Ambimama - India

Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
In his article on Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion, he has written a nice research article.
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ambimama says:
The article is very lengthy folloed by lot of comments. For the sake of ‘keeping the readers engaed’ I give only excerpts from the original. For detailed reading see the end of this article for the original link.
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Friday, June 23, 2006
I just saw the spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations on CNN saying that the Miami cult members just arrested are not Muslims. I’d say that is a fair statement.

For one thing, they are vegetarians!

It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam.

It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites “devils” in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York’s Moors.

Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santeria-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot.

Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek. I wonder if it is “Seas of David” or “C’s of David”, with “c” meaning commando or some such?

I define cult as a religious group that has values that put it in a high state of tension with the norms of mainstream society, and that has a leadership that imposes high levels of discipline and demand for control of adherents’ lives.

This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names.

Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they’d have been Black Panthers or Communists.

American folk religion, pursued in small groups with charismatic leaders, is replete with such groups, from Father Divine to Jim Jones of the People’s Temple to David Koreish.

The group never got past the stage of talking big, and violently. They talked dangerously, and some sort of intervention was warranted. Since they begged the FBI informant for “shoes,” they weren’t exactly a well-heeled group that seems very dangerous in actual practice. And, to what extent did the FBI informant press an al-Qaeda connection on these otherwise clueless but imaginative zealots?

But contrast the grandstanding of Alberto Gonzales on this group of poor unarmed ghetto folk with the way in which the Robert J. Goldstein case was treated.
He actually had the bombs in his house and was going to blow up Floridians. No press called him a “Jewish” terrorist and no questions were ever raised about his possible international links.

Imagine the horror of an urbane Arab-American professional with university higher degrees, steeped in Islamic culture and contributing to American society, at being lumped in by the American press and officialdom with these cultists who appropriated his religion for their violent religious fantasies.

The other thing to say is that American law is soft on cultic practices, of dirty tricks against and smearing of critics, enforced third-party shunning, manipulation, and group coercion. These things are not protected by the First Amendment and I think one part of our counter-terrorism strategy must be to develop legal strategies to make it easier to disrupt the workings of cults before they accumulate a critical mass for violent action.

The practice of just letting the head of the Internal Revenue Service decide if a group is a tax-free religion should also be revisited. In the past, some IRS heads appear to have been blackmailed by cults into granting them that status, which allows them to accumulate more wealth.

Whereas most terrorism is a form of educated, middle class politics, this particular group clearly grew out of the grievances and resentments of race and class inequality in the United States.
……..

The position of the poor and workers in particular is deteriorating in the US, as more and more of the privately held wealth is concentrated in the hands of a white, privileged, few…..

Posted by Juan @ 6/23/2006 01:45:00 PM

24 COMMENTS:
At 8:04 PM, Rudi’s Thoughts said…
Juan,
I live in the Detroit area and have been disgusted by the press coverage on the Miami situation. I find the degree of threat in Miami near 0, this story is worse than the “Detroit Sleeper Cell” story. At least it will dilute the Duke Lx BS.

At 8:27 PM, james_speaks said…
The BBC quotes Miami Herald reporter Mani Garcia as calling the arrests “overblown.” Be sure to check out this link to a BBC story about the new division in the FBI devoted to domestic spying and the need for home grown terrorist cells, which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales calls no less dangerous despite a clear link to al Qaeda, becomes apparent…..

At 8:27 PM, nephertiri said…
Well said, Mr. Cole. It’s heartening to know that many Americans will see right through such a ridiculous farce. Muslim terrorists indeed….Will these people will ever get a clue??

At 8:32 PM, PST said…
With respect to a possible black Hebrew connection, Maimi was the home of a violent group using Hebrew terms and symbols led by a man calling himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh. A Miami Herald reporter described the cult in a 1994 book called Brother Love: Murder, Money, and a Messiah. A name like Levi-El suggests the possibility of a history with them.

At 9:15 PM, Dr. Rudy Kastner said…
Who’s this “al Qaeda representative” cited throughout the indictment? This so called representative seemed to have all the money, weapons, and connections. The Justice Department, nor the media, seems to interested finding out or revealing who is this “al Qaeda representative.” Anyway, how “fortunate” for these seven impoverished black men in Miami to have this “Sugar Daddy” show up out of no where to take these poor men under his wings with the promise of money and adventure.
Can you say FBI AGENT PROVOCATEUR?

At 9:48 PM, haydarg said…
Dr. Cole,
Just to set the record straight I know several Muslims who are vegetarian. There certainly isn’t any prohibition against it, and in the current context of industrial animal production one could actually find a justification for it.

At 10:22 PM, The Buffalo In The Midst said…
One of my favorite news commentators, Travus T. Hipp, mentioned that this operation was a “sting”, and suggested quite bluntly that it means the FBI did most of the “War planning” and sold it to the group.

When I read this:
“Dwight York, a former Black Panther…”

…in the SPLC’s write-up on David York, it brings to mind so many infitrated organizations of the 60s, and where all the independent informers, opportunists, and provocateurs went.

They went into the cult business…..

lease this sort of carelessness is not worthy of the informed.)

The Link:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/06/cair-miami-cult-not-muslims-i-just-saw.html

For the latest article from the same author contact:

http://www.juancole.com

And please help vegetarianism to spred peace.More on the ‘SATVIC’ quality and ‘RAJAS’ quality of “BHIMA” the only among the Pandavas to fight terrorism with the same attitude, food intake and cunningness! More on this later - ambimama