One of the most important challenges we face as a free people is understanding the true nature of - and threat posed by - a totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine its adherents call Shariah. So it would seem to be good news that a $3 million public education campaign is being launched nationwide to "clarify" what Shariah is.
The question is: Will this campaign be truthful and helpful, or will it amount to an exercise in what is not only permissible under Shariah, but obligatory: lying for the faith, or taqiyya in Arabic?
Unfortunately, because the sponsor of this initiative is one of the most virulent Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the United States, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Shariah tour assuredly will be all taqiyya, all the time. As we are seeing in Egypt at the moment, the Brotherhood is fully prepared to lie about its repressive agenda until it is too late for its opponents to resist.
As the old saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
For the purpose of calibrating whether the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to fool us yet again - this time, here in the United States - consider a sample of the research compiled by the Center for Security Policy about the Islamic Circle of North America, its heroes, leadership and agenda:
c ICNA was founded in 1971 by leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, a fundamentalist, anti-American, Taliban-supporting organization also known as the Pakistani branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Jamaat's primary goal is the establishment of Islamic states worldwide, governed by the tyrannical, oppressive system of Shariah law.
c ICNA reveres the rabid American-hating Iranian cleric-turned-despot Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After Sept. 11, 2001, ICNA ran a public-relations campaign extolling the "great leaders of the last 100 years." It featured Khomeini, leader of the violent Shiite revolution and totalitarian regime in Iran. ICNA's paean to this enemy of the United States remained on its website for years until it was removed before the launch of the organization's current PR effort aimed at promoting Shariah in this country.
c ICNA also considers Sayyid Qutb and Sayyid Mawdudi - the Islamist ideologues who inspired a host of Salafist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda - to be among the "great leaders of the last 100 years."
c ICNA has featured the Muslim Brotherhood's current chief ideologue, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Among Mr. al-Qaradawi's many unsavory stances is his view that democracy is permitted only when it complies with Shariah. Writing in the ICNA magazine, the Message, Mr. al-Qaradawi states: "What we seek is that legislations and codes be within the limits of the flawless texts and the overall objectives of the Shariah and the Islamic Message."
c ICNA also identified the "great movements of the last 100 years." Not surprising, given its association with the Muslim Brotherhood, this roster prominently featured al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen (the Brotherhood's name in Arabic) and two other Brotherhood-inspired Pakistani jihadist groups, Jama'at-e-Islami and Tablighi Jama'at.
c A former ICNA president, Zulfiqar Ali Shah, also was president in 2005 of the South Asia division of KindHearts, an Islamist "charity" whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury the following year for its funneling of funds to Hamas. KindHearts is still contesting its listing by the U.S. Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization. Hamas, of course, also is identified officially as such a terrorist organization, one responsible for thousands of murders - including of American citizens.
c Also in 2006, ICNA and two spinoffs, ICNA Relief and ICNA Helping Hand, funded the al-Khidmat Welfare Society and al-Khidmat Foundation, which then gave Hamas nearly $100,000.
c ICNA's past Secretary General and Vice President Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, who also is a past president of the organization's New York chapter, reportedly is about to be indicted for war crimes by the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal for the systematic execution of civilians during the civil war there. Bangladeshi groups claim Mr. Khan was a chief executioner for the al-Badr force, personally killing seven Dhaka University teachers in the city of Mirpur.
c A December 2001 ICNA South East region convention had a special program honoring convicted murderer Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown), who is serving a life sentence for killing a sheriff's deputy.
c The curriculum for ICNA's women's organization promotes jihad, Shariah rule and hatred of Jews and Christians and warns of the "dangers of secular Western thoughts and ideas."
In short, the Islamic Circle of North America is pretty much as unreliable a source as one can imagine for factual information about the unconstitutional - indeed, anti-constitutional - character of Shariah, the real objectives of its adherents elsewhere and here, and the implications for a free society like ours of submitting to this brutally woman-hating, intolerant and repressive doctrine. It would be nice to know who is putting up the $3 million for such an outfit to propagandize and mislead the American people.
We cannot afford to be fooled by Islamists any further, particularly about their ambitions for, to borrow a phrase, fundamentally transforming the United States of America. We need the truth - not taqiyya - about Shariah.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy.