Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

U.S. Army Begins Testing Monster Laser Truck That Can Shoot Down Anything, Including Missiles
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily NewsThedailymail.co.uk
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Laser weapons are a step closer to deployment on Earth's battlefields as a U.S. defence company gears up to test a new land-based device.

Boeing has announced that it has successfully mounted a 10kw solid-state laser on an eight-wheeled, 500-horsepower truck that could be used alongside conventional Army forces.

The High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) is now ready for field testing and over the next year will have a chance to show off its ability to acquire, track and destroy targets.

The U.S. military has long hoped to develop a land-based, laser weapon that could be used to shoot down enemy missiles at the speed of light, but progress on the project has been slow.

It is hoped that the new weapon can be used to defend ground forces against rockets, artillery shells, missiles and unmanned drones by destroying threats with a beam of super-powered light energy.

U.S. and allied troops currently have limited options to defend against rockets, artillery or mortars. The short-range projectiles are airborne for only seconds, providing little time to take cover. And using heavy gunfire might inadvertently hit friendly forces in the process.

But HEL MD’s laser beam, moving at the speed of light - approximately 186,000 miles per second - will hit targets with unprecedented precision and swiftness.

Mike Rinn, vice president of Boeing Directed Energy Systems and director of the programme, said: 'The Boeing HEL MD program is applying the best of solid-state laser technology to ensure the Army has speed-of-light capability to defend against rockets, artillery, mortars, and unmanned aerial threats - both today and into the future.

'High power testing represents a critical step forward for this innovative directed energy system.'

The latest field tests as part of Boeing's contract with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defence Command. Blaine Beardsley, HEL MD program manager for Boeing, said: 'Phase II will allow us to build on the great work we have accomplished over the past several years with SMDC.

'Our team is eager to demonstrate that this revolutionary system is capable of saving lives and ready for the battlefield.'

The U.S. military is seeking contractors to build it miniature 'suicide drones' that can be flown into targets up to six miles away.

The little planes, which could look like the remote-controlled aircraft used in a more domestic setting, could be used for kamikaze-style attacks on vehicles or buildings - even individuals if necessary.

The Army wants the weapons, known as the 'Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System' (LMAMS) into war by 2016, and describe the weapon as a 'portable, covert weapon with strike capability against stationary or moving individuals, with a very low risk of collateral damage'.

The 'plane' will consist of a drone, warhead and launching device with a maximum weight of less than five pounds.

The aim is to fit the entire plane in a backpack, and be able to fly it two minutes after a target is agreed on.

At that point, the plane must be able to fly for 15 to 30 minutes across up to six miles of territory before hitting its target.

The Pentagon has long been keen to develop laser weapons, and not just because of their ubiquity in science fiction.

Proponents of laser guns claim they are capable of incredible speed and precision coupled with relatively low cost and a seemingly near-infinite supply of 'ammo' constrained only by the availability of electricity.

However, developing weapons to the stage where they are ready for battlefield use has so far proved a challenge as researchers battle with problems like cooling, efficiency and miniaturisation.

In recent years other defence contractors including Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have demonstrated ship-mounted lasers capable of shooting down aircraft and disabling small boats.

The U.S. military has been experimenting with laser weapons since the Seventies but it is only in the past few years that a high-energy laser has properly functioned as a weapon.

Early systems used large, chemical-based lasers which tended to produce dangerous waste gases. More recently, scientists have developed solid state lasers that combine large numbers of compact beam generators, similar to LEDs.

The 10kw capacity of Boeing's latest effort is fairly modest compared with the power levels the Pentagon hopes to eventually achieve. The threshold for weapons-grade lasers is generally considered to be 100kw. Boeing said their system could 'subsequently' incorporate a more powerful laser.

The Monstrous Abortion Trial the Media Don’t Want You to Know About
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily NewsFoxsnews
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

When the Newtown shooting took the lives of 20 children, the nation was justifiably horrified. Journalists reported round the clock on ways to change public policy to prevent another shooting. But when seven children and a mother died in a Philadelphia abortion clinic dubbed a “house of horrors,” the major media couldn’t have cared less.

It’s a news story that reads more like a Hollywood torture plot – “Saw” or “Hostel” or some other movie so foul that it makes you want to take a shower just having viewed it.

