The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE NEW OTTOMAN EMPIRE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H7986-H7988 on Nov. 14, 2014.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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THE NEW OTTOMAN EMPIRE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Cramer). Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Keystone XL Pipeline
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this is an important day for a number of reasons.
It is an important day in that we passed the Cassidy bill here in the House that will open the door to the Keystone XL pipeline being built. Since this administration has dallied so, the Chinese have entered the picture and are desirous of having a pipeline going to the west coast of Canada so that, apparently, when this administration does, finally, get around to deciding what is best for Americans instead of what is best for his political situation, then we will have to compete with the Chinese, who will be seeking the oil to go in their pipeline as opposed to the United States' getting it to come through our pipeline.
We understand that our friend Ms. Landrieu, Senator Landrieu, will have a bill in her name come to the Senate floor for a vote. I am really proud Bill Cassidy is a friend. I am proud that we had a chance to vote on the Bill Cassidy bill, and I am proud that it passed. I think it is such a shame that Mary Landrieu will not be able to likely get her colleagues to vote for the Keystone pipeline and pass it as Bill Cassidy has been able to do here in the House.
Make no mistake. Since I live in east Texas and the pipeline will come through part of my district and come across private land, nobody who has private land wants a pipeline coming across their land. Anybody who has ever had one knows it is no fun. You don't like having an easement across for a pipeline like that. So it will require great diligence to make sure that it is properly maintained and that damage is avoided, and if damage occurs, then I will certainly want to fight for our landowners to make sure they are properly addressed and taken care of and compensated.
That is one thing today, but it really pales in comparison, Mr. Speaker, to what happened 100 years ago today.
The New Ottoman Empire
Mr. GOHMERT. In recent years, after this administration blindly supported what it called--and others in North Africa and the Middle East called--an Arab Spring, we have come to find out what many of us suspected even at the time and said was likely to be even more of a devastating winter than an Arab Spring. It has seen the fall of the government in Libya. It has seen the chaos arise in many parts of Libya. It has seen terrorists take control of parts of Libya. It has seen the fall of the governments in Algeria, Tunisia, and the takeover of radical Islam.
I was amazed at the ignorance of many in the mainstream media when I said back at the time that what radical Islamists--what the Muslim Brotherhood--were seeking to re-create was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire and that, in its ignorance, our executive branch--this administration here in the U.S.--actually helped jump-start what the Muslim Brothers are hoping will be the new Ottoman Empire. I was surprised how many reporters asked what did I mean by ``Ottoman Empire.'' They had not had the kind of education that I was fortunate to have had in public schools in east Texas and in public school by way of Texas A&M University and then law school at Baylor. So they didn't know what the Ottoman Empire was. Hopefully, they did some research.
Many of us did not realize that the date 9/11--when the worst attack on America occurred--also marked the anniversary of the worst defeat that the Islamic caliphate ever suffered in history. That was the devastating defeat to the caliphate. The radical Islamist caliphate had made it all the way to Vienna. It laid siege upon Vienna, and on 9/11 of 1683, the radical Islamic caliphate suffered its worst defeat in history. Amazingly, that was the date that Osama bin Laden and the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--currently in Guantanamo, who hopefully will stay there until his death--chose to inflict the worst attack in American history.
To many people, dates mean things. My anniversary means a lot. I have never forgotten one. Our birthdays mean a lot to most Westerners. Some of us begin to try to forget them, but major dates in caliphate history mean a great deal to radical Islamists.
There was an article today written by Dr. Sebastian Gorka, and I would like to read this in for the Record. He does a good job of incapsulating this issue today.
Dr. Gorka says:
One hundred years ago today, the last caliph, or emperor of Islam, declared the last jihad against the infidel, and today is the first time ever that the National Cathedral in the Nation's Capital will host Muslim prayers.
Most Americans will have no idea that, as part of World War I, the then-caliph of the Ottoman Empire declared a holy war against infidels as was his right within shari'a law and Islamic theology. You can read the full fatwa.
In that fatwa, there actually was a typo in the original. It was provided on this day in 1914, but they had a typo saying it was 1915.
The article says:
That statement by the last sitting head of what was the theocratic empire of Islam was the catalyst which led to the religiously fueled genocide against Christian Armenians and Assyrians.
That is what is pictured. It actually represents a photograph that was taken of young Armenian Christian girls who were kidnapped, stripped naked, raped, and then crucified on crosses as far as the eye could see.
This article points out:
The Episcopal church leaders who agreed to host Muslim prayers inside the Washington cathedral probably have no idea what happened a century ago in Asia Minor or that there even was a caliph in office at the beginning of the 20th century.
However, we can rest assured that the co-organizers do, for they include the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and the All Dulles Area Muslims Society (ADAMS) Center.
