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

a moral position against war of any kind. The question in this instance, however, does not arise in a vacuum but in a setting flowing from the black box of Shariah. That black box, once pried open, exposes a hostile and even violent doctrine targeting non -Muslims in the West for conversion, subjugation, or war. There literally are armies of Shariah- driven combatants at war with the West based upon that doctrine. It is in this context that the question about the motives for the prohibition be- comes material to a post -9/ 11 U. S. investor and applicable disclosure laws. The question hardens into an indictment when juxtaposed against the published legal edicts of the classical and contemporary Shariah authorities. To suggest that Shariah is opposed to the defense industry is absurd on its face, given the history of Shariah -based empires waging war against their enemies. The evidence is more than historical, however, as the contempo- rary evidence of Shariah -based regimes illustrates. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and the Taliban all have acquired massive weapons arsenals and, at least in the case of Iran, have developed an Islamic defense industry." The adoption of such a military posture on the part of these Muslim countries is not simply grounded in a geo- strategic pol- icy. It is also demanded by Shariah, at least according to the leading Shariah authorities of our day. For example, in Usmani' s book, Islam and Modernism, he makes the careful point that Shariah has no objections to science and technology per se. In fact, he opines that Shariah requires Muslims to invest in and to utilize all of modern warfare technology for its mandatory jihad: The Grand Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Muhammad Shafi, President, Darul Ulum, Karachi, has written in his treatise `Jihad" as under, Indeed, the Patience, the fear of Allah and total belief in and submission to Allah is the real and unconquerable strength of Muslims. Along with it, however, it is also essential that equipment of war and ammunition proper to the time and place should be acquired and stored. The Prophet (SA) always arranged for war exercises, and issued instructions to collect and acquire all those weapons that were in vogue anywhere in those days. [ Usmani goes on to cite the case where two companions of Muhammad were excused from fighting because they were studying how to manufacture modern war weapons.] This incidence (sic) also proves that it is obligatory for the Muslims to make their countries self-sufficient in war weapons and technology and 62 Shariah, Law and ` Financial Jihad': How Should America Respond? should not depend on others.... We are bound to think it seriously how much our country is in need of all the equipment and weapons of war used in modern warfare so that we may not be lagging behind. We must put all our energy and resources to fulfill the aim that we become self -suffi- cient in the nearest possible future. Moulana Zafar Ahmad Usmani, Sheikh- ul- Hadith, Darul -Ulum- al- Islamiya, Tando Allah Yar, writes in one of his recent articles: War weapons and technology against the enemy should be raised to the extent that the enemy is overawed with them ...our earlier Caliphs and Sultans religiously followed this rule ....The Muslim nations should join together to build up factories for ammunition and other weapons, and a continued process of research and inventions must be carried out. All these efforts are in conformity with Quranic injunction. Investors are of course free to exclude defense industries from their port- folios. Muslim nations are also free to purchase or manufacture armaments. There is, however, a threshold disclosure issue for a U. S. company that is promoting SCF, which forbids investment in the defense industry. If that pro- hibition is due to the fact that Shariah considers Islam at war with the West, the promotion of Shariah and its " opposition" to defense industries is hardly full disclosure. The aforementioned acknowledgement by Dow Jones that there is " no consensus" on the question of whether the defense sector is a forbidden industry suggests that someone in the inner circle at Dow Jones under- stands an unstated fact: DJII' s Shariah authorities are using SCF to weaken their enemies ( i. e., the non -Muslim West), while mandating through their legal rulings (applied selectively) that Shariah- adherent subscribers should embrace the weapons industry in the Muslim world in the service of jihad. This rather patent implication suggests more than a reckless disregard for the duty to disclose material facts to the investing public. It is simply untenable to argue that these omissions of purpose ( i. e.; Shariah hegemony) and methodology ( i. e., jihad) in the disclosures and rep- resentations by Dow Jones as a U. S. public company are not material to the reasonable U. S. investor. There are two possible explanations for such omis- sions: 1) There has been a wholesale failure to conduct even a minimally acceptable due diligence by legal counsel on this issue. Or 2) legal counsel knows full well the purposes for such prohibitions —and, indeed, of Shariah 63  Case Studies: Dow Jones, Shariah -Compliant Finance and Wall Street and its methodologies —and has consciously opted to bury this political -mili- tary agenda deep inside the black box. The Dow Jones Islamic Fund The Dow Jones Islamic Fund ( DJIF) was the name given to an open - ended mutual fund marketed publicly mostly to the Muslim- American community. Recently, though, the fund' s name was changed to the Iman Fund and the original licensing arrangement with Dow Jones was termi- nated. The official explanation for this termination was provided by Dow