Only this case is real and the media are keeping it real quiet because it betrays the barbarity of the abortion industry in open court, where they can’t hide. It’s all about abortion “doctor” Kermit Gosnell and the purportedly Medieval facility he ran to kill babies – both before they were born and after, claim prosecutors. Eight clinic employees have already pleaded guilty to “various charges.”

ABC, CBS and NBC have spent 41 minutes and 26 seconds telling viewers about the Rutgers basketball scandal. And not a second about baby murder in Philadelphia.

“Gosnell is charged with killing seven babies born alive, along with Karnamaya Mongar a newly-arrived, 41-year-old refugee from Bhutan. Prosecutors say Gosnell's staff gave the 90-pound woman a lethal dose of anesthesia and painkillers during a 2009 abortion,” according to the Associated Press.

ABC has never carried that story. Not once. Neither has NBC. CBS did … back in 2011 when Gosnell was first arrested. The rest of the media landscape is an equal travesty. CNN did one story on it in 2013, even though the trial has been going on for more than three weeks. Fox has covered it more than most of its TV kin, but it has surprisingly not done a lot.

It’s OK, they’ve been too busy with basketball. Yes, ABC, CBS and NBC have spent 41 minutes and 26 seconds telling viewers about the Rutgers basketball scandal. And not a second about baby murder in Philadelphia. Of course, Rutgers Coach Mike Rice did throw basketballs at grown men and deploy “abusive behavior”.

Gosnell’s charges seem mild by comparison. He is charged with murdering seven viable, born-alive babies “by plunging scissors into their spinal cords.” Sherry West, who worked for Gosnell, recently testified she saw an 18- to 24-inch-long newborn. “It didn't have eyes or a mouth but it was like screeching, making this noise. It was weird. It sounded like a little alien,” she told the court.

“A former clinic worker who grew up in Mt. Lebanon testified on Thursday that he routinely saw babies born and then killed with scissors in an inner-city Philadelphia clinic that catered to minorities, the poor and women with late-term pregnancies,” reported AP. The worker estimated the number of babies he saw killed at about 100.

Despite all that, print publications haven’t covered the story much either. The local papers, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, have done a fantastic job covering a story that is so ghastly that its reporters will probably never stop having nightmares. Lexis-Nexis credits the Inquirer with more than 140 stories about the topic, each more gruesome than the last.

But the national papers have largely ignored it. The New York Times, the land of “All the News That's Fit to Print” only found this mass murder story “fit” four times, just once in 2013. The Washington Post has mentioned it three times, but not since April 11 of 2012.

The liberal press has been almost as silent. Lefty Salon had a few AP stories, but only ones that undermined the charges against the doctor. Those include: “Doc disputes ‘killings’ at Philly abortion clinic” and “Med. examiner, lawyer clash at doc’s murder trial.”

The liberal Huffington Post, on which so many journalists rely for their news, was equally dismissive. It’s run a couple wire stories, but those conveniently left out the most heinous aspects of the trial.

Surprisingly, the whacko site Alternet included one condemnation of Gosnell, but it did to hold the line on unlimited abortion. The site ran the text of a speech by Dr. Jennefer Russo of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. While she admitted, “what happened in Philadelphia in the office of Kermit Gosnell is an atrocity,” she still defended abortion as a way to “protect women’s health.” Perhaps she hasn’t been following the trial.

Or maybe she has and the abortion industry doesn’t care what happens as long as it adds to the 50 million aborted babies since Roe v. Wade. That was certainly the impression given by Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates. She testified that how to handle a child born from a botched abortion “should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” Someone needs to teach Planned Parenthood that abortions after a child is born are murder.

Sadly, that story also has received no attention. Journalists are quick to worry about “extreme” ways states are trying to curtail abortion. But clearly, murdering babies is not the news media’s definition of “extreme.”

Twenty conservative leaders including L. Brent Bozell, of the Media Research Center, Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, and Jeanne Monahan, of March for Life Education and Defense Fund, have all demanded the media stop censoring this ghoulish trial. In an open letter, they concluded: “This cover-up is a national disgrace.”

