John Brennan, CIA Director, Backs Obama: Islamic State Is Not Islamic

The Obama administration is doubling down on its refusal to call the Islamic State group "Islamic," with the director of the CIA saying the word would give the group "legitimacy." "It is totally inconsistent with what the overwhelming majority of Muslims throughout the world" view as Islam, said CIA director John Brennan, at a discussion Friday…

Former FBI Agent: CIA Director John Brennan Is a Muslim

John Guandolo, former FBI agent and author of Raising A Jihadi Generation -- A Handbook for Law Enforcement, Military and Intelligence Professionals, joins David to discuss his claim that CIA director John Brennan is a Muslim

Robert Spencer: John Brennan and Islam

HT: Robert Spencer @ Jihad Watch »

Beck: Its 'Plausible' That John Brennan Converted to Islam and 'Reasonable' to Ask Questions

John Brennan Converted to Islam in Saudi Arabia

Obama Advisor John Brennan Speaks about the Beauty of Islam

Barack Obama's Choice for CIA Chief 'Converted to Islam' Former FBI Agent Claims
MAIL ONLINE: John Guandolo claims John Brennan converted while in Saudi Arabia / Former FBI agent says Mr Brennan visited Mecca and Medina during Hajj

The incoming head of the CIA converted to Islam while working as a station chief in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, a former FBI agent has claimed.

John Guandolo, who retired from the FBI in 2008, said in a radio interview that John Brennan - who has been nominated by Barack Obama as the new director of the CIA - visited the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina accompanied by Saudi officials who may have persuaded him to convert.

Mr Guandolo's tale echoes elements of the plot of hit show Homeland, in which U.S. Marine Nick Brody converts to Islam while being held prisoner by al-Qaeda, only to begin working for the CIA after his release.

Mr Guandolo told the Trento Radio Show via Skype that Mr Brennan visited the holy sites during the Hajj season - in sees hundreds of thousands of Muslims converge on the cities to perform a series of rituals - while serving as CIA station chief in Riyadh between 1996 and 1999, a report on Al Arabiya News said.

Non-Muslims are prohibited from entering Mecca, and are not permitted to enter the city centre, or sacred core, of Medina.

The ex-FBI agent told the radio station Mr Brennan was 'unfit' to take charge of the CIA, and claimed U.S. government officials based in Saudi Arabia during that period 'were direct witnesses to his growing relationships with individuals who work with the Saudi government and they witnessed his conversion to Islam'. Read on and comment » | Kerry McDermott | Tuesday, February 12, 2013


HT: Robert Spencer @ Jihad Watch »

Cables Depict U.S. Haggling to Find Takers for Detainees
THE NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — Last year, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed an unorthodox way to return Guantánamo Bay prisoners to a chaotic country like Yemen without fear that they would disappear and join a terrorist group.

The king told a top White House aide, John O. Brennan, that the United States should implant an electronic chip in each detainee to track his movements, as is sometimes done with horses and falcons.

“Horses don’t have good lawyers,” Mr. Brennan replied.

That unusual discussion in March 2009 was one of hundreds recounted in a cache of secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of news organizations that reveal the painstaking efforts by the United States to safely reduce the population of the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba so that it could eventually be closed.

American diplomats went looking for countries that were not only willing to take in former prisoners but also could be trusted to keep them under close watch. In a global bazaar of sorts, the American officials sweet-talked and haggled with their foreign counterparts in an effort to resettle the detainees who had been cleared for release but could not be repatriated for fear of mistreatment, the cables show. >>> Charlie Savage and Andrew W. Lehren | Monday, November 29, 2010

Islam and the Politically Correct White House
TOWNHALL.COM: Most Americans are sympathetic to public references to Islam and to Muslims that do not offend patriotic American Muslims or affix to the Islamic religion the rantings of al-Qaeda. But sensitivity to the need to be civil to Muslims doesn’t—or shouldn’t—obviate the need for intellectual honesty when discussing or analyzing America’s Islamist political foes.

At a recent briefing to scholars and reporters at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, went into contortions to avoid admitting what seems commonsense to most Americans: there is a connection between some parts of Islamic thought and the repeated assertions of Osama bin Laden and his supporters and sympathizers that they are waging “jihad” against the United States. Brennan said the religious views of America’s Islamist terrorist adversaries shouldn’t even be discussed. Yet to accept that view would be like asking the State Department to examine the views of Adolf Hitler during Word War II and avoid mentioning his hatred of the Jews.

