigilante who uses the internet to act out a self-righteous fantasy of self-empowerment through harassment and abuse. Just yesterday, he decided once again to use a sock-puppet to spam Twitter with abusive messages about me – these attacks tend to occur late on Saturday nights, when Flowers is perhaps “tired and emotional” (background here). Presumably this latest self-debasing outburst was prompted by Flowers’ frustrations over how the planned Quilliam event failed to pan out.

Some of Flowers’ friends either don’t know what he gets up to, don’t care (sadly, this includes British Muslims for  Secular Democracy, a  group which I broadly support), or refuse to believe it. Others, however, actively get a kick out of being a part of his anti-social activities; Burns is perhaps one of these, as indicated by goading messages which he has left on this blog under the name “Arry”.

Although, unlike Evans, Burns hasn’t expressed hostility towards Quilliam, he does hold views that would have been awkward had they come up at the roundtable. Here he is again on Facebook:

EDL only focus on Muslims Gavin. Jews and their religion make as many demands as Muslims, I don’t really see much difference. The Jews in Stamford Hill rattle of the same crap about us as do the Muslims in Whitechapel. If you’re going to come here and moan about the country and it’s people then don’t be surprised when people start to dislike you. So much trouble throughout the world between Muzzies and Jews, why have they brought their crap to our country?

Latte can you explain why Jews have been kicked out of so many countries?

Oh dear.

Meanwhile, EDL sites claim that Burns as Evans were “not high-ranking EDL”, and that they had been to only “a handful of demos”.

UPDATE: Burns has now posted a statement on the main NiceOnesUK website. He complains that Expose “has it in” for moderate Muslims who are against extremists, and adds that he himself is part-Jewish and that his fiancée is a Muslim. Further:

Seeing as our group of Muslims and non-Muslims are constantly bitched about by Expose, it was worth a shot to see if they lapped up the anti-Jew and anti-Muslim rhetoric from me. And yes they did. They are obviously aware of the Muslims who are involved with and who comment on NiceOnesUK,  just because Expose are cunts there’s no need for them to take everybody else for one.

This seems to be suggesting – weirdly – that he posted some “anti-Jew and anti-Muslim rhetoric” in order to see if Expose would believe he really meant it. The fact they did believe it proves that they are “cunts” (a word of which Flowers and his friends are inordinately fond, by the way). He goes on:

Due to me and my fiancee’s circumstances we will be taking a break from this whole scene, I’ve departed company with the guys and girls at NiceOnes and left them to it… People who know fuck all about others that they have never met in their life but are all to eager to spread misinformation about them and to slate them for their efforts in bringing sides together obviously haven’t got anything better to do, so it’s probably not about to stop.

To read one of Flowers’ cronies complaining of “misinformation” is rather too much to take.

(H/T to Islamophobia Watch for Facebook links)

More on Walid Shoebat and CNN

CNN has now broadcast the second part of its investigation into into Walid Shoebat (I blogged on part one here), this time focusing on Shoebat’s finances and accountability. According to reporter Drew Griffin:

We couldn’t get a straight answer about anything from just about anybody.

The report includes a remarkable encounter with Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies at the recent Homeland Security conference in South Dakota:

Walid said that you would be able to tell us about your advisory board. You guys said you have generals and other high-ranking officials.

Correct, yeah.

Can you tell us who they are?

Erm… off the top of my head, yes. Let me see. Erm… I’m trying to think. The name’s gone blank. It’ll come back to me in a second… Major General… err… [sigh]… La. I can’t remember name… Erm… Four-star… there’s a three star general at the Air Force… Irish name… Thomas… I usually know these off by heart…

Griffin says that Davies (who occasionally stops by this blog to post goading comments) eventually came up with the name of a pilot, who did not respond calls for confirmation. It seems bizarre that Davies found it so difficult to come up with any name – and that such names are not in the public domain anyway. If there really is a general involved with Shoebat’s advisory board, the most likely candidate would be Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, a well-known Christian Right figure who spoke at an alternative Fort Hood Memorial event organised by Shoebat’s Forum For Middle East Understanding back in November (Robert Spencer was also a participant).

Public tax forms, CNN notes, name as board members Davies and Lance Silver, who is described as “a real-estate developer”. I looked at Silver – who has also been involved with the “Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel” and the “America-Kurdistan Friendship League” (in the latter case alongside Jack Wheeler) back in 2008. According to CNN, the tax returns contain “very little information”. When asked for further details, Davies nodded towards other speaker stalls and complained that

You don’t ask anyone else here about the money.