The oddest thing about the media blackout is how it defies everything news folks ordinarily do. Journalists aren’t just predictable, they are stunningly so. Give them a Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox, Scott Peterson and more, and they will be reporting it, desperate for the attention and ratings.

That is, unless it makes the Merchants of Death at Planned Parenthood look bad. Then that story will be ignored, no matter how many babies die in the process.

The AP Capitulates to the Muslim Brotherhood
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily NewsAmerican Thinker
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

In a stunning move, the Associated Press (AP) capitulated to pressures by Islamist group CAIR to drop the use of the term "Islamist" when describing self-declared Islamist militants and movements.

The AP's retreat is indicative of a crumbling of parts of the so-called "mainstream media" in its reporting about the Middle East, the Arab world and the Muslim world.

By retreating from describing the Islamists as Islamists, the AP isolates itself from the rest of international media, which uses the term "Islamist" naturally and consistently with its Arabic translation and meaning.

More importantly, the AP is isolating itself from Arab media. For while media in the region uses the term Islamy or Islami (Islamist) to identify all movements that aim at the establishment of an "Islamist" state, regardless of these various movements' strategic agendas, from the more political Muslim Brotherhood to the radical Salafists and the extremist al-Qaeda, The AP will be entering the foggy zone established and encouraged by advisers of the U.S. administration, where definitions are twisted by "Islamist lobbies" backed by petrodollars' power.

The term "Islamist" is the most accurate translation of "Islami" and "Islamy," which in the original language mean a militant movement working towards an ideological goal, particularly the establishment of a government based on a strict version of sharia law.

The term "Islamist" was created in Arab political culture, precisely to distinguish the militants from regular Muslims whose goals do not necessarily include establishing an Islamist state. All Arab media, in addition to European, Asian, African, Russian, and Latin American presses, use the term on a daily basis.

It clarifies to their readers and viewers that not all Muslims are Islamists inasmuch as not all Christians are fundamentalists or all Hindus ultra-nationalists, etc.

By eliminating the term "Islamist" from the media and political dictionary, the public will revert to using more ambiguous terms, such as Muslim radicals or extremists, among others, which would actually have two negative effects.

One, it will blur the difference between moderates and extremists in the Muslim world, and two, it will provide the actual extremists or militants a cover within society.

In short, by eliminating the term "Islamist" as identification of "militants," we run the high risk of having the actual Islamists merging with Muslim society and claiming they are simply devout individuals.

In the Arab world and the rest of the international community, a clear distinction has been established between the "Islamist militants" and the rest.

Even the Islamists themselves are proud of this terminology. Brotherhood, Salafists, jihadists, and Khomeinists all use this term while disagreeing who among them deserves it. Hence, the concept is as rooted as all well-established categories in Middle East politics.

So why would Islamist lobbies in the United States wage a campaign to ban the use of the term for what it means and force media, particularly the influential news agencies, to refrain from identifying the militants as "Islamists"?

The narrative strategy employed by the Brotherhood-inspired pressure groups, such as CAIR, ISNA and others in Washington, is to deny the public the ability to distinguish between Islamists and Muslims or to understand that there is an ideological movement that is attempting to drive politics within a much wider and diverse community.

In short, the lobbies aim at establishing as an accepted reality that all true Muslims are Islamists, and hence criticism against their own brand of Salafism is a criticism against the entire community.

In the region, a long-established political narrative has made a difference between Muslims who follow Salafism, and thus are called Islamists, and the rest of the communities who happen to be Muslims but do not subscribe to the Salafi Islamist brand.

When the West has identified the former brand or political ideology, it can operate strategically and isolate the extreme from the mainstream.

However, by forcing the media and the government in the U.S. to blur the difference, the Islamists will be wrongly perceived as more religious Muslims than usual, not as an ideological current with a political agenda.

This would have significant negative consequences on de-radicalization domestically and clearly affect U.S. foreign policy. Washington will be incapable of distinguishing the radicals from the moderates.

The AP move, according to observers, "is part of a wider push to remove the capacity to identify the Jihadi threat from the public narrative." We warned about this propaganda warfare waged by the lobbies as early as 2005 in our book Future Jihad, as well as in our 2007 book War of Ideas.