Both CAIR and ISNA will be fully aware of the significance of November 14th, seeing as both organizations were declared by a Federal court to be unindicted coconspirators of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood terror group, in the largest terrorist financing trial in U.S. history.
Those Muslims who have a supremacist understanding of their religion, such as members of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was recently declared an illegal terrorist organization in the country of its founding, Egypt, have a special regard for historic dates and anniversaries.
It is, of course, no accident that the 9/11 attacks--the worst terror attacks in world history--occurred exactly to the day in 1683 when the Islamic Ottoman forces were defeated outside the city walls of Vienna, the deepest the Islamic caliphate's forces made it into the heart of the Christian West.
There is nothing inherently wrong about interfaith initiatives as long as they start from the same place: a mutual respect for the belief system of the other and their inherent dignity as humans created by God. When one party acts in bad faith based upon its ideological commitment to see other faiths destroyed or subjected, then the event runs the risk of becoming a propaganda coup for the extremists and their followers.
The fact that this event is occurring just as ancient Christian communities are being destroyed in the Middle East and ``nonbelievers'' are being actually crucified by ISIS jihadists makes it all the more egregious.
We know that the Episcopal church is in trouble with more conservative believers leaving in great numbers and the remaining adherents not exactly outdoing their Catholic cousins in terms of reproducing the next generation of believers.
The author goes on to say:
But I doubt they also understand the finer points of jihadist doctrine, one of which is that if a place of worship is used by Muslims for their prayers that territory subsequently becomes part of Dar al Islam, sacred Muslim land, forever.
That author was Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., and he is the Major General Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at the Marine Corps University and is the national security and foreign affairs editor at Breitbart.com.
Mr. Speaker, it is an important day. The prosecution referred to in this article was actually the Holy Land Foundation criminal trial in the United States Federal District Court in Dallas, Texas. I have done a great deal of reading and looking into the issues involved in that case, and am aware of the massive number of counts of conviction, and also have read some of the pleadings in this case in which the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations--CAIR and ISNA--were named as coconspirators in that prosecution, in which they were contributors and part of funding terrorism.
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They were not named as indicted coconspirators, but they were named as coconspirators. And CAIR and ISNA were among parties that filed pleadings in Federal District Court, demanding that their names be eliminated from the pleadings.
Yet after the Federal judge in Dallas reviewed all of the information, the evidence before him, he declared that actually there was plenty of evidence to support the fact that CAIR and ISNA--which have such cozy relations with this administration now--that there is plenty of evidence to support that those two entities are coconspirators in supplying and financing terrorism.
Well, those convictions occurred in late 2008. And from some who have been involved in that effort, their understanding was that if the Bush administration Justice Department, after years of investigation and effort of prosecution, if they got convictions, then the intention was to come back--and especially since the courts had said that there is plenty of evidence to support that these named coconspirators were coconspirators, then they would come back and actually indict them, prosecute them. And those parties were not satisfied, though, with the judgment of the Dallas Federal court.
So they appealed the ruling that there was plenty of evidence to support CAIR and ISNA being coconspirators, and Imam Majid, who is their part of the prayer effort at National Cathedral today--they wanted their names eliminated. The Federal judge in Dallas would not do that. So they appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed the record, all the information, then they stated even more plainly and more directly than the Federal District Court did that, yes, there really was plenty of evidence to support that they were coconspirators and that the names should not be struck. They should not be kept private.
And the thinking was that, you know, gee, any administration, of course, will understand that once a Federal District Court and a Court of Appeals find there is plenty of evidence to support that CAIR and ISNA are coconspirators in helping terrorism around the world that surely they would not end up being cozy with any American administration. That would be the common sense, you would think.
There is plenty of common sense back where I come from. But you get to Washington, and it is not common sense. It is just sense.
And it is rather a shame that organizations who were said by a Federal court system to have plenty of evidence to show that they are coconspirators and had radical Islamic efforts at terrorism, that they would have such an open ear at the White House.
In recent years, there was a 2-day seminar that was going to take place out at Langley. And I know one of the instructors very well. He has made a career out of studying radical Islam. He used to provide briefings, do research, provide advice to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our military about radical Islam. Well, he was one of them. Well, that rather upset what the Federal courts have said the evidence indicates were front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood, were suppliers, helpers in terrorism. They got upset that he was going to be out there and be a part of the teaching of the seminar. So they burned up the phone line to the White House. The White House canceled the seminar.
And it was CAIR that had an ongoing partnership that they developed with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. And I was surprised that it took so long after the FBI had spent a couple of decades investigating what, ultimately, we understood was the Muslim Brotherhood. It was surprising, with Federal courts saying that there is plenty of evidence to show that they are complicit in supplying terrorism funding, helping with terrorism. I was surprised that the FBI decided, with all that evidence they furnished the prosecutors, that they ended up turning around and making CAIR their partner.