Brennan said the White House and State Department were avoiding reference to “jihadists” even though terrorist adversaries of the United States often call themselves exactly that. He said that jihad was “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself and one’s community.” True, this is the “greater jihad,” as defined by Mohammed himself—but it is not the whole meaning of jihad at all. In fact, serious and respected scholars of Islam such as Professor Bernard Lewis assert that by far the largest proportion of Islamic historical references to jihad refer to what is called the “lesser jihad”—the duty of Muslims to wage war on non-Muslims in order to subdue all countries and communities for Allah.

The Quran, Islam’s holy book, is quite explicit about this. Surah 9, for example, the “surah of the sword,” explicitly calls on Muslims to “fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and his Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the book [i.e,. Jews and Christians] until they pay the tax in acknowledgement of superiority and they are in a state of subjection” (Surah 9:29). Just in case readers didn’t get that message, Surah 2:216 says “jihad is enjoined for you, though you dislike it, and it may be that you dislike a thing while it is good for you, and it may be that you love a thing while it is evil for you, and Allah knows, while you do not know” (Surah 2:216).

Brennan claimed that the extremists were victims of “political, economic, and social forces,” and that they should not be described in “religious terms.” But if America’s Islamist opponents describe themselves in religious terms, why shouldn’t we take seriously what they are saying? Read on and comment>>> David Aikman | Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Brennan’s Lessons on Jihad
FRONTPAGEMAG.COM: Just recently, John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor, announced that we may no longer describe our enemy as ‘Jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam.

I have news for Mr. Brennan: it is not Americans who invented the word “Jihad”; it is Muslims who have used that word for 1400 years. Brennan is right in that Jihad is a major tenet of Islam, but he is wrong in calling it legitimate because it is a declaration of war and violence against non-Muslim individuals, governments and nations.

The Obama administration refuses to understand that the doctrine of Jihad challenges the sovereignty of any non-Muslim country and denies it exercising its right to remain non-Muslim. But after standing against the Arizona law, the current administration seems to care little about protecting the sovereignty of the United States.

If John Brennan is interested, this is the definition of Jihad given in mainstream Shafii law: “to war against non-Muslims, derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare, to establish the religion” (Shafii law # o9.0 p. 599).

To ensure that all Muslims perform or at least support Jihad, there is also a law that states that not performing Jihad or fleeing from combat with “unbelievers” is considered an enormous crime (Shafii law 377 p. 987). Not only is Jihad the duty of every Muslim, but of every Muslim head of state. Sharia says: “The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim” (o9.9 p. 603).

This Muslim notion of Jihad is being taught today across the Muslim world and producing thousands of young men and women who are committed to killing us. Jihadi commandments to kill and engage in aggressive wars against non-Muslims are all over Muslim scriptures and preached from mosques across the Middle East and even in the West. Such violent Jihadi commandments have never been amended, annulled or denied by any Muslim group with authority in the Middle East. >>> Nonie Darwish | Tuesday, June 01, 2010

John Brennan Is Totally Ignorant of Islam! Obama's Czar John Brennan on Islam
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Pakistani Taliban Behind Times Sq. Plot, Holder Says
THE NEW YORK TIMES: More firmly and publicly than before, senior officials of the Obama administration on Sunday blamed the failed attempt to blow up a bomb in Times Square on the Pakistani Taliban, an accusation that should increase pressure on the Pakistan military to attack the organization in its bastions in the lawless tribal region of North Waziristan.

“We’ve now developed evidence that shows the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview on ABC television’s news program “This Week.”

Later, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said the Taliban in Pakistan “directed this plot” and may have also financed it. The Pakistani Taliban, he said, was “intimately involved” in the attempt on May 1 by Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, to blow up gasoline and propane tanks secreted inside a Nissan Pathfinder parked on West 45th Street just yards from the heart of Times Square.

John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, echoed Mr. Holder’s statements Sunday morning, saying that it appeared that Mr. Shahzad, a resident of Bridgeport, Conn., who spent five months in Pakistan until February, was working for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP is believed by some military intelligence officials to have joined forces with Al Qaeda and may be hiding some of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who was the motivating force behind the 9/11 attack.