Observers in the region, particularly in Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon, noted that while an uprising is brewing against the Brotherhood and the Salafists in the Arab world, Western governments, particularly the U.S. bureaucracy, are making concession after concession to the pro-Brotherhood lobbies in America.

No Coherent U.S. Israel - Palestinian Peace Policy - Only Small Steps Centering On… Hamas
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;Commentary

From the outside, US Secretary of State John Kerry looked like molding his first foray into Middle East peacemaking around a series of small steps, mostly economic, for enticing Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) out of his long sulk to face Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the negotiating table.
From the inside, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Middle East sources present a different picture. The American, Israeli, Arab and Turkish players with whom Kerry talked received the same impression: The US has given up on a solid and defined policy on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and turned to a series of graduated steps, some mutually inconsistent, but all centering on a push for reconciliation within the Palestinian camp.
After that is achieved, the Obama administration will count on three regional rulers, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Qatari ruler Amir al-Thani, and Jordan’s King Abdullah to bring to the table a unified Palestinian delegation which includes the radical Hamas in Gaza as well as its rival Fatah in Ramallah.
In this venture, the obstacles facing Secretary Kerry far outweigh its realistic prospects:

Kerry helped the Turkish-Israeli thaw

1. Kerry was able to smooth out some of the bumps remaining in the path of a thaw in the deep crisis between Turkey and Israel. The first steps toward rapprochement between Ankara and Jerusalem have been short, considering their vast differences. But there is still a long way to go.
The US Secretary urged Erdogan to make some attitude adjustments if he wanted to be taken seriously by Netanyahu as a peace sponsor. For instance, he managed to get Erdogan to drop his plan to make hay from his incipient strategic, economic and military rapport with Israel to the advantage of the hardline Palestinian Hamas in Gaza.
The Turkish prime minister had planned to visit the Gaza Strip in mid-April to trumpet his success in bringing Israel’s prime minister to his knees by forcing him to apologize for the Marmara incident. He intended to drive into Gaza City in an open car sitting beside the triumphant Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
But Wednesday, April 10, he suddenly called off his Gaza trip until after he visits the White House in mid-May. It took two phone calls to Kerry - from Prime Minister Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi - to pull Erdogan off his high horse, although he climbed back on as soon as the US Secretary was out of the region.

Egypt’s mistrust of Hamas runs deep

2. Egypt’s mistrust of Hamas is another sticking-point in Kerry’s project.
Meshaal was reelected head of the Hamas Politburo by the movement’s Shura Council meeting at the InterContinental Hotel in Nasr City Cairo on April 1. His ally ex-Prime Minister of Gaza Ismail Haniyeh was chosen as Vice President.
Although the vote was held under the strict supervision of Egyptian intelligence, Cairo is not pleased with the result for four reasons:
- Meshaal is setting up his bureau and center of operations in Doha rather than Cairo, so that the Qatari emir will acquire the Gaza Strip as his sphere of influence at the expense of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood whose pull with the Palestinians will accordingly diminish.
- Cairo is not convinced by the US, European and Qatari and Turkish diplomats who maintain that the Meshaal-Haniyeh election win was a victory for the moderate Hamas wing over the pro-Iranian radicals.
Egypt was gravely upset by learning that Hamas was jointly responsible with Al Qaeda-linked elements in Sinai for the attack on an Egyptian border police outpost in Rafah near the Israeli border on August 5, 2012, which left 16 Egyptian commandos dead.
Egyptian intelligence obtained hard evidence that Hamas operatives tipped off the attackers and led them to their target. Cairo relayed to Gaza City the names of the accused operatives and demanded their extradition. Hamas refused to hand them over.

Egyptian and Israeli concerns about Hamas’s shady Sinai connections

The Egyptians are therefore deeply concerned by the burgeoning interrelations between the Hamas rulers of Gaza and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Salafists of Sinai and also distrust Hamas’s role in abetting the large network shuttling smuggled Libyan arms to Middle East clients.
It was their connections with Hamas that enabled the smuggling networks to make the Sinai desert peninsula a key wayside hub on their routes to markets. From Cairo’s perspective, Hamas was instrumental in undermining Egyptian sovereignty in Sinai.
Israel shares both of Cairo's concerns about Hamas and its shady connections.
This week, IDF forces in southern Israeli were placed on high alert, and Iron Dome missile batteries deployed at the two important port-towns of Ashkelon and Eilat on information of a forthcoming, multiple Salafi-Al Qaeda attack from Sinai.
The danger was averted by the arrest in Gaza of 41 activists from these organizations in a show of willingness by Hamas to cooperate with Egypt and Israel in countering terror.
However, an Israeli military delegation which arrived in Cairo Thursday, April 11, has plenty to discuss with is Egyptian hosts.

