Its headline wonders if Perry will be considered “the pro-Shariah candidate,” during his bid to win the GOP nomination, a label sure to make some conservative voters cringe.

Perry has embraced small sects of Islam like the Ismailis, while avoiding close ties to the broader Muslim community.

Perry’s cozy relationship with the Aga Khan, an extremely affluent jet-setting billionaire, is mutually and monetarily beneficial. Khan’s far-reaching network spends $350 million a year on projects in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The governor has capitalized on the leader’s scope and influence, agreeing to partnerships, including a deal with The University of Texas and the Aga Khan University in Pakistan to bring Muslim history and cultural studies to high school educators.

The pair have shared about a decade of friendship, hosting and attending various invitation-only events. For instance, in April 2008 the Austin American-Statesman reported on Perry’s plans to host a private dinner “to honor the Aga Khan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad celebrating his 50th year as the spiritual leader of a Muslim sect.”

The powerful alliance between the West Texas politician and the Kenyan-raised Ismaili leader may have some pivotal right-wing voters thinking twice about a Perry ticket — especially in light of the hard-line approaches against Islam voiced by his opponents — but is the bond really indicative of Perry’s larger relationship with Muslims?

So soon after his controversial Christian prayer event in Houston, it sounds unlikely that anyone would fault Perry for being too inclusive of other religions. The event followed months of protests by faith leaders and activist groups who condemned its lack of religious diversity and said it blurred church-state boundaries.

Muslim groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and leaders like Imam Qasim Khan, president and CEO of the Islamic organization Shades of White, denounced Perry for promoting Christianity above all others. The day before the rally Qasim Khan, joined by leaders of a plurality of faith backgrounds, called the governor a “contradictory politician,” one that claims to be religious but fails to help those most in need.

Many of the evangelical leaders who backed “The Response” have a history of contentious statements about Islam — like the suggestion Muslims do not deserve First Amendment rights and should be kept out of the U.S. altogether. Bryan Fischer, a spokesman for the American Family Association, which bankrolled Perry’s event, detailed four steps to “save Western Civilization” on the group’s blog in May.

The steps include eradicating all mosques, denying Muslims inclusion into the U.S. military, and cutting off Muslim migration to the United States. “There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Islam itself is a dangerous infection, and every devout Muslim is a carrier,” he wrote.

Another “Response” host with a history of anti-Muslim sentiments is Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council, who said earlier this year that Texas’ Speaker of the House should be allowed to follow any religion, just as long as he’s not Muslim, as the Texas Independent previously reported.

Cultivating ties to minor sects

Mustafaa Carroll of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says Perry’s relationship with the Muslim community is fairly middle-of-the-road in practice. The exclusivity of his recent prayer rally didn’t help him build any alliances with Muslims, he said, but overall the tone is neither supportive nor negative.

“As far as I can tell, the governor doesn’t have a strong relationship with the mainstream Muslim community,” said Carroll. “He mostly sticks to interacting with minority groups within Islam like the Ahmadiyya and the Ismailis and hasn’t done anything to overwhelmingly gain support from Muslims.”

Carroll mentioned Perry’s 2003 ceremonial signing of Texas’ Halal Law, which seeks to protect consumers from product mislabeling, as Perry’s most memorable act supporting the Muslim community — but could not point to any other major event like it.

“I think he hasn’t branched out because it’s seen as a risk for some politicians to align with the majority of Muslims, they may feel safer with minority groups with less connectivity.”

“I can’t speak to his motivations aligning with [the Aga Khan], but there may be some other benefits in that relationship,” he added.

‘I do believe this could be a problem’

That halal bill was hailed as the “Texas Muslim community’s First Legislative victory” in the state by the Freedom and Justice Foundation, an activist group that lobbied for its passage — but the community’s advocates in the State Capitol focused most of their attention on defeating a pair of anti-Sharia bills that floated around this past Legislative session. And unlike the halal legislation, those bills were embraced by Perry.

“We met with the governor’s office and he seemed to really support the bill,” said Pat Carlson of the conservative Texas Eagle Forum, who called the numerical assignment of H.B. 911, “appropriate.” “Although he didn’t have the power to push it­ — that’s controlled by [Texas Speaker Joe] Straus — he gave me every indication he agreed with the bill.”

The legislation suggested a constitutional amendment prohibiting Texas courts from enforcing, considering or applying religious or cultural law. Though the bills did not explicitly mention Sharia, author Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, did not exclude it, as the Texas Independent previously reported.

As for his long-time partnership with the Aga Khan, Carlson said the bond could pose a sizable roadblock in currying favor with conservative voters.

“I do believe this could be a problem for Gov. Perry in his presidential bid,” she said. “We should not be showing a preference in Texas schools for a religion that is guided by Sharia law […] it is totally incompatible with our U.S. and Texas Constitutions. It is a complete political, social, legal and economic system controlling every aspect of a Muslim’s life.”

Carroll, though, disagreed, saying that if Perry showed any true support for the anti-Sharia bill, it was “strictly political.” He considers Sharia Law a “non-existent” threat drummed up for partisan reasons. Sharia is a cultural underpinning, he said, not a codified edict; Muslims end up having to defend it because efforts to limit Sharia stomp on their First Amendment rights, Carroll said.

“It’s a red herring, it’s a non-issue,” he said. “The idea people have conjured up that Muslims are trying to overtake our constitution is the biggest lie ever told.”

The New York Times reported that “authorities” have described Breivik as a “right-wing fundamentalist Christian, a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country.” (More recent accounts paint him as potentially being insane.)

Some bloggers who identify with right-wing, Christian politics have attacked the “right-wing fundamentalist Christian” descriptions of Breivik and tried to paint him as more of a “liberal.” One charge in particular that has hit the conservative blogosphere is Breivik’s supposed support of abortion in certain instances.

The online publication LifeSiteNews published a blog post Monday titled “Norway shooter supported abortion for disabled babies.” LifeSiteNews attacks the “fundamentalist Christian” label portrayed by the “mainstream media” and writes that Breivik “did not consider himself a Christian believer, but that he was a mason, held such anti-Christian views as supporting abortion for disabled babies, and that he also hired a prostitute prior to his killing rampage.”

The blog refers to Breivik’s hefty “manifesto” (PDF), where in one section he discusses his views on abortion, writing:

Abortion should only be allowed in case of rape, if the mother’s life is in danger, or if the baby has mental or physical disabilities. The liberal zones may be exempt by this rule.

LifeSiteNews, however, does not mention Breivik’s views on contraception or sex education, points on which he appears to be more in line with the positions of anti-abortion rights advocates:

Contraceptive pills and equivalent methods will be severely restricted in conservative territories. The liberal zones may be exempt by this rule.

[...]

Sexual education in schools should be limited to that of 1950/60 Western Europe. The liberal zones may be exempt by this rule.

The blog Logos published a post titled, “The Identity Ideology of Anders Breivik. Not a Christian Fundamentalist.” Logos writes:

No fundamentalist would subscribe to this theory, and all fundamentalists condemn abortion without exceptions.

Other media outlets have pointed to Breivik’s manifesto as proof that he is mentally unstable and that his style of thinking is similar to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

Another blogger simply blames the practice of abortion for Friday’s tragedy.

In a blog post titled “The Opposite of Pro-Life Is What Just Happened in Norway,” RedState blogger Repair_Man_Jack on Monday compared Breivik’s disdain for human life to that of abortion-rights supporters:

[Breivik] had convinced himself what he was doing was noble and decent. It wasn’t like he was killing anything that had value.

[...]

We live in a world where we are perfectly happy to abort millions of children and then DEMAND to know WHY Anders Behring Breivik became the human sarcoma that he truly is. We live in a world where people praise Jack Kevorkian as some sort of efficiency expert, but we have outraged news stories when someone in Seattle shoots his fellow man for insulting the paint job on his car. I mean it’s rough sanding down the frame and applying a new coat of primer. Give the guy an efficiency ribbon. Al Gore decries our global overpopulation anyway.

We’ve previously reported that the group is getting a staggering amount of support from billionaires, several of whom made their fortune in the energy industry and live in Texas. Last month Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Dallas-based Chief Oil and Gas, contributed another $1 million to American Crossroads, on top of the $1 million he gave earlier this year. Fellow billionaire Robert Rowling, CEO of the company TRT Holdings, also gave Crossroads his second $1 million donation in August.

The only new name on the list is American Financial Group, a Cincinnati-based firm owned by nonagenerian Carl Linder. Forbes put Linder’s net worth at $1.7 billion this year, a fortune built up through the growth of United Dairy Farmers. He previously owned Chiquita and currently owns a stake in the Cincinnati Reds. American Financial Group gave American Crossroads $400,000 last month.

Another new billionaire to add to the list of Crossroads backers is Jerry Perenchio of Bel Air. He is worth $2.1 billion, the bulk of which was made off the sale of Spanish language TV station Univision, according to Forbes. He is a major Republican donor who was co-chair of John McCain’s national finance committee. Perenchio gave American Crossroads $1 million in July.