He went on to explain that “most of the money goes to help persecuted Christians in the middle east that the media doesn’t want to talk about”. Shoebat was also asked for details about how he helps persecuted Christians:

 A lot of the times, if you disclose information who you’re helping, it ends up biting them.

This is an evasive reply – as I noted last month, Shoebat has claimed to be protecting families affected by some of the highest-profile cases of Christian persecution reported from Pakistan. And why does Shoebat require more secrecy than is the case for other Christian groups that work in this area, such as  Open Doors or Release International?

The CNN report ends with a statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security, which states that the DHS does not “tolerate” any programme “that relies on racial or ethnic profiling”.

Meanwhile, the Shoebat Foundation now has a fuller response on its website, disputing CNN’s account and alleging that CNN has worked secretly with “CAIR operatives” to carry out a “political assassination.” The response is difficult to follow, but the guts of it are that Griffin has lied about the checks he claims to have made into Shoebat’s terrorist background, and that Shoebat’s Palestinian relatives themselves have terror connections, which is why they lied to CNN about Shoebat not having been a terrorist. There are also further details about Shoebat’s purported links to known terrorists.

The reply also claims that Shoebat’s name would not appear in Israeli records because he used his mother’s maiden name in his US passport. Shoebat claims that he couldn’t divulge these details to CNN because “CNN refused to offer privacy”; perhaps this is a genuine concern, but based on Shoebat’s statements and a bit of googling I was able to track down the name on the internet quite easily. So, once again, there is no reason why the “proofs” which Shoebat showed Daniel Pipes in 2006 should not be made public.

However, as I’ve written before: Shoebat’s back-story may or may not be true. The question of whether he’s an appropriate speaker at Homeland Security events can be assessed by looking at his statements, which are so excessive as to be absurd.

CNN Investigates Walid Shoebat

Asked about claim to be helping Christians in Pakistan: “None of your business”

CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° has broadcast the first of a two-part investigative report on Walid Shoebat, the self-professed terror expert who last month spoke at a Homeland Security Conference in South Dakota. Shoebat, as is well-known, purports to be an ex-terrorist who spent time in prison in Israel after firebombing a bank for the PLO; however:

CNN’s Jerusalem bureau went to great lengths trying to verify Shoebat’s story. The Tel Aviv headquarters of Bank Leumi had no record of a firebombing at its now-demolished Bethlehem branch. Israeli police had no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held “for a few weeks” for inciting anti-Israel demonstrations says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.

Shoebat says he was never charged because he was a U.S. citizen.

Scepticism about Shoebat’s story has been around for a while – in 2008 Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies threatened to sue a blogger who had looked into Shoebat’s background, and a critical piece appeared soon after in the Jerusalem Post. The doubts should have been easy to clear up; in 2006, Daniel Pipes had told his readers that

Walid Shoebat took the time to visit me in my office today and to show me proofs that his life story is a true one. I accept that it is.

At this time, Shoebat was claiming that “Walid Shoebat” was a pseudonym to protect his identity, but he has since confirmed that his relatives are indeed named “Shu’aybat” (one Shu’aybat relative, billed as “Daood Shoebat”, appears in the CNN piece). Therefore there is no reason why these “proofs” should not be made public.

But even if Shoebat’s story is true, attempting to firebomb a bank for the PLO more than thirty years ago would hardly make Shoebat an expert on terrorism. When it comes to professional expertise in contemporary counter-terrorism – which can be the only valid basis for inviting him to speak at a Homeland Security conference – Shoebat exposes himself as amateurish and sloppy. CNN notes:

Shoebat also told the group there were 17 hijackers when there were 19. And perhaps more surprising from a man who bills himself as a terror expert, Shoebat said the Transportation Security Administration could have stopped them. The TSA wasn’t created until after the 9-11 attacks.

…During Shoebat’s presentation, he criticized Muslim organizations and told audience members to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students and mosques.

“Now, we aren’t saying every single mosque is potential terrorist headquarters. But if you look at certain reports by the Hudson report, 80 percent of mosques they found pamphlets and education on jihad. So they’re in the mosque, the mosque in accordance to the Muslim brotherhood is the command post and center.”

The conservative Hudson Institute said it never issued such a report and has no idea why its name was invoked.