How moderate is moderate when it comes to Hamas?

3. Not everyone is convinced that the Hamas fundamentalists, long branded by the US and the EU as terrorists, have changed their spots. Some US and other Western officials, influenced by Turkey and Qatar, are now claiming this is so on the strength of Hamas’s willingness to get involved in the Syrian conflict on the side of the rebels.
Hamas instructors are reaching Syria with the help of Turkish intelligence and Qatari funds. Turkey and Qatar consider Hamas is now worthy of an American seal of approval as participants in the Palestinian delegation to peace talks with Israel.
Kerry and his strategists still see this as a far-off goal.
4. Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal has set an ambitious objective for his new term, which is to transform his extremist Islamic movement which governs Gaza into a widely recognized, legitimate political force – without, however, paying for this recognition by recognizing Israel.
5. The US Secretary of State is also exploring a separate Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli channel that would be sharply inconsistent with the Turkish-Qatari-Hamas track – that is if either of them ever got off the ground.
This channel envisages the creation of a federation between Jordan and the Palestinian West Bank that would in time broaden out into an Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian confederation (a proposal which DEBKA-Net-Weekly and debkafile have cited several times in recent months) and so allay Saudi concerns.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been vying for control over the rebel movement in Syria. Now they are pitted against one another for influence over the Palestinians.
Secretary Kerry has a long way to go before he can make sense of this mishmash and fashion a coherent US policy for breaking the ice on the Palestinian issue.

Let the Headlines Speak
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Iranian media: Successful testing of 3 new missiles
The Iranian Army announced on Saturday the successful testing of three new missiles, the Iranian Fars News Agency reported. The army revealed no details about the weapons, but did say that they were different from the Naze'at 10 and Fajr missiles that Iran has in its arsenal. The report stated that the Fajr-5 has a range of 75 km. which is a longer range than the medium range Naze'at 10.

Google chief urges action to regulate mini-drones
The influential head of Google, Eric Schmidt, has called for civilian drone technology to be regulated, warning about privacy and security concerns. Cheap miniature versions of the unmanned aircraft used by militaries could fall into the wrong hands, he told the UK's Guardian newspaper. Quarrelling neighbours, he suggested, might end up buzzing each other with private surveillance drones.

Republicans approve resolution reaffirming opposition to gay marriage
With no debate, Republicans at the party's spring meeting here on Friday unanimously approved a number of resolutions, including one that reaffirmed the party's opposition to same-sex marriage. "The Republican National Committee affirms its support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and as the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America," the resolution read. The 157 RNC members present approved it in a voice vote.

Global 4/14 Day Sees 1 Million Christians Pray for 2 Billion Children
An international coalition of 1 million Christians, known as the 4/14 Window Movement, will partner together in prayer on six continents on Sunday. Their mission: to pray for children in the "4/14 Window." The 4/14 Window refers to all children between the ages of 4 to 14. During this decade, or "window," most children in this demographic develop their moral and spiritual foundations.

Strong Quake in Japan Leaves Several Injured
A strong earthquake shook Japan on Saturday near the southwestern city of Kobe, leaving 23 people injured, seven of them seriously — mostly elderly tripping while trying to flee, police said. No one was killed. The magnitude 6.3 quake left some homes with rooftop tiles broken and cracked walls, while goods fell off store shelves, according to the Meteorological Agency and Japanese TV news footage.

Spring storm socks Midwest, Deep South; 3 dead
A powerful spring storm unleashed tornadoes and winds strong enough to peel the roofs from homes in the Deep South and heaped snow and ice on the Midwest, killing three people and leaving thousands without power.

Kerry to meet China's top leaders to discuss North Korea
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets China's top leaders on Saturday in an effort to persuade