So I was surprised that the letter took so long from the FBI eventually to the leaders of CAIR, saying that, in view of evidence in essence there in the Holy Land Foundation trial, we need to suspend our partnership in the outreach program that the FBI had to them.
When I was questioning the immediate previous director of the FBI, Director Mueller, about the Tsarnaevs and the lack of investigation into their backgrounds, even after the Russians warned this administration twice--after the first time, apparently the Russians were surprised that we didn't do anything with the knowledge they had provided, that Tsarnaev had been radicalized and would likely kill people here. They warned a second time and had to be totally shocked--
and, to the best I understand, basically the investigation included talking to Tsarnaev, himself, and to his mom. There may have been some other peripheral things.
But as I questioned the director of the FBI, saying, you guys didn't even go out to their mosque to ask questions to help you determine whether Tsarnaev had been radicalized. And, in essence, he ended up saying, we did go to the mosque. When he gave the answer, I didn't hear the little add-on he gave until my staff replayed it with the little add-on he gave after: We did go out to those mosques, but he added,
``in our outreach program.''
So just as I suspected, the FBI didn't go out and investigate. Michele Bachmann, Lynn Westmoreland reviewed some materials. Trent Franks looked at some of the materials. But we were concerned because CAIR, this named coconspirator in supplying and helping terrorism, as a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, we were surprised that CAIR had such powerful inroads into the FBI, enough to the point that they could demand to have the training materials for the FBI reviewed and had them purged of things that they, as apparently a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood, found offensive. As named coconspirators in funding terrorism, they were offended.
So a massive number of pages that radical Islamists might find offensive, that people who wanted to kill Americans might be offended by, were purged from our training materials. The State Department apparently purged materials. The intelligence community purged materials. And, as one intelligence officer told me, we have blinded ourselves of the ability to see our enemy.
So, Mr. Speaker, it breaks my heart, grieves me deeply when innocent Muslims are maltreated, killed, tortured. It is a grievous violation of human rights. But in the same way, the things that have been done and are growing and spreading in numbers never before seen in human history, of Christians being persecuted around the world, as America basically remains silent.
But today, being the 100th anniversary of the caliph's public fatwa, demanding the murder, killing of Christians in 1914 by the last Islamic caliph, also is the first day in our history when the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian church, conceded to the named coconspirators in funding terrorism, their demands to have prayers today on this 100th anniversary of the fatwa that caused the deaths of countless Christians, especially Armenian Christians, as depicted in this blown-up photograph from the newspaper, as depicted in this drawing that we have blurred, depicting what was actually seen along the road as massive numbers of young Christian girls were raped and crucified.
We don't want a holy war. No Christian should ever go to some kind of holy war. But for heaven's sake, when there is an international group about which moderate Muslim leaders in the Middle East have said to me: The Muslim Brotherhood is your enemy; they have been behind every attack that has occurred onto America and Americans; they have been behind the killing of Americans all over the Middle East and the world--why do you keep helping the Muslim Brotherhood?
When the largest uprising in the history of the world occurred over a year ago in Egypt, when moderate Muslims, Christians, even the Coptic Christian Pope, secularists, over 30 million came to the streets of Egypt and said, we don't want radical Islam controlling our country, it was a day of historic proportions. Never before had there been a crowd of that size gathered. Even when 20 million came out or when the estimated 33 million came out, they demanded the same thing. It was not a military coup, as CNN and this administration tried to paint. It was the largest uprising in the history of the world, in Egypt.
And the Egyptians, instead of being called stupid, foolish by this administration and some media, they should have been congratulated. We should have rushed to their assistance. And, instead, this administration said, Unless you put Muslim Brother Morsi back in power, then we are not going to help you. The Apache helicopters that were coming, that you use to keep the Suez Canal open, that you use to fight terrorism in the Sinai, that help Israel, we are not going to send them. You are not going to be able to keep the Suez Canal and the Sinai terrorism down until you put the Muslim Brothers back in charge.
Many in the media made a big deal about the Christian churches being burned and about Jews and Christians being persecuted, tortured, and killed, and, for some unbelievable reason, tried to blame it on those who ousted the Muslim Brothers. And anybody that will do any modicum of research in Egypt will understand, it was the Muslim Brothers that burned the churches, that killed Christians and Jews there. It was not the government. It was not the military. The military, under General el-Sisi, was doing everything it could to stop it.
I talked to a former CIA operative in the Middle East last year who said that he had talked to a guy who said, Morsi, President Morsi, had tried to contract through him to have General el-Sisi murdered.