Shoebat doesn’t have any specialist inside information about how terrorists operate or think: instead, he uses his status as an ex-Muslim to offer lurid and often generalised warnings about the dangers of Islam and Muslim infiltration, based on familiar talking points from the paranoid right. Although he appears to have moderated his rhetoric slightly for the event in South Dakota, in other contexts Shoebat has claimed to know that Barack Obama is a Islamic terrorist:

Islam could not defeat us by destroying the twin towers. But they are able to defeat us by sneaking in their man.

Spreading himself even thinner, Shoebat also visits churches to explain how his Muslim background gives him special insight into how the Bible predicts the coming of a Muslim anti-Christ.

CNN looks into Shoebat’s finances:

In tax records filed by Davies, the Forum for Middle East Understanding reported 2009 earnings from speaking engagements, videos and book sales of more than $560,000. The documents are thin on specifics, and so is Shoebat.

“Basically, we are in information, and we do speaking and we do also helping Christians that are being persecuted in countries like Pakistan, and we help Christians that are suffering all throughout the Middle East,” he said. Asked how they do that, he said, “None of your business” — adding that disclosing details could endanger people he was trying to help in Islamic countries that have laws against blasphemy.

Shoebat’s claim to be helping Christians in Pakistan is a subject I’ve looked at a couple of times recently (here and here). He has created a separate organisation, called “Rescue Christians”, which has no apparent formal board structure or trustees. “Rescue Christians” purports to be protecting the families of Fanish Robert, Rashid and Sajid Emmanuel, and Qamar David: these are all high-profile cases in which men accused of blasphemy have either been murdered or have died in suspicious circumstances in custody. Despite international media attention, and lobbying by established groups such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide or International Christian Concern, I have not been able to find any independent reference to the involvement of “Rescue Christians”.

CNN adds:

[Shoebat] referred details to Davies, who offered to provide a copy of the group’s tax returns — but didn’t. When asked who served on the foundation’s board of advisers, Davies gave “Anderson Cooper 360” the name of a former pilot, who didn’t return phone calls. But he could not name the high-ranking military officers he said were on the board.

The second part of the investigation will be broadcast this evening.

So far, Shoebat has responded by suggesting that CNN “has been infiltrated or worse is an ally of CAIR”.

John Hagee Coming to Birmingham

From the Birmingham Post (UK):

Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby has been urged to cancel a planned rally led by a controversial American pastor.

Richard Burden (Lab Northfield) has written to Coun Whitby asking him to confirm whether the rally will be allowed to go ahead, and asking whether he believes it is ethical to receive payment for the event.

The pastor is John Hagee, who has hired Birmingham’s Symphony Hall for a rally in August; as the Post notes:

…Mr Hagee has been criticised in the US for a series of controversial statements.

He compared Adolf Hitler in one sermon to a “hunter” sent by God to force Jews to live in Israel and said the Koran gave Muslims “a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews”.

He also claimed that Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,800 people in 2005, was “the judgment of God against New Orleans” because of a planned “homosexual parade”.

Hagee’s “Hitler is a hunter” sermon was uncovered by Bruce Wilson in 2008, and led to John McCain repudiating Hagee’s presidential endorsement. The Birmingham Post, meanwhile, has a quote from Rabbi Shlomo Odze, of Birmingham Central Synagogue, accusing Hagee of anti-Semitism; this isn’t a description I would use, and I’ve blogged on Hagee’s views about Jews and and Judaism here. Hagee is also close to Glenn Beck – he appeared on his show a number of times, and he offered prayers the evening before Beck’s “Divine Destiny” event last year.

This will not be the first time that Hagee will have come to the UK – he passed through on the way to Nigeria in December 2009 (there’s a nice picture of him here at the airport reading the Daily Mail), and he held a rally in May 2010 at Westminster Central Hall. Accounts submitted by the John Hagee Ministries UK charity have further details:

The charity hosted the first John Hagee Ministries UK Rally in London on 14th-15th May 2010. This was attended by over 2800 delegates over the 2 days. John Hagee preached to a packed auditorium at Westminster Central Hall, London on the Friday Evening on the subject “Who Is God?” and then taught at 4 sessions on the Saturday on the book of Revelation. Additionally, a Partner’s Dinner was hosted on Thursday 13th May with over 150 Partner’s in attendance. On the Saturday morning over 180 Pastors gathered to be taught by Pastor Hagee on Spiritual Authority.