Until now, American officials have speculated that the Pakistan Taliban may have trained Mr. Shahzad during his visit to Pakistan, but Sunday’s statements were their most definitive about the Taliban’s role.

The conclusion that the Pakistani Taliban is behind the attempted bombing “underscores the serious threat that we face from a very determined enemy,” Mr. Brennan said on CNN’s ”State of the Union.” >>> Joseph Berger | Sunday, May 09, 2010

THE SUNDAY TIMES: US warns Pakistan over Times Square bomb attempt: The United States has delivered a tough new warning to Pakistan to crack down on Islamic militants or face severe consequences after the failed Times Square bombing. >>> Anne Barrowclough | Sunday, May 09, 2010

Obama im Gestrüpp der US-Geheimdienste: Amerikanischer Präsident will Bericht über Versagen von Detroit vorstellen
NZZ ONLINE: Der Druck auf Präsident Obama hat zugenommen. Nach dem Versagen der Geheimdienste im Fall des versuchten Attentats des Nigerianers Abdulmutallab auf ein amerikanisches Flugzeug wird vom Präsidenten erwartet, dass er Köpfe rollen lässt.

Der für Innere Sicherheit zuständige Berater Präsident Obamas, John Brennan, hat seinem Chef am Donnerstag einen nicht sogleich veröffentlichten Bericht über die Schwächen der amerikanischen Terrorabwehr vorgelegt. Darin ging es um die Frage, warum der Nigerianer Abdulmutallab am Weihnachtstag mit einem Sprengsatz in der Unterhose in Amsterdam ein Flugzeug nach Detroit besteigen konnte, obwohl konkrete Warnungen über den Attentäter sowie Indizien für einen bevorstehenden Anschlag eingetroffen waren. Zuvor war er von Lagos nach Amsterdam geflogen.

Die mehr als ein Dutzend zivilen und militärischen Nachrichten- und Geheimdienste versagten bei der Aufgabe, die diversen bruchstückhaften Informationen – darunter Warnungen aus dem Munde des Vaters des Attentäters – miteinander zu verknüpfen. Dies geschah, obwohl nach den Attacken des 11. Septembers 2001 wegen genau solcher damals ans Licht getretenen Schwächen neue Institutionen geschaffen worden waren. Dazu zählen das Nationale Anti-Terror-Zentrum und ein Direktorat der nationalen Nachrichtendienste. >>> Beat Ammann, Washington | Donnerstag, 07. Januar 2010

Obama's Counter-terrorism Advisor Denounces Bush-era Policies
LOS ANGELES TIMES: John Brennan accuses the previous administration of promoting a 'global war' mind-set that served only to 'validate Al Qaeda's twisted worldview.'

Reporting from Washington -- President Obama's counter-terrorism chief on Thursday repeatedly rebuked the Bush administration in a speech designed to make the case for a broader approach to fighting Islamic extremism.

In his first public appearance as the White House counter-terrorism advisor, John O. Brennan said that President George W. Bush's policies had been an affront to American values, undermined the nation's security and fostered a "global war" mind-set that served only to "validate Al Qaeda's twisted worldview."

"Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism -- whether they are with us or against us -- the [Obama] administration is now engaging other countries and people across a broader range of areas," Brennan said.

The sharp language is likely to extend the war of words between the current administration and conservative critics such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has carried out an unusually high-profile campaign accusing Obama of abandoning methods that made the country safe.

Brennan's speech was the latest in a series of addresses by senior administration figures in recent weeks outlining the president's national security agenda.

Brennan emphasized the argument that the United States must move beyond using the CIA and the military to attack Al Qaeda and must work to expand economic and educational opportunities across the Muslim world.

"We cannot shoot ourselves out of this challenge," Brennan said. "If we fail to confront the broader political, economic and social conditions in which extremists thrive, then there will always be another recruit in the pipeline, another attack coming downstream."

Brennan presented what he described as a multi-tiered approach -- including using the U.S. military to train the security forces of allied countries, supporting democratic reforms and directing billions of dollars in aid to impoverished regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. >>> Greg Miller | Friday, August 07, 2009