Fort Walton Beach Council agenda — 03-09-2010 Regular — reading text

from overseas. Scarcely less worrisome is the fact that the infrastructure is also in place for an ideological Islamic assault on America from within. This infrastructure is comprised of a large number of mosques, schools, social clubs and other organizations openly teaching historical, traditional and authoritative Shariah including the call for violent jihad. To be sure, many Muslims in America appear to construe their obligation to engage in jihad as a personal, peaceful and pietistic struggle. Others, however, pursue a non -violent —and, therefore, legal —form of jihad aimed at persuading Americans to embrace Islam as a religion, political doctrine and obligation to work to bring about an Islamic state. In addition, there are 14 Shariah, Law and `Financial Jihad': How Should America Respond? still other Muslims who operate " underground" and explicitly advocate violence and Islamic war against America as the Great Satan. Understanding the true sentiments and agendas of the latter two cate- gories of Muslim individuals and organizations is made more difficult by their frequent adoption of an unthreatening and tolerant veneer in public settings where English is used. In private, however, and in their native tongues usually Arabic, Farsi or Urdu), they frequently are more candid about their anti -American and even violent ambitions. As discussed above, Shariah demands of the Muslim faithful that they carry out —or at least support—violent jihad when circumstances permit. In order to assess accurately the threat posed across America by domestic jihadists, it is necessary to identify: the Muslim organizations and mosques teaching and preaching Shariah; how it rates on a scale designed to measure systematically the extent of Shariah adherence that is being taught or preached ( based upon one of the five historical, traditional and authoritative jurisprudential schools of fiqh, or legal interpretation); and to what degree does the particular brand of Shariah advocated call for jihad, and which aspect of jihad. Project Methodology A team of experienced former intelligence officers and counter -terrorism experts and Islamic scholars (Arabs, Christians and Jews), many fluent in Arabic, Urdu, and Farsi, are visiting America's 2,300 -plus mosques and associated schools to collect information that includes the level of Shariah adherence in practice, prayer and discussion and the statements by their leaders and the literature and other materials they disseminate which advocate violent Jihad. Through this investigation, the project is developing two products: First, for law enforcement officials, an interactive, cross -indexed mapping and ranking of Shariah as it is preached, taught, and observed in each of the mosques and Islamic day schools. And second, for the public, an open access portal that provides the ranking of individual mosques and schools. W Mapping Shariah in America The project is designed with two goals in mind: 1. To examine the extent to which Shariah amounts to a criminal conspira- cy to overthrow the government of the United States by undermining and ultimately replacing the Constitution with Islamic law. In the process, every effort is made to document evidence of jihadist sympa- thies or teachings since such activities are tactics for advancing Shariah. 2. To test the hypothesis that one can identify and interdict much of the early groundwork used to establish jihadist cells and networks by iden- tifying mosques and Islamic schools that are teaching and preaching traditional and authoritative Shariah. As the link between Shariah and the threat to the United States from jihad is thus documented, there will be strong grounds for the criminalization of authoritative Shariah —that is, treating it as a criminal conspiracy to under- mine the Constitution and to commit murder and treason. c Chapter 3: What is Shariah- Compliant Finance? hariah- Compliant Finance is not strictly speaking a Quranic requirement of faithful Muslims. In fact, there is only one refer- ence in the Quran to the Arabic term riba, a prohibition that was traditionally understood to apply to the practice of usury, not traditional interest transactions. Rather, Shariah -Compliant Finance ( SCF) is an invention of the 20th Century. The influential Islamist ideologue Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi took it upon himself in the 1940s to chart out a course for Muslim cultural and polit- ical reassertion in the face of what he saw as an onslaught of Westernization that ostensibly threatened Muslims with the loss of their religious and single national identity ( i. e., the Ummah). Mawdudi saw the solution to this existential threat in a return of the Muslims to authentic Islam. To do that, he advocated building a separate, self-sustained Islamic order with its own Islamic ideology, Islamic politics and Islamic economics that taken together would guarantee an Islamic way of life and ultimately the Islamic state as the first step toward establishing Muslim rule worldwide, bound and united together through Shariah. Mawdudi' s novel call for Muslim economic reassertion was promptly taken up by others like the prominent Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s. Qutb, like Mawdudi, knew very little about economics, but saw clearly its utility in mobilizing support for the cause of political Islam. The transition from the vague discourse on Islamic economics to actual Islamic financial institutions took place several decades later, further evidence that the concept of Islamic economics was indeed a recent innovation. The driving forces behind the establishment of Islamic banking in the 1970s were two closely related developments. The first one involved the huge windfall profits that accrued to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers following the 1973 oil embargo and the dramatic spike in oil prices that followed it. Suddenly endowed with unprecedented amounts of money, Saudi Arabia dramatically accelerated its drive to promote itself as the leading country of Islam and export its Wahhabi creed worldwide by using its new financial clout. Following the embargo, Saudi funding of Islamic activities outside the Kingdom' s borders —usually depicted as " overseas development aid" — averaged $ 4 billion per annum between 1975 and 1987, a truly unprece- dented sum at the time. By 2002, according to Saudi sources, Riyadh' s Islamic largesse had built a Wahhabi -controlled network of 1500 mosques, 210 Islamic centers, 202 Islamic colleges and 2000 Islamic schools in non - Muslim countries alone. 