Of course, the groups’s sister organization, a 501(c)4 called American Crossroads GPS, has quite possibly been raising even more. Because the group is only required to file with the IRS, however, we may never know the sources of its funding.

I’m curious to see what Breitbart goes after — I was at the 2006 event that leads Blumenthal’s story and can confirm all the details about it.

The Journal and Buchanan somehow overlook the five different wars — or five fronts in the “Terror War” — that Glenn Greenwald aptly points out today. We are, after all, engaged in consistent deadly bombings and raids aimed at terrorists and their sympathizers in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.

Still, The Journal’s editors are wringing their hands over the administration’s decision to “treat terrorists like routine criminal suspects” with a right to a lawyer and a defense, rather than classifying Abdulmutallab as a “illegal enemy combatant who should be interrogated first with the goal of preventing future attacks and learning more about terror networks rather than gaining a single conviction.”

Here we have another version of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “torture works” argument — notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary.  The Journal and Buchanan apparently believe that the U.S. government ought to have grabbed Abdulmutallab and whisked him away to a secret prison where we could interrogate him under torture, what Cheney and The Journal’s editorial board would call “enhanced interrogation techniques” — even though the FBI, which conducts lots of interrogations, has argued in memos that such tactics are unlikely to yield useful information and make prosecution of actual terrorists impossible. U.S. military leaders and at least one Republican senator have also agreed they may aid terrorist recruitment to boot.

It’s worth noting that the Bush administration treated Richard Reid, the so-called “shoe bomber” who similarly attempted to blow up a plane shortly before Christmas in 2001, as a criminal. Reid was convicted in federal court and is now serving a life sentence in a federal prison.

In contrast, most of the suspects — including 520 Guantanamo Bay detainees — that the Bush administration treated as “enemy combatants” ended up being transferred or released. The Bush administration failed to collect any usable evidence against them, and as a result could neither try them nor continue to hold them without charge. As Republicans are quick to point out, some of those people have since joined terrorist groups back home. Indeed, reports are emerging that some may have been behind last week’s bombing attempt.

Actually, The Journal is right that, as I noted yesterday, the Obama administration’s handling of Abdulmutallab is inconsistent with the treatment of some other alleged terrorists, whom the administration has insisted it will try in military commissions rather than ordinary civilian courts. But rather than highlight the need to interrogate Abdulmutallab under torture, it underscores just how wrongheaded the warrior approach has actually been.

As Greenwald points out, our five-front war is “constantly delivering death to the Muslim world,” leading many Muslims to believe, not surprisingly, that we’re at war with Muslims, not just with terrorists.

However, prosecuting terror suspects as ordinary criminals — who, just like suspects in drug gangs and other organized crime often provide valuable information and rat out their criminal colleagues — shows Muslims and others that unlike the terrorists, we do believe in and adhere to the rule of law.

I know this isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that the Obama administration keeps getting attacked for trying to address. At a recent rally in New York against Attorney Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his suspected Sept. 11 co-conspirators in federal court, for example, anti-Obama protesters denounced the administration’s decision to accord the defendants the rights that come with a federal court trial, all the while vigorously waving the American flag and citing “our freedoms” protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Street protesters riled up by conservatives with a political agenda may be forgiven for forgetting what’s actually in the Constitution or what the flag is supposed to stand for. But The Wall Street Journal — and even Pat Buchanan — surely know better.

Americans’ surprise at the announcement may be best explained by a quick look at Obama’s domestic policies when it comes to the international war on terror — so let’s take a glance at Glenn Greenwald’s page today at Salon. Just below his discussion of Obama’s Nobel prize is a lengthy analysis of how the president, now with the help of Congress, has repeatedly suppressed evidence of war crimes committed by the previous administration.

From trying to exempt abuse photos from the Freedom of Information Act to dismissing torture cases on “state secrets” grounds, encouraging Congress to limit civil liberties protections against broad-based FBI snooping and refusing even to investigate cases where the Defense Department appears to have tortured detainees in its custody (let alone investigating the policymakers who approved of the abuse), the Obama administration has so far amassed a disappointing record on “peace”-related activities at home.

The Nobel Committee was obviously looking at different things when it made its award, and emphasized Obama’s ability to “capture the world’s attention” and offer people hope for the future. That’s a good start, and hopeful rhetoric is important and a welcome change for the so-called “leader of the free world.” But true diplomacy and progress and “peace” can’t come from hiding the brutality of the past.

So far, just as he’s promised a new diplomacy, the President has made lots of hopeful promises about a new transparency and accountability in government. He has yet to follow up on them.

