The Redhunter

Andy McCarthy provides some answers:

Why They Can't Condemn Hamas
Rauf and his friends employ different methods, but they are on the same team National Review
by Andy McCarthy
August 28, 2010

If you want to know whether an ostensible Muslim "moderate" is really moderate, ask him if Hamas is a terrorist organization.

It is really not a hard question, even if Feisal Rauf can't -- or won't -- answer it. Rauf, the would-be imam of the controversial Ground Zero mosque, is also a stud in the State Department's stable of ready-to-travel-on-your-dime "moderates." That same State Department has branded Hamas a terrorist organization, and we can't even get it to say that about the Taliban, the guys we're fighting in the overseas contingency operation formerly known as the War on Terror.

During a WABC radio interview, Aaron Klein three times pressed Rauf to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Rauf bobbed and weaved in classic Islamist style. "I'm not a politician," he replied, as if only politicians trouble themselves over whether terrorists are terrorists. "I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question."
...

With due respect to Imam Kringle and Islam's other American cheerleaders, this neither "twists up the religion to serve a political agenda" nor "hijacks" Islam. Hamas, to the contrary, accurately quoted Islamic scripture. As the scholar Andrew Bostom observes, the pronouncement by Mohammed about Muslims killing all remaining Jews on the Day of Judgment comes straight from a canonical hadith, Sahih Muslim, Book 41, No. 6985. Hadiths are collections of the prophet's words and deeds, and the one in question flows seamlessly from the Koran itself, from verses like Sura 2:61, which condemns Jews for purportedly rejecting Allah's signs and "slaying his Messengers." That indictment, reiterated in Sura 3:112, is echoed in the Hamas charter's opening passages: "They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve the revelations of Allah, and slew the Prophets wrongfully." Thus, the charter warns, "Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors."

THE BROTHERHOOD

This is why Imam Rauf and his friends get so tongue-tied when it comes to Hamas. Like many of Rauf's principal supporters in the United States, Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood; in fact, it is its Palestinian branch. Don't take my word for it. Here's what Hamas itself says, in the charter:

Article Two: The Link between Hamas and the Association of Muslim Brothers: The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of the Muslim Brothers in Palestine. The Muslim Brotherhood Movement is a world organization, the largest Islamic Movement in the modern era. It is characterized by a profound understanding, by precise notions and by a complete comprehensiveness of all concepts of Islam in all domains of life: views and beliefs, politics and economics, education and society, jurisprudence and rule, indoctrination and teaching, the arts and publications, the hidden and the evident, and all the other domains of life.

Again: no separation of the spiritual and the temporal, of Islamic and civil law. They are one. And, it turns out, the top priority of Rauf's Cordoba Initiative is the Sharia Index Project, which is designed to plant and expand Islamic law in every country. Wonder of wonders, that just happens to be the Muslim Brotherhood's top priority -- the installation of sharia being the necessary precondition to the Islamicizing of a society. And, lo and behold, Rauf's partners in the Sharia Index Project include Jamal Barzinji and his International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).

This is the background and all very accurate. The Muslim Brotherhood is the guiding light behind Hamas, and no doubt many of Rauf's buddies are associated with the Brotherhood. It has infiltrated many or most Muslim organizations in most countries, such are it's tentacles.

Here's the key: Rauf and many other Muslims won't condemn Hamas because they don't consider it's attacks on Israeli's to be terrorism.

The WABC with Rauf was a PR disaster, and Rauf's office quickly tried to repair the damage. McCarthy again:

Rauf's office put out a statement: "Imam Feisal has always condemned terrorism (see his . . . hundreds of speeches). Hamas is both a political movement and a terrorist organization. Hamas commits atrocious acts of terror. Imam Feisal has forcefully and consistently condemned all forms of terrorism, including those committed by Hamas, as un-Islamic."

These are clever assertions. They give Rauf's admirers ammunition to plead his case but leave his Brotherhood friends pacified. Yes, Rauf now appears, finally, to concede that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Yet it is one he cannot bring himself to condemn because, voila, it's also a "political movement" (just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). Rauf condemns "terrorism" in the abstract, but don't ask him to condemn specific terrorists. Being against "terrorism" is safe: The Brotherhood does not consider attacks by Hamas to be "terrorism" -- they are resistance (as in "the Islamic Resistance Movement" -- Hamas). Rauf declares that "targeting civilians is wrong," but when it comes to Israel, a country fighting for its survival, Brotherhood ideology emphasizes that all Jewish men and unmarried women are drafted into the armed forces, and most remain in the reserves for years thereafter; therefore, most Jewish Israelis are not considered civilians by Hamas.

But wait a second, you say: Didn't Rauf declare outright that he is a "supporter of the state of Israel"? He certainly did, but he was careful not to say in what form. In fact, he supports a state of Israel stripped of its Jewish character. Earlier this week, a 2005 speech was uncovered in which Rauf explained that he sees Israel, with its growing Arab sector, becoming "post-Zionist," "secular," and "multicultural." He perceives its "identity" as a Jewish state having "shifted enormously" since its founding. Consequently, he rejects the so-called "two-state solution" -- the American government dream of a Jewish state and a Muslim state, co-existing side-by-side in peace. Instead, Rauf concluded, "My own personal analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two-state solution."

And there you have it; what they really want is to destroy Israel and put a Muslim state governed by some form of the sharia. Jews and Christians can live there, but only as dhimmi. No thanks.