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Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts Promote Radical Islam

by Daniel Pipes
Fri, 21 May 2004
updated Fri, 28 Dec 2007

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	Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941), founder of the Scouting movement.

the girls line up in two groups — one dressed in white, the other in pink gowns and hijabs. On stage, they approach a copy of the Quran held by another girl. Gently kissing its spine, they pass underneath as parents in the audience snap away with digital cameras. "That's my baby," beams one father. …

Organizers of the Takleef celebration are well aware of the spiritual and cultural challenges these girls face in deciding to wear the hijab. "A couple of these girls are taking the veil before their mothers are," says 38-year-old Ali Ibrahim, one of the scout volunteers organizing the celebration. "We even have one girl whose parents are not convinced and are trying to get her to take off the veil. May God guide her." …

A song airs over the loudspeakers during the play, summing up, in Simon and Garfunkel-like acoustical melodies, a Muslim girl's answer to criticism: The hijab "is a simple cloth to preserve her dignity/So lift the veil from your heart/And see the heart of purity."

Comments: (1) This is the Girl Scouts. In the United States. A new era is upon us. (2) Note the confidence subtly expressed in the middle paragraph quoted above, that those Muslim women not already with hijab will soon make the necessary adjustment. (May 21, 2004)

June 2, 2004 update: Beila Rabinowitz, the researcher on militant Islam, points out that the logo of the Islamic Committee on Scouting, an official part of the scouting movement, has a format of note: the Islamic crescent and star surround the Boy Scout fleur de lys, as though gobbling it up, while the boy pictured by it has his hands extended out as Muslims do when praying.

No less interesting, the ICS offers an "Allahu Akber" award – the same as the war cry (usually spelled "Allahu Akbar") associated with militant Islam.

These Islamist features of ICS (as well as its sister organization, the Islamic Committee on Girl Scouting) should come as no surprise, as they are headed by Dawood Zwink, someone closely associated with a range of militant Islamic institutions, including the American Muslim Council and the Islamic Society of North America. More worrisome yet is Zwink's serving as chairperson of the Somali Relief Fund for, as J. Michael Waller pointed out in Senate testimony in October 2003,

Prominent Al-Qaeda operative, Wadih El Hage, now serving life in prison for masterminding 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, reportedly had Somali Relief Fund business card in his possession during a 1997 raid on his home by Kenyan officials.

If this report is in fact true, it establishes a connection between the Islamic Committee on Scouting and Al-Qaeda.

July 1, 2005 update: "The Saudi Boy Scout Association has kindly invited you to be their guest for Hajj 2006. Flights, Saudi accommodation, meals and internal transport for the period of Hajj will be sponsored by the Saudi Scouts." So announces the Muslim Association of Britain on its website today. "Hajj will transform your life," it goes on, "since you will be able to share & experience something incredible with 2 million other Muslims. This will truly be an international Scouting experience."

Oct. 27, 2006 update: There is no date or specificity, but it appears that the 55 pictures posted by the BBC at "Scouts' Hajj Experience" derive from the Hajj 2006 project noted above. Here is one of those pictures.

British Boy Scouts on hajj, standing here at the top of Mina Mountain.

Also of note is the "1st UK Hajj Scout Contingent 2006" patch worn on their T-shirts

Patch of "1st UK Hajj Scout Contingent 2006."

Jan. 21, 2007 update: More information on the Islamist tinge of British Muslim scouting comes from Jonny Beardsall of London's Daily Telegraph in "Prayers and pledges."

Children attend after-school meetings during the week and go on weekend expeditions, but religious sensitivities dictate that from the age of 11, girls do not do physical activities alongside boys. "We just keep within our boundaries, which isn't difficult," Mahliya Almulad, 28, who leads the girls' troop, says. "Girls play football, but only with other girls, and they always cover their legs. Likewise they can swim, but at female-only sessions."

For six years, Almulad has worked as a support group co-ordinator for the charity Islamic Relief. "I enjoy working with children and I believe in what the movement stands for," she says. "It's important for them to learn new skills and to socialise. Muslims kids haven't had such chances." Muslim Scouts eat only halal meat. "If we're intending to cook we bring our own meat," Mustafa Audhali says. They observe prayers five times a day.

We also learn that Hanan Bakakam, 20, who studies youth and community work at Stafford University, has her head "swathed with a double layer of cream headscarf, with another worn around her shoulders."

Sep. 23, 2007 update: The Muslim American Society, the face of the Muslim Brethren in the United States, "used Boy and Girl Scout troops last year as part of a massive get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Muslim voters in Virginia and elsewhere" to vote for the Democratic candidate for Senate, Jim Webb, reports Linda Keay in IPT News. This is not routine stuff: "National leaders at the Boy and Girl Scouts of America say they've never heard of using Scout troops in such political activity and it violates Scout policy." But "MAS Executive Director Mahdi Bray isn't keeping the fact that he tapped Scouts to run phone banks a secret. In fact, he's bragging about it."

Related Topics: Muslims in the West, Radical Islam

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