Jones Indexes in a letter from its president Michael A. Petronella to Frank Gaffney and David Yerushalmi at the Center for Security Policy dated May 28, 2008. In that letter, Mr. Petronella explained that Dow Jones learned only in late February 2008 for the first time that DJIF' s principal sharehold- er ( with 69.8 %), the North American Islamic Trust ( "NAIT "), had been iden- tified by the Department of Justice as an un- indicted co- conspirator in a terrorism -financing case. Here again, serious questions abound concerning Dow Jones' due dili- gence in connection with this and other Shariah -compliant finance initiatives. For example, on its Internet site, NAIT represents itself as follows: The North American Islamic Trust ( NAIT) is a waqf, the historical Islamic equivalent of an American trust or endowment, serving Muslims in the United States and their institutions. NAIT facilitates the realization of American Muslims' desire for a virtuous and happy life in a Shariah compliant way. NAIT is a not -for -profit entity that qualifies as a tax-exempt organization under Section 501( c) ( 3) of the Internal Revenue Code. NAIT was estab- lished in 1973 in Indiana by the Muslim Students Association of U. S. and Canada ( MSA), the predecessor of the Islamic Society of North America ISNA). NAIT supports and provides services to ISNA, MSA, their affiliates, and other Islamic centers and institutions. The President of ISNA is an ex- officio member of the Board of Trustees of NAIT. The trouble with Dow Jones' post hoc explanation, still not made public by Dow Jones, is that, long before February 2008, it was well -known that NAIT and its associated organizations —i. e., the Muslim Students Association and the Islamic Society of North America —have all been linked to organizations involved in the material support of terrorism. For example, prior to the start of the 2007 terror -financing trial of the Holy Land 64 Sharjah, Law and `Financial Jihad': How Should America Respond? Foundation ( "HLF "), the U. S. government submitted a trial brief with a list of unindicted co- conspirators (the " List of Co- Conspirators ") who had allegedly participated in some way in the conspiracy to fund Hamas' terror -related activities against Israel. Hamas was at the time a designated foreign terrorist organization ( FTO). In its trial brief, the government characterized Hamas as follows: Hamas' founding charter makes clear that Hamas is, in fact, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and calls for the annihila- tion of Israel through " jihad" ( holy war), and the creation of an Islamic state in its place. Hamas defines jihad as including violent activities, with such violent activities being carried out by Hamas' military wing, commonly known as the Izz AI -Din AI- Qassam Brigades ( "AI- Qassam Brigades "). The charter also calls for charity as [ a] means of securing the population' s loyalty. Through charitable support, the charter explains, congeniality will deepen, cooperation and compassion will prevail, unity will firm up, and the ranks will be strengthened in the confrontation with the enemy. As evidenced by documents seized in 2004 from the Virginia home of un- indicted co- conspirator and fellow Palestinian Committee member Ismail Elbarrasse, as well as other evidence, the Muslim Brotherhood directed its Palestinian Committees throughout the world, including the United States, to carry out the mandate of assisting Sheik Yassin' s newly formed Hamas. NAIT and ISNA were both identified on the List of Co- Conspirators as individuals /entities who are and /or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Evidence at the trial linked these organizations to Hamas. Although the trial ended in a mistrial, the Government is preparing to retry its main case. How, it might be asked, did the legal advisors to Dow Jones navigate the due diligence and disclosure issues associated with such a problematic principal licensee? The short answer is that they seem to have been willing, until publicly embarrassed by an editorial that was published on February 27, 2008 in Investors Business Daily, to ignore the implications of the intrin- sic elements of Shariah ( i. e., jihad) described above that the Fund inherited from the DJII. But even more troublesome is that the Dow Jones' lawyers also appear to have looked- the -other -way on the record of organizational connections between NAIT and material support for terror. 65  Case Studies: Dow Jones, Shariah -Compliant Finance and Wall Street Other disturbing connections to the funding of terrorism arise. The Dow Jones Islamic Fund' s portfolio manager is Dr. Bassam Osman. As noted above, he has also been the President and Chairman of the DJIF Fund Advisor for the past six years. He was also director to another suspect Muslim charity, the Quranic Literary Institute, an Oak Lawn, Illinois, organiza- tion that had $ 1. 4 million in assets seized by the Justice Department in June 1998 on the grounds it was used to support Hamas activities. Finally, NAIT's well -known ownership of the mortgages of a majority of Shariah- adherent mosques in the United States —including a number that have been reamed as suspected centers of terrorist activity— raises further questions about its fitness to be a licensee on a Dow Jones -branded mutual fund. For example, in April 2004, the founder of a NAITowned mosque in Albany and the imam he had recruited to serve as its spiritual leader were arrested for participating in " a plot to import a shoulder -fired missile and assassinate a Pakistani diplomat in New York City." In light of these ties, the standard representation of compliance with the Patriot Act's anti -money laundering provisions contained in the DJIF' s prospectus rings not just hollow, but