http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/personnel_is_policy_the_case_o.html

The article "Baker's ISG: Shilling for the saudis", exposes the extensive financial ties of members of the ISG to Saudi Arabia and other gulf arab regimes. Among these connections are Citigroup, the Middle East Institute, the Middle East Policy Council, and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Bechtel, the Carlyle Group and the saudi bin laden group.  The ISG is far from being a diverse and neutral group of people, but are rather a monolithic group of people with a shared interest in carrying out the wishes of their saudi benefactors, which of course means an anti-Israel agenda.  I'm still waiting for the Walt and Meirsheimer study of how the arab lobby is subverting American interests in the Middle East.

In "O, Muslim town of Bethlehem" the situation of Bethlehem's beleaguered Christian community is described.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=423126&in_page_id=1770

...The town, according to the Cardinal, is being "steadily strangled".

The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem.

A mosque on one side of Manger Square stands directly opposite the Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, while in the evening the muezzin's call to prayer clashes with the peal of church bells.

Shops selling Santa Claus outfits and mother-of-pearl statuettes of the Virgin Mary have their shutters painted a sun-bleached green, the colour of Islam.

And in the Al-Jacir Palace, Bethlehem's only luxury hotel, there is a baubled Christmas tree in reception and a card showing the direction of Mecca in the rooms.

George Rabie, a 22-year-old taxi driver from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala, is proud of his Christianity, even though it puts him in daily danger.

Two months ago, he was beaten up by a gang of Muslims who were visiting Bethlehem from nearby Hebron and who had spotted the crucifix hanging on his windscreen.

"Every day, I experience discrimination," he says. "

"It is a type of racism. We are a minority so we are an easier target. Many extremists from the villages are coming into Bethlehem."

Jeriez Moussa Amaro, a 27-year-old aluminium craftsman from Beit Jala is another with first-hand experience of the appalling violence that Christians face.

Five years ago, his two sisters, Rada, 24, and Dunya, 18, were shot dead by Muslim gunmen in their own home.

Their crime was to be young, attractive Christian women who wore Western clothes and no veil. Rada had been sleeping with a Muslim man in the months before her death.

A terrorist organisation, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement claiming responsibility, which said: "We wanted to clean the Palestinian house of prostitutes."

Jeriez says: "A Christian man is weak compared to a Muslim man.

"They have bigger, more powerful families and they know people high up in the Palestinian authority."

...

Samir Qumsieh is general manager of Al-Mahed - Nativity - which is the only Christian television station in Bethlehem.

He has had death threats and visits from armed men demanding three acres of his land - and he is now ready to leave.

"As Christians, we have no future here," he says.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53241

A black convert to orthodox Sunni Islam, Ellison spoke to the North American Imams Federation, or NAIF, at the group's Nov. 19 conference in Minneapolis.

His talk flowed into a breakout session listed on the agenda simply as "American Open University," according to the conference program. It turns out the university is a "distance-learning" center based in Alexandria, Va., and known to local law enforcement as "Wahhabi Online."

Later that day, Ellison met with NAIF's president, Omar Ahmad Shahin, who lectures at the same American Open University. (He also met at the time with New York imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.) The radical Islamic school trains many of NAIF's more than 150 members, who control mosques across America.

American Open University supports Sharia, or Islamic law. And its founder and chairman, Jaafar Sheikh Idris, has denounced the U.S system of democracy as "the antithesis of Islam" and argued no man has the right to make laws outside Allah's laws expressed in the Quran.

"There is a basic difference between Islam and this form of democracy," he says. "The basic difference is that in Islam it is [Allah's] law as expressed in the Quran and the Sunna that is the supreme law within the limits of which people have the right to legislate.

"No one can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to that divine law," Idris adds. "Examples of such violations include the legalization of alcoholic drinks, gambling, homosexuality, usury or interest, and even adoption."

Conversely, laws prohibiting polygamy and domestic violence also violate the Quran.

Further, he maintains that no Muslim elected to Congress or the White House can swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution and still be a Muslim.

"No Muslim could become president in a secular regime, for in order to pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of his belief and embrace the belief of secularism – which is practically another religion. For Muslims, the word 'religion' does not only refer to a collection of beliefs and rituals, it refers to a way of life which includes all values, behaviors and details of living," Idris says. "Separation of religion and state is not an option for Muslims because it requires us to abandon [Allah's] decree for that of a man."

He further explains: "Islam cannot be separated from the state because it guides Muslims through every detail of running the state and their lives. Muslims have no choice but to reject secularism for it excludes the laws of [Allah]."

Also, he asserts that "there is absolutely no compromise: Any belief that contradicts Islam is false."