JHM UK is based in an office in Swindon, in the west of England, and is headed by a certain Des Starritt, who provides management services for a number of organisations and religious ministries.

Burden, meanwhile, has contrasted Hagee with Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Salah entered the UK for a visit late last month and was waved through by border officials; it was belatedly realised he was supposed to be banned, and he was arrested following a talk in Leicester. Burden had been due to take part in a later event with Salah at the Houses of Parliament; Salah has a reputation for moderation, although there is (I would say, conclusive) evidence that this reputation is undeserved – see here and here. In particular, Salah has promoted the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews who worked in the World Trade Center were tipped off prior to 9/11.

UPDATE (14 July): I have just become aware of a group called Mordecai Voice (reported as “Mordecai’s Voice”), which recently held a rally outside the Israeli Embassy in London. According to its website, this group is planning a “UK Night to honour Israel”, citing John Hagee by name as the “American equivalent”. Mordecai Voice is a project of Pastor Tim Gutmann, who is with the Derbyshire-based Junction 28 Church.

(Corrected: Burden was not at the talk in Leicester. Thanks to a reader for pointing that out)

Some Notes on Rupert Murdoch and Religion

With controversy continuing to engulf Rupert Murdoch, the Catholic Herald asks “Should Rupert Murdoch’s papal knighthood be rescinded?”:

In 1998 Rupert Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory. He had apparently been recommended for the honour by Cardinal Roger Mahony, after giving money to a Church education fund. A year later he donated $10 million to help build Los Angeles Catholic cathedral.

Is it right that papal knighthoods should be awarded in this way?… And is Rupert Murdoch a person the Church should celebrate? He owns – or did own – a newspaper that lost its moral bearings; he ought to bear some responsibility for that…

The Independent reported at the time:

The Roman Catholic church is receiving complaints from worshippers following news that Rupert Murdoch has been awarded a papal knighthood from Pope John Paul II.

Senior Catholics are said to have been “mystified and astonished” when they heard that the purveyor of newspaper sex, scandal and nudity was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory at a ceremony in Los Angeles last month.

News of the award was kept out of Mr Murdoch’s British titles – the Sun, the Times, the Sunday Times and the News of the World – at his request, although it is provoking outrage in the religious media and in Ireland, where many Catholics have reacted with anger that Mr Murdoch, who is not a Catholic, appears to have been honoured purely for donating large sums of money to the church.

Murdoch showed his gratitude for the honour a few years later by announcing the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI with the Sun headline “From Hitler Youth to Papa Ratzi“.

Meanwhile, the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) is concerned about having shares in Murdoch’s News International:

While the EIAG welcomes decision to close the News of the World, this action is not a sufficient response to the revelations of malpractice at this paper. Nor does it address the failure of News International and News Corporation executives to undertake a proper investigation and take decisive action as soon as the police uncovered illegal phone hacking in 2006.

The EIAG chairman has written to Rupert Murdoch today (8.7.11) to insist that the Board of News Corporation takes all necessary measures to instil investor confidence in the ethical and governance standards of News Corporation.

We cannot imagine circumstances in which we would be satisfied with any outcome that does not hold senior executives to account at News Corporation for the gross failures of management at the News of the World.

Murdoch’s empire, it should be recalled, also has a huge stake in religious publishing: Murdoch owns HarperCollins, which includes the evangelical Zondervan imprint. Collins has a strong reputation for religious books in the UK, although one editor there, Robin Baird-Smith, quit in disgust in the early 1980s for reasons that he explained to Christian Bookseller in December 2000:

If you are running a religious book list as part of a large corporation, you are in the last analysis a small part of someone else’s global plan… [Y]ou are also subject to censorship, and outside editorial control. At HarperCollins we were owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owned the Sun newspaper. One day I received a call from the features editor of that newspaper saying that they were going to publish in serial form the memoirs of Sonia Sutcliffe, the wife of Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) and he wanted Collins to publish the book. That was the moment when what it meant to be part of a corporation really sunk in and I decided that I had to leave. (1)

Murdoch’s interference with HarperCollins was highlighted in 1998 (the same year that he received his Papal honour), when he attempted to prevent the publication of a book by Chris Patten about the Hong Kong handover – Patten’s editor, Stuart Proffitt, was told to inform Patten’s agent that the book was “substandard”. It was clear that Murdoch wished to appease the Chinese government in order to protect business interests in China (although he continues to deny it), and Proffitt, like Baird-Smith before him, resigned rather than compromise. The Independent denounced Murdoch as “a liar and a threat to democracy” over the affair.

