| | | Islamists 'staking claim' with Maryland 'cultural center'
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by: Michael Carl
WND.com
6/10/13
On his visit to a new Turkish-funded mosque in Lanham, Md., Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erodogan said his government chose the site because of its location in “free territory.”
He said when he attended the groundbreaking of the 15-acre, $100 million mega-mosque that the Turkish-American Cultural Center likely will become “the largest and most striking examples of Islamic architecture in the Western hemisphere when finished in 2014.”
But those seemingly innocuous words are alarming to a number of analysts, including former Palestinian operative Walid Shoebat, who says the West doesn’t realize the significance of what Erdogan was saying.
Shoebat said Erdogan’s true mission is to claim the land for Islam, and the evidence is in his words.
“The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers,” Shoebat said, quoting Erdogan.
“The West is unaware that in Islam, a mosque is an embassy and Turkey is acting stealthily, which is why the project is not arousing much alarm,” Shoebat said.
Islam analyst and Atlas Shrugs blogger Pamela Geller agrees. Most Americans don’t know that the plans showcase Turkey’s long-held territorial dream, she said.
“The Turks are trying to restore the glory of the Ottoman period. They may be staking a claim to be the leaders of Sunni Islam worldwide, as they were in the days of the last caliphate,” Geller said.
Clarion Project intelligence analyst Ryan Mauro noted that Turkey’s influence is largely under the radar.
He said Turkey is quietly spreading its influence in the U.S.
Shoebat said the Turkish plan coincides with a plan by Fethullah Gulen, reported by Der Spiegel. Gulen is an operative who has been establishing charter schools around the U.S.
Shoebat cited a statement from Gulen: “Move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers. Until the conditions are ripe, they (the followers) must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere.
“You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power. Until that time, any step taken would be too early – like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside.”
WND reported in February 2011 that Gulen was the leader of a 27-state, 100-charter school network that subtly teaches the students to hold a favorable view of Islam.
Koinonia Institute President Steven Elwart believes the indoctrination is subdued but intentional.
“There is a certain amount of an Islamic-centered slant to their teaching. One place they really start bringing in the slant is through their after-school programs and what they call their outside programs,” Elwart observed.
“For example, they’ll have Turkish festivals and the kids can compete in making costumes, writings and the like. Many times the prize for these in these competitions is a cultural trip to Turkey,” Elwart said.
Elwart believes that the Gulen charter schools are going largely unnoticed by the American public.
Mauro wrote in an analysis of the event that it’s significant that two members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups were also in attendance, Naeem Baig, president of the Islamic Circle of North America, or ICNA, and Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America, ISNA.
A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo lists ICNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The memo says its “work” in America is “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
Mauro noted the memo even refers to meetings with ICNA in which there was talk about a merger.
ISNA was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, the largest Islamic terror-funding trial in the history of the U.S.
Shoebat saidt Erdogan’s ambitions clearly extend past Maryland.
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