They are following in the illustrious footsteps of the caliph Umar, who is supposed to have said when ordering the ancient, fabled library of Alexandria to be burned: “If the books agree with the Qur’an, they are superfluous. If they disagree with it, they are heretical.”

“Iraqi libraries ransacked by Islamic State group in Mosul,” by Sinan Salaheddin and Sameer N. Yacoub, Associated Press, January 31, 2015:

BAGHDAD (AP) — When Islamic State group militants invaded the Central Library of Mosul earlier this month, they were on a mission to destroy a familiar enemy: other people’s ideas.

Residents say the extremists smashed the locks that had protected the biggest repository of learning in the northern Iraq town, and loaded around 2,000 books — including children’s stories, poetry, philosophy and tomes on sports, health, culture and science — into six pickup trucks. They left only Islamic texts.

The rest?

“These books promote infidelity and call for disobeying Allah. So they will be burned,” a bearded militant in traditional Afghani two-piece clothing told residents, according to one man living nearby who spoke to The Associated Press. The man, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation, said the Islamic State group official made his impromptu address as others stuffed books into empty flour bags.

Since the Islamic State group seized a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria, they have sought to purge society of everything that doesn’t conform to their violent interpretation of Islam. They already have destroyed many archaeological relics, deeming them pagan, and even Islamic sites considered idolatrous. Increasingly books are in the firing line.

Mosul, the biggest city in the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate, boasts a relatively educated, diverse population that seeks to preserve its heritage sites and libraries. In the chaos that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, residents near the Central Library hid some of its centuries-old manuscripts in their own homes to prevent their theft or destruction by looters.

But this time, the Islamic State group has made the penalty for such actions death. Presumed destroyed are the Central Library’s collection of Iraqi newspapers dating to the early 20th century, maps and books from the Ottoman Empire and book collections contributed by around 100 of Mosul’s establishment families.

Days after the Central Library’s ransacking, militants broke into University of Mosul’s library. They made a bonfire out of hundreds of books on science and culture, destroying them in front of students.

A University of Mosul history professor, who spoke on condition he not be named because of his fear of the Islamic State group, said the extremists started wrecking the collections of other public libraries last month. He reported particularly heavy damage to the archives of a Sunni Muslim library, the library of the 265-year-old Latin Church and Monastery of the Dominican Fathers and the Mosul Museum Library with works dating back to 5000 BC.

Citing reports by the locals who live near these libraries, the professor added that the militants used to come during the night and carry the materials in refrigerated trucks with Syria-registered license plates. The fate of these old materials is still unknown, though the professor suggested some could be sold on the black market. In September, Iraqi and Syrian officials told the AP that the militants profited from the sale of ancient artifacts.

The professor said Islamic State group militants appeared determined to “change the face of this city … by erasing its iconic buildings and history.”

Since routing government forces and seizing Mosul last summer, the Islamic State group has destroyed dozens of historic sites, including the centuries-old Islamic mosque shrines of the prophets Seth, Jirjis and Jonah.

An Iraqi lawmaker, Hakim al-Zamili, said the Islamic State group “considers culture, civilization and science as their fierce enemies.”

Al-Zamili, who leads the parliament’s Security and Defense Committee, compared the Islamic State group to raiding medieval Mongols, who in 1258 ransacked Baghdad. Libraries’ ancient collections of works on history, medicine and astronomy were dumped into the Tigris River, purportedly turning the waters black from running ink.

“The only difference is that the Mongols threw the books in the Tigris River, while now Daesh is burning them,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. “Different method, but same mentality.”

It isn’t clear whether or not the Saud-funded Islamic apologist John Esposito was directly involved in this, but it is consistent with positions he has taken. He has called Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who advocates jihad suicide bombings and has prayed that Allah would destroy kill all the Jews, a champion of a “reformist interpretation of Islam and its relationship to democracy, pluralism and human rights.”

Esposito has called the Hamas-linked terror organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a “phenomenal organization.” Esposito has spoken at Hamas-linked CAIR fundraisers in order, he explained, to “show solidarity not only with the Holy Land Fund [that is, the Holy Land Foundation], but also with CAIR.” The Holy Land Foundation was shut down and prosecuted for funneling money to the jihad terror group Hamas, which once boasted on its website about its murders of civilians in pizza parlors and on buses; the Justice Department named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

Esposito also refuses to condemn Hamas, as the Investigative Project notes: “In a 2000 interview in The United Association for Studies and Research’s (UASR) Middle East Affairs Journal, Esposito refused to condemn Hamas, which at the time was already designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department.” He has co-edited a book, Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, with Azzam Tamimi. Palestinian political scientist Muhammad Muslih calls Tamimi “a Hamas member.” Tamimi has said: “I admire the Taliban; they are courageous,” and “I support Hamas.” When University of South Florida computer science professor Sami al-Arian was accused of involvement with the leadership of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for the murders of several civilians, he became a cause célèbre, with his defenders ascribing his prosecution to “Islamophobia.” Esposito rushed to his defense, avowing: “Sami Al-Arian’s a very good friend of mine.” In 2008, Esposito advocated for al-Arian’s release, saying:

Sami Al-Arian is a proud, dedicated and committed American as well as a proud and committed Palestinian. He is an extraordinarily bright, articulate scholar and intellectual-activist, a man of conscience with a strong commitment to peace and social justice.

Al-Arian later pled guilty to “conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law.” He is under house arrest. Al-Arian also, according to Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), has “longstanding connections to associates of al Qaeda.” Wolf quotes a federal affidavit noting that “‘Sheik Rahman (the ‘Blind Sheik’) visited Al-Arian at his residence in Tampa and spoke at his mosque.’ Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and additional terror plots.”

Also associated with the Blind Sheik is the man Esposito calls “my old friend Siraj”: the popular Muslim speaker Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj was designated a “potential unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing for taking the Blind Sheik to speak at mosques in New York and New Jersey in the early 1990s. Wahhaj has warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has also asserted that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

Yet not only does the unsavory Esposito remain on Georgetown’s faculty; now Georgetown is paying for Muslim Brotherhood operatives to visit with State Department officials. Is this a sign of Esposito’s pernicious influence?

“State Dept: Muslim Brotherhood US Trip ‘Organized and Funded’ by Georgetown University,” by Jordan Schachtel, Breitbart, January 30, 2015:

An official U.S. State Department transcript revealed that Georgetown University had “organized and funded” a recent trip for members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to the United States.

While in the United States, the Brotherhood operatives met with top State Department officials in the Obama administration.

A reporter asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, “Members of Muslim Brothers were in town, and few days ago they met – had meetings in this building. Do you have any like – any details about the meeting, the nature of the meeting, the purpose of the meeting, and whom they met?”

Psaki responded:

Well, State Department officials meet – recently met with a group of visiting Egyptian former parliamentarians whose visit to the United States was organized and funded by Georgetown University. Such meetings are fairly routine at the State Department, where we regularly meet with political party leaders from across the world. The Georgetown group included former members of the Freedom and Justice Party (Muslim Brotherhood), among others. So this was a meeting – we meet on a regular basis with a range of groups, and obviously, as I mentioned, this was a group sponsored by Georgetown.

Psaki added that the meeting between the Muslim Brotherhood officials and Obama administration officials “was attended by a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor, and other State Department officials.”

This week, the State Department hosted several “former” members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. One of the members of the Brotherhood delegation, Waleed Sharaby, proudly displayed on Facebook a picture he took at the State Department, where he flashed the Brotherhood’s four-finger symbol.

Another Brotherhood leader within the delegation, Gamal Heshmat, claimed that he met with a “representative of the White House.” Heshmat has openly supported the Palestinian Hamas terror group that rules the Gaza Strip. Additionally, Heshmat has previously described Jews as “the descendants of pigs and monkeys.”

Georgetown University, which hosted the Brotherhood delegation, receives a vast amount of funding from foreign entities, some of which could potentially be sympathetic to the jihadist group.

Qatar, which remains a strong ideological ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, operates a Georgetown satellite school in Doha that some have alleged is funded entirely “by oil money and corrupt sheikhs,” according to The Hoya student newspaper. Dr. John Esposito, who serves as director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alaweed Bin Tala Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, “has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organization,” according to Global MB Watch.…

Azka Fayyaz was probably being ironic, but what she said was closer to the truth than she would probably be willing to admit. Islamic Jew-hatred has taken over UC Davis, with the willing collusion of the administration. But in this, UC Davis is not different from most campuses in the U.S. today: the Brownshirts rule.

“Student Leader: ‘Hamas & Shariah Law Have Taken Over UC Davis,'” by Daniel Mael, Truth Revolt, January 30, 2015:

A resolution calling for the University of California at Davis to divest from “corporations that aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine and illegal settlements in Palestinian territories, violating both international humanitarian law and international human rights”passed on Thursday evening by a vote of 8-2-2. The resolution, sponsored by campus hate group Students for Justice in Palestine, was presented before the student senate and specifically targeted companies Caterpillar Inc., G4S PLC, Veolia Environment and Raytheon.

The pro-Israel community on campus staged a walk-out from the divestment hearing, highlighting the fact that the anti-Semitic resolution was “toxic” and “damaged lives.”

However the actual divestment vote was overshadowed by a member of the UC Davis student senate, Azka Fayyaz,  captioning a photo on Facebook that “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis. Brb crying over the resilience.”

The imam Tareq Yousef Al-Masri apparently believes that jihad terrorists have hijacked the Religion of Peace, as he says: “Anyone claiming that we are not allowed to wish the Christians happy holidays has prepared the killers in France, Boston, in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt…These people constitute the fertile ground for terrorism, which they present as the religion of Allah, conveyed to the Prophet Muhammad, while Islam has nothing to do with them.” Nonetheless, he has gone much farther than virtually all other Muslim authorities and spokesmen in admitting that all too many Muslims are taught to hate Christians (he could have added “and other non-Muslims”), and in saying, “I am ashamed of the rotten and despicable conduct of the Muslims,” when Islamic supremacists never, ever say a negative word about the activities of any Muslim, but instead blame the Infidels for every jihad attack. Will he now be denounced as an “Islamophobe” and a tool of the Zionists?

“Brooklyn Imam Tareq Yousef Al-Masri on Paris Terror Attacks: We Muslims Must Admit That We Are Time Bombs and We Hate Christians,” MEMRI, January 9, 2015:

On a Friday sermon in the Brooklyn Oulel-Albab Mosque, Imam Tareq Yousef Al-Masri spoke about the terror attacks in Paris, and said that Muslims are like time bombs. He further said that Muslims should admit that they hate Christians. Imam Al-Masri explained that Wahhabi ideology is responsible for instilling hatred in the hearts of Muslims, which leads to terrorism worldwide.

Following are excerpts from the sermon, which was posted on the Internet on January 9, 2015.

Tareq Yousef Al-Masri: The crisis in France casts its shadow upon us. The two brothers who stormed the offices of the [Charlie Hebdo] magazine, which published offensive cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and affronted the Muslims, just as it affronts others… This is a satirical magazine, which is well known as such. This magazine knows no limits when it comes to freedom of speech.

It is peculiar that two years ago, during the Boston [marathon], it was two brothers, of Chechen origin, and now, we have two brothers – of Algerian origin, I think. What’s the story with brothers? What’s the story with that all-destructive ideology?

Let us admit, without lying to ourselves, that we, the Muslims, are time bombs. When I say “we, the Muslims,” I do not mean every single Muslim, but Muslims of the religious sector are time bombs. When a sinner repents, the first thing he does is make a bomb. He blows it up and kills people.

We must admit this. We cannot become immune if we do not admit this. If you have cancer, it won’t help you if I tell you that you have the flu. I must tell you that you clearly have cancer. When someone has cancer, they run a series of tests, in order to identify the cause of this cancer. They don’t just say that this cancer is an act of God. Everything comes from Allah, but this should not prevent us from studying the underlying reasons for this cancer.

Let us admit something else. The majority of us Muslims hate the Christians – true or false? Yes, that is the truth.

[…]

When you see how many people oppose [congratulating Christians on their holidays], you have to admit that deep-rooted hatred dwells in the hearts of Muslims. Someone might say to me: “Do you think they love us? They hate us too.” What do you care what others do? Just because there are thieves, would you become a thief too? In that case, all people would be thieves.

[…]

Who instilled so much hatred in these generations? It is the ideology present in the books – the ideology of Ibn Taymiyyah, of Ibn Al-Qayyam, of Al-Nawawi. These are the pillars of this ideology. In modern times, we have Ibn Baz, Ibn Al-Uthaymeen, Al-Huweini, Muhammad Hassan… These people are responsible for instilling hatred in human beings.

[…]

Christians sometimes cite the Quranic verses used by these thugs, those [Salafi] scholars who have corrupted the nation of Muhammad, and who have buried our good reputation in the ground. I’ve just mentioned their names – from the past and from the present.

[…]

When we tell people that it is forbidden to wish a Christian “Merry Christmas,” does this not lay the foundation for terrorism? This is how you condition yourself to feel hatred.

[…]

The truth of the Quran has been distorted by scholars who corrupt the youth. Those killers [in France] are the victims of Ibn Taymiyyah, of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, of Ibn Al-Qayyim, of Al-Nawawi, of Al-Huweini, of Ibn Baz, of Ibn Al-Uthaymeen, of Muhammad Hassan. By Allah, these are wretched victims, who believe that they are worshipping Allah by killing people.

[…]

[These scholars consider] any Quranic verse of moral value to have been abrogated. They consider any verse that calls to treat people with kindness to have been abrogated. All that remains valid is: Kill! Slaughter! Is that the only thing that God tells us?!

[…]

They have made the Muslims hate everyone – the Christians, the Jews, the atheists, and all human beings. Why did God say: “We made peoples and tribes that you may know one another”? How can you get to know other people if you hate them?! How can you maintain a relationship with them? Oh you who believe that truth is on your side, show me what “merchandise” you are selling. It amounts to nothing but killing and accusing others of heresy and polytheism. It is all bad. What have you contributed to human civilization? Nothing! Then you try to claim that you are the best among people, and that you will go to Paradise while everybody else will go to the Hellfire.

I am ashamed of the rotten and despicable conduct of the Muslims. Today, the Muslims stand up in mosques and wash their hands of these two brothers – or of the two brothers from the Boston bombings – but is this enough? No. Oh servants of Allah, do not hate people! Love people. Get closer to them. Do you want to invite other people to join Islam, while you hate them and curse them day and night?!

[…]

In my fatwas, I said that we should wish the Christians happy holidays. I wrote that Allah said: “And speak to the people good.” Would you believe that some Wahhabi on Facebook said that this verse referred to the Jews and the Israelites?! In other words, they are supposed “to speak to people good,” while we are supposed to treat people like trash…

[…]

Anyone claiming that we are not allowed to wish the Christians happy holidays has prepared the killers in France, Boston, in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt…These people constitute the fertile ground for terrorism, which they present as the religion of Allah, conveyed to the Prophet Muhammad, while Islam has nothing to do with them.

Is this what they discussed at the State Department — what would need to be done to overthrow al-Sisi?

“Open Jihad Declared in Egypt Following State Dept. Meeting with Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, January 30, 2015:

The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just days after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released this week.

Just days after a delegation that included two top Brotherhood leaders was hosted at the State Department, the organization released an official statement calling on its supporters to “prepare” for jihad, according to an independent translation of the statement first posted on Tuesday.

The State Department meeting was attended by a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor and other State Department officials.

The Muslim Brotherhood statement also was issued just two days before a major terror attack Thursday in Egypt’s lawless Sinai region that killed at least 25.

“It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom,” it states.

Preparation for jihad is a key theme of the Brotherhood’s latest call for jihad.

An image posted with the statement shows two crossing swords and the word “prepare!” between them. Below the swords it reads, “the voice of truth, strength, and freedom.” According to the statement, “that is the motto of the Dawa of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The statement also invokes the well-known Muslim cleric Imam al-Bana, who founded the Brotherhood and has called for the death of Jews.

“Imam al-Bana prepared the jihad brigades that he sent to Palestine to kill the Zionist usurpers and the second [Supreme] Guide Hassan al-Hudaybi reconstructed the ‘secret apparatus’ to bleed the British occupiers,” the statement says….