As regards Zondervan, it is claimed that Murdoch takes a hands-off approach – in 1999, Doug Ross, President of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) in the USA, told an industry seminar in Durham, NC, that :

HarperCollins exerts no non-Christian ideas on Zondervan. Why? Well, Rupert Murdoch, who is at the helm of all that, who is not known for Christian ministry, recognises that Zondervan’s distinctive is the publishing of Christian material…They don’t want to change the company… Zondervan gets its money from HarperCollins, who is Murdoch, that’s not different than maybe you borrowing money to expand your store from a bank that does not have John 3:16 above its door… I personally don’t know of any circumstance where that message has ever been compromised.

However, there have been concerns about whether Murdoch’s business practices are compatible with evangelical religious values. In 2005 there were Christian complaints about Zondervan’s use of Chinese labour to print Bibles, and in 2007 Rick Warren’s connections to Murdoch brought him some critical attention. In 2005, the Orange County Register had reported that

Warren says he is pastor to Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. subsidiary publishes “The Purpose-Driven Life” but also publishes tabloid newspapers featuring topless women.

“I don’t have to agree with 100 percent of what another person does in order to work with them on the 20 percent that we do agree on,” Warren says.

The claim also appeared in the New Yorker the same year:

…”I had dinner with Jack Welch last Sunday night,” he said. “He came to church, and we had dinner. I’ve been kind of mentoring him on his spiritual journey. And he said to me, ‘Rick, you are the biggest thinker I have ever met in my life. The only other person I know who thinks globally like you is Rupert Murdoch.’ And I said, ‘That’s interesting. I’m Rupert’s pastor! Rupert published my book!’ ” Then he tilted back his head and gave one of those big Rick Warren laughs.

Apparently Murdoch donated $2 million to Warren’s “PEACE” plan for Africa (background here), but in 2007 Warren’s attitude changed to “I know not the man”: the Christian Post reported that:

Chris Rosebrough, head of the Calif.-based Christian Accountability Network, was one of a number of Christians who earlier this month said that Warren should “call Murdoch to repentance and/or put him out of the church.”

…According to London-based magazine The Business, Murdoch has been secretly building a stable of wholly-owned pornographic channels for his BSkyB subsidiary. The British publication claims that BSkyB now owns and operates its own pornographic channels – the 18+ Movies selection – after years of hosting third-party content only.

…In response, David Chrzan, chief of staff at Saddleback Church, pointed out that Murdoch, who resides in Manhattan, was not a member of the Southern California megachurch and that he had never even attended a service there.

The story was seized on with glee by Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily, who launched a salvo from the right which drew attention the Orange County Register and New Yorker quotes.

Murdoch does seem to have a liking for evangelists; in a new article at ASSIST Ministries, Dan Wooding recalls:

The phone rang in the Billy Graham media room just before the start of Mr. Graham’s Greater Puerto Rico Global Mission, which originated March 16-18, 1995 in San Juan, and was beamed around the world by satellite.

I picked it up and at the other end of the line was a man with an Australian accent, who asked to speak to Billy Graham.

I asked, “Whose calling,” and he replied, “Rupert Murdoch”

When I explained that Mr. Graham was not at this number I asked the media baron if I could convey a message to Billy and he replied, “Please tell him that I am praying for his crusade.”

Maybe Murdoch thought a connection to Graham would bring him luck: after all, Graham had come to fame after catching the attention of the man who must be Murdoch’s role-model. The story is well-known:

Evangelist Billy Graham recalls in his new book the pivotal point in his young ministry when, during a 1949 Los Angeles crusade, a two-word directive from publisher William Randolph Hearst to “puff Graham” made him an instant celebrity nationwide.

The sudden front-page coverage showered on Graham by Hearst newspapers in mid-October (after three weeks of little notice) was quickly matched by other newspapers and newsmagazines–literally a media circus descending on his rallies under a big tent.

The elder statesman of evangelical Christianity contends in “Just as I Am” (HarperCollins), however, that he never learned why Hearst took an interest in him. “Hearst and I did not meet, talk by phone, or correspond as long as he lived,” Graham wrote.

***

(1) In fact, Sonia Sutcliffe told the press that she was “adverse” to any book deal, and Murdoch lost interest in the face of public opposition to “chequebook journalism”: “They’ll pass a law against you”, he told the then-editor of the News of the World, Barry Askew – background here.

Awards to Presidents of Syria and Yemen Cited in Clash Between Orders of Saint George

Here’s one I missed from last month, as reported by Damian Thompson: the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has received a letter written on behalf of “HRH the Infante D. Carlos, Duke of Calabria, Grand Master of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, Head of the Royal House of Bourbon of the Two Sicilies and Doyen of the Knights of the Golden Fleece”. The Archbishop is chaplain to a rival Constantinian Order of Saint George, which is headed by Carlos’ cousin Prince Carlo Duke of Castro and which is scheduled to hold an service in the cathedral, and the letter attacks this rival faction.

Among the points raised is “the scandalous awards of the Constantinian Gold Medal to the Presidents of the Republics of Syria and the Yemen”. This is not the only controversial religious award that the President of Yemen has received – just recently the Moscow Times asked

why did Russia’s St. Andrew’s Foundation — headed by Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin, the Kremlin’s model “Orthodox businessman” — award Yemeni dictator Saleh its International Prize of the Holy Apostle Andrew?

Saleh was honored for his contributions to the notion of “dialogue among civilizations” (intended to be an alternative to the “clash of civilizations”) in 2004, the year marking the 10-year anniversary of the civil war in Yemen that Saleh had started — one that took the lives of more than 10,000 people.

More recently, Yakunin doled out an award to the President of Kazakhstan.

Returning to the “Carlos or Carlo” question, it should be noted that Prince Carlo also regards himself to be “Head of the Royal House of Bourbon of the Two Sicilies”, and this dispute is why there are two rival Constantinian Orders of Saint George. According to this site, by a certain L. Mendola and taking a pro-Carlo position, the issue goes back to 1900, when a previous Carlo (b. 1870) renounced his claim to the Two Sicilies position, then held by his elder brother Fernandino Pio, in order to marry a Spanish princess. Fernandino Pio died in 1960, and because his surviving offspring were all daughters the claim passed to Ranieri, another younger brother, rather than to Alfonso, the son of the by-then deceased Carlo. Ranieri’s grandson is Carlo Duke of Castro (b. 1963), while Alfonso’s son is the Infante Carlos (b. 1938). Apparently, Alfonso had reasserted the claim which his father had rejected in the vain hope of monarchical restoration in Italy; he had been encouraged in this this by Juan, Duke of Barcelona, who wished to strengthen the chances of his son Juan Carlos becoming King of Spain following the death of Franco by having Alfonso’s family out of the running.

Mendola adds that

…As much as one may marvel at the activities (in several countries) of the order bestowed by Infante Carlos of Spain, it is here in southern Italy, in the former Two Sicilies, that the truly bizarre situations are to be seen. One of my favorite examples occurs annually in Palermo on 23 April for the feast of Saint George, the order’s patron, when two organisations with the same name observe the same event with masses held at about the same hour in two churches located not half a mile from each other.

Thompson claims that the Carlos faction has “better credentials” than the Carlo faction, although it’s not clear on what this is based besides Thompson’s animus to the Carlo faction’s delegate in London, Anthony Bailey. Thompson notes that Bailey is a “PR man and Labour Party donor”, and that:

Amusingly, Mr Bailey calls himself “His Excellency” when playing this role; he is also described as the Order’s “worldwide Grand Magistral Delegate for Inter-Religious Relations”.

Thompson also draws attention  a 2007 Guardian profile of Bailey here (“the Vatican and the House of Saud take his calls… Bailey, whose circle of close acquaintances includes Prince Khalid al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Prince Charles, is to chair Labour’s Faith Task Force when it launches in July.”). The Carlo faction also has a sister order, the Royal Order of Francis I, which is an inter-faith organisation. Baroness Thatcher is a member, as are Rowan Williams and George Carey.

I’ve previously blogged on the strange world of chivalric orders here. There are also various other organisations called the “Order of Saint George”, which do not claim any association with the “Constantinian Order” or any particular link to Roman Catholicism. One of these is the “Knightly Order”, which was founded in Hungary – its UK “Grand Priory” enjoys as its “spiritual protector” none other than Andrew White, the famous “Vicar of Baghdad”; White’s predecessor in this role was Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican Bishop of Rochester. Interestingly, several individuals involved with this group made their names in the 1980s as radical-right libertarian Conservative political activists.