17 What is Shariah -Compliant Finance? A first practical result of this drive was the founding of the Saudi -controlled multinational Islamic bank, the Islamic Development Bank ( IDB) in 1975. The first private bank, the Islamic Bank of Dubai followed in 1975 and several others were opened before the decade of the 1970s was over. The real takeoff of Islamic finance, however, took place in the 1980s, prompted by the success of the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979, the ongoing Islamization of Pakistan under Zia ul -Haq in the 1980s and the imposition of Shariah jurisprudence in these two countries, as well as in Sudan in the same period. The result was a veritable explosion of Islamic banks and affiliated institutions across the Muslim world. According to the International Monetary Fund ( IMF), the number of such banks reached 300 in 2005. More recent estimates from Arab sources suggest there were 400 Islamic banks active in 75 countries with close to a trillion dollars under management as of mid -2007. This does not include the dozens of Western banks that are now offering various Islamic financial products and " Islamic windows" at their institutions. As practiced today in Muslim and Western capital markets, " Shariah -com- pliant finance" means that a particular investment or financial transaction has been conducted or structured in a way deemed " legal," authorized" or " pure" ( halal) pursuant to Islamic law. Such compliance is determined by Shariah " authorities" engaged as advisors to the investment houses, commercial banks or other institutions making various SCF products available to their clients. According to SCF prospectuses and related information, the following factors determine whether, according to Shariah advisors engaged for the purpose, transactions are compliant or non -compliant: Interest: SCF transactions avoid interest through convoluted nominate contracts developed by Shariah authorities based upon classical Islamic forms; Risk: SCF transactions eschew risk ( uncertainty or speculation) as defined by Shariah authorities; Banned Industries: SCF transactions must not include prohibited haram) activities, including investments in the pork and alcohol- beverage industries, pornography, gambling, interest -based financing and Western defense, based on lists revised monthly by Shariah authorities; Obligatory Tithing: SCF can entail contributions of 2. 5% of income or more in a charitable gift ( known as zakat) that observant Muslims are obliged to make each year. The Shariah advisors are often responsible for determining the recipients of such contributions; 18 Shariah, Law and `Financial Jihad': How Should America Respond? Obligatory Donation of " Tainted" Revenue: " Purification" is required of a Shariah -compliant investment or financial transaction that has been taint- ed with forbidden revenue, whether from interest, illicit speculation ( such as trading in commodity futures) or a forbidden commercial enterprise such as the pork industry). These " tainted" funds must be purified by donating the revenue to an acceptable charity, again typically selected by Shariah authorities. The recipients of these funds are currently not dis- closed and the process is non -transparent. Shariah law requires charitable donations to jihadist combatants ( i. e., terrorists) and their families ( e.g., the support of families of suicide -homicide bombers). The Growth of Shariah- Compliant Finance At current oil prices of well over $ 120 /barrel, there are more than a trillion petrodollars available annually for global investment. To date, most Muslim investments worldwide have remained in traditional Western banking and financial products, rather than their Shariah -compliant counterparts. That is beginning to change, however, with more and more countries in the Muslim world embracing Shariah -compliant finance and total funds com- mitted globally to some kind of SCF program currently estimated to be between $ 400 billion and $ 1 trillion. What is more, the annual rate of SCF growth is projected to be on the order of 15 -25 %. (The great range in esti- mates is due in part to the rapid proliferation of new products, and the lack of disclosure about those products.) According to an article in The Banker in November 2007, " The Top 25 country ranking of the Top 500 Islamic institutions clearly demonstrates that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are by far the three largest countries provid- ing Islamic finance, with Iran' s total amounting to $ 154. 6 billion of Shariah- compliant assets ( SCAs) accounting for 30.9% of the global aggregate total of $ 500.5 billion." At this writing, Shariah -compliant finance has achieved its greatest pene- tration in Western capital markets outside the United States. Increasingly, however, American financial institutions and commercial banks are offering SCF products —particularly in the wake of the sub -prime meltdown. Typically, those in the U. S. financial sector