That may be true, but there’s an aspect of one of Brennan’s recent speeches that, if actually implemented, would have the opposite effect.

As Spencer Ackerman reported here earlier, Brennan, in his speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, declared an end to the “war on terror.”

“This is not a ‘war on terror,’” Brennan said. “We cannot let the terror prism guide how we’re going to interact and be involved in different parts of the world.”

Well, if that’s the case, then how is the Obama administration going to justify “preventive detention” of terror suspects under the laws of war?

That power to detain supposedly “dangerous” people who can’t be proven guilty in any sort of court is a power the Bush administration relied on heavily and the Obama administration continues to claim. It’s at the core of President Obama’s claim that there’s a class of people who cannot be tried in criminal court or even by military commission, yet still must be held in prison because they’re “dangerous.”  That’s all been justified legally by saying that we’re at “war,” and terror suspects are warriors in the “war on terror.”

Now that the Brennan has declared an end to that war, is the Obama administration willing to relinquish its right to detain terror suspects picked up anywhere in the world?

So far, Obama has not made clear how he intends to use this “preventive detention” authority he claims that he has, though it’s as broad a detention authority as Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey claimed over a year ago. But if Brennan really has the sway over the administration that Wheeler suggests he does, then maybe Obama will soon have to concede that the “war on terror” is over — and so is his corresponding power to seize and imprison its supposed “warriors” anywhere in the world.

Economists and media pundits — themselves mostly gentlemanly elites anxious to please corporate America — are slow to make the accusation that what happened here was truly criminal, and so miss the real story. The American people understand that when a group of bankers shuffle some paper unproductively and get away with hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses, yet cause a loss of $40 trillion in global wealth and cause approximately 100 million people to become unemployed worldwide, there is only one word to describe it: criminal. [...]

Why isn’t the FBI breaking down the doors of the commercial and investment banks and grabbing computers so as to preserve incendiary e-mails that will most definitely implicate executives? Why are managements that caused this still in their jobs and still receiving bonuses? Are the bonuses paid to the folks at AIG that caused its collapse nothing more than hush money? How can the rating agencies still be in business? Why don’t we make one arrest and lean on the bankster to see if he will fold like the cheap suit that he is and name other conspirators? The FBI spends more time investigating $2,000 drug buys than they have to date investigating the biggest heist in the history of the world: $40 trillion, that’s trillion with a T, that’s 40 million bags each containing $1 million.

Talbott’s arguments bring to mind a recent investigative series by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which used public records to document who was behind the flipping and mortgage fraud that have decimated the area, with $450 million in defaulted loans.

Nearly 40 percent of the people involved in questionable flips in Sarasota and Manatee counties were industry insiders — real estate agents, developers, lawyers and mortgage brokers. Of the 37 groups discovered by the newspaper, 21 were organized by real estate agents or mortgage brokers.

Some of the people who organized or participated in flips were considered leaders of their profession. One was recognized as one of the top 50 Re/Max real estate agents in the world. Another won multiple awards from the Mortgage Bankers Association of Florida. Some flippers identified by the Herald-Tribune were seen as key clients by local banks and were allowed to pick their own appraisers or had loan approvals expedited to quickly close deals.

In the email thread, Johnson agrees that more criminal investigations are called for, but points out that investigations can be lengthy and more charges actually may be on the way. He adds that an equally worrisome problem were the actions during the crisis that were perfectly legal — such as campaign contributions to politicians who did the bidding of the financial industry.

That’s true, but the criminal piece of this shouldn’t get left behind. I’ve heard the argument before that numerous criminal investigations are ongoing and it’s just a matter of time before we begin to see more prosecutions — but I’ll believe that when I finally see it. In the meantime, the Sarasota stories point out that the real estate industry has a responsibility to do a much better job of policing itself. Award-winning agents who engaged in flipping schemes based on fraud should be hounded out of the profession. And if the industry won’t do it on its own, then someone else needs to do it for them, either by aggressive criminal investigations and prosecutions or some kind of public censure.

As it stands now, everyone up and down the line is getting away with it when it comes to predatory mortgage lending, from the brokers at the bottom to the investors at the top. As Talbott points out, it’s not hard for the American public to figure out that something criminal went wrong in a $40 trillion meltdown. Now it’s the justice system’s turn to do the same.