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I asked our Embassy personnel if they had heard of anything like that. They said they had not.
In our meeting with General el-Sisi, I asked him directly, ``Did you have evidence when you arrested President Morsi that he was trying to hire someone to kill you?'' He beat around the bush twice and ultimately answered, ``Yes, we did.''
Yet we even had even Republicans go to Cairo and say, ``Put back the Muslim Brothers.'' And I met the brilliant gentleman--Muslim, seemed to be a very fine man--that was put in charge of the committee to draft a new constitution because the constitution the United States helped and this administration helped Egypt to get that led to the Muslim Brotherhood control of the country had no provision for impeachment.
So as Muslim Brother President Morsi began to usurp power, kind of in the same vein, and Noriega and other dictators who get elected and then start grabbing power, he was doing it in Egypt. There was no provision for impeachment.
There was nothing they could do except what they did, go to the street in the tens of millions, demand his removal and, in the largest uprising, cause the removal of an unconstitutionally acting President, and he was removed, thank goodness.
I was thrilled earlier this year when I think it was over 90 percent of the Egyptian voters voted to ratify the new constitution for Egypt. I really wished that all of the American media could have grasped the significance of what happened.
That constitution actually included provisions that required the Egyptian Government under the constitution to rebuild and replace the churches or synagogues that had been damaged or destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They felt so badly for what the Muslim Brotherhood had done to the Christians and Jews that they put it in their constitution that they had to be repaired and replaced. That should have been a big day for freedom, and most of the American media missed it entirely.
Well, they are also missing today. As the left often wants to do--
maybe they want to vilify me. You can try to rewrite history, but you can't change what has happened in the past, and what happened 100 years ago today, the first day, November 14, that the National Cathedral, run by the Presbyterian Church, has allowed Muslim prayers by named coconspirators in the terrorist funding trial to come lead prayers in this Christian cathedral.
I thank God that the massive majority of Muslims, including some of my Muslim friends in the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, they don't want radical Islamists controlling anything. They don't want to be at war with Americans. They don't want to kill Americans. Thank God for that.
But it is sheer lunacy not to recognize how important anniversaries are to radical Islamists, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to those who would kill and persecute and wipe out Jews and, as they say, wipe the Great Satan America off the map and the Little Satan Israel off the map. It is lunacy not to recognize the way these radical Islamists feel. We can live at peace with moderate Muslims.
When I visited Nigeria not long ago to mourn with the Africans--23 mothers who had had their daughters kidnapped, brutalized every day still in Boko Haram, radical Islamist controlled, it was a beautiful thing. Nigeria, until the radicals got involved, had Muslims and Christians living peacefully together.
Meeting a government official, a devout Christian, who had in his wedding party one of his best friends in the world who was a Muslim, it is a thing of beauty to see people with different backgrounds and beliefs living at peace together.
But until the American media, until a majority of Americans realize there really are radical Islamists that think that the fatwa that was declared by the last Islamic caliph of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago today was a great thing, then this country remains at great risk.
It is bad enough that we have enemies publicly saying they want to wipe us off the map, destroy our freedom of worship, free speech, the freedoms we hold dear and love, but to be blind that they want to destroy us is negligence, reckless indifference that can cost a country's freedom.
Mr. Speaker, today is a big day. I hope Americans will wake up and understand the Muslim Brotherhood is not our friend. They want us all to be living, if we live at all, as Muslims or to pay the fine that acknowledges that we are subjugating ourselves to radical Islam. People have got to wake up. This country is at risk.
Mr. Speaker, with prayerful regard to the masses of young Christians who were kidnapped, raped, crucified as a result of that fatwa issued 100 years ago today, I hope that we will not be so blind that we could allow this movement to continue to grow as it has grown and grown.
Some say a good way to avoid destructive forces overtaking civilized society is to watch Israel--that Israel could be looked at as the world's miner's canary, as miners used to take canaries into mine shafts. They knew canaries were more sensitive to poison gas, so if they saw a canary getting in trouble, falling, then they knew they better get out of the mine because it was very, very dangerous.
When we see Israel being attacked, our best friend in the Middle East being attacked, when we see anti-Semitism, hatred for Jews, hatred for Israelis growing in Europe, of all places--I never thought that would happen again after Hitler--but it is growing again around Europe. It is growing on American campuses.
These young, wonderful, brilliant students who have been miseducated to think that they need to get involved in anti-Semitism on their campuses in America will hopefully wake up and realize they have been played by people that are not about freedom.
It is time for America to wake up. Because today, as an anniversary of what happened 100 years ago, is a really big deal for those who want to destroy our way of life and our lives if we are Christians.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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