The Lieberman-Graham Amendment, also known as The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act, is strongly supported by President Obama. It would amend the Freedom of Information Act — the same one Obama promised to construe liberally in favor of releasing information — to allow the president to conceal the photos of detainee abuse that the administration has already been ordered to produce in a pending lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Oddly, the Obama administration and Senate Democrats seem to have followed the advice of Andy McCarthy at National Review, who a few weeks ago specifically suggested that the administration need not follow the court order requiring release of the photos; Congress, with the White House’s support, could just amend FOIA or adopt a new law to allow Obama to conceal the photos, and avoid having to bother with the pesky federal court system, which so far hasn’t given the administration its way.

The only problem is, how is the Obama administration going to reconcile this move with the President’s eloquent promises on his first days in office?

Remember this Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government?

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.

Or this statement by Attorney General Eric Holder during his confirmation process?

I firmly believe that transparency is a key to good government.  Openness allows the public to have faith that its government obeys the law.

So isn’t it strange that the government, rather than appealing a court order pursuant to its rights under the law, now wants to defy the court by asking Congress simply to change the law?

I agree with Glenn Greenwald on this one:

If, as Obama claims, there are legitimate reasons to suppress these photos under FOIA’s exemptions (including its very broad national security exemptions), then the Supreme Court can reverse the two lower court rulings ordering disclosure — as Obama is asking it to do.  But there is no good reason to vest the Obama administration with the unilateral power to simply waive FOIA requirements simply because it loses in court and decides it doesn’t want to comply with court rulings and with current transparency laws.

And Nick Baumann at Mother Jones, who calls the photo suppression bill “an abomination that is reminiscent of the worst Bush-era excesses.”

It gives the executive branch the power to withhold an entire category of information from public scrutiny without any review. This law is Example A of the theory of the Presidency that says citizens should just trust the benevolent executive to do the right thing. Even in you oppose releasing some of the photos, I don’t see why you would want to give the White House the power to unilaterally decide what’s best. It says a lot about the Congress that members are willing to give Obama this kind of power. It says a lot about Obama that he supports this bill. Thank God for Barney Frank.

Well, except that late last week, Frank switched his vote.

In his recent speech at the National Archives, Obama said:

I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said. That is why, whenever possible, we will make information available to the American people so that they can make informed judgments and hold us accountable. But I have never argued – and never will – that our most sensitive national security matters should be an open book. I will never abandon – and I will vigorously defend – the necessity of classification to defend our troops at war; to protect sources and methods; and to safeguard confidential actions that keep the American people safe. And so, whenever we cannot release certain information to the public for valid national security reasons, I will insist that there is oversight of my actions – by Congress or by the courts.

Now that the court has refused to give the president what he wants, he’s hoping Congress will. He’s won in the Senate already. Let’s see if the House Democrats will stand their ground on this one.

“Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House,” Johnson wrote.

No kidding.

While The Post has mentioned some of these issues in previous stories, it hasn’t given the Obama administration’s surprising position on “state secrets”  nearly the sort of sustained attention that it deserves.  The Obama administration’s use of secrecy privileges to protect the previous administration’s lawbreaking has been going on for months, as I’ve been writing about here, and other legal bloggers, such as Glenn Greenwald at Salon, have been extensively reporting on as well.

Most recently, in the al-Haramain case, in which an Islamic charity sued the government for wiretapping the group and its lawyers without a warrant, the Obama administration told a federal district court that it simply did not have the authority to do what the court ordered (turn over critical documents that would allow the suit to go forward) and hence, it was not going to comply. What’s more, the new, open, free information-loving administration basically threatened to send in the federal marshals to seize from the judge’s files the offending “secret” documents at issue in the case, if he planned to turn them over to al-Haramain’s lawyers. It didn’t matter that the organization’s lawyers had already seen them, and knew exactly what they revealed: that the Bush administration had been secretly wiretapping the Islamic charity and its attorneys, without a warrant, in violation of federal law.

This was the second major Obama Justice Department showdown over the “state secrets” privilege (explained here). The first, which TWI was first to write about, was in the case of Binyam Mohamed and other torture victims suing Jeppesen Dataplan, the Boeing subsidiary that assisted the CIA in transporting the men to be tortured. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the men have pressed their claims against the company in part to avoid the broad range of immunities government officials usually claim — only to be thwarted by the Bush administration’s assertion that the “state secrets” privilege requires its dismissal.  Incredibly – even to the judges, it seemed — the Obama administration has continued to maintain that position.

In response, last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Penn.) introduced a bill that would require judges to look at the classified evidence when the government makes the state secrets claim, rather than blindly accept the government’s claims about the sensitivity of the materials.

Now that the mainstream media is finally taking a serious look at this — as I’ve noted before, some in the press seem to have been willfully avoiding some of these troubling Obama administration positions — that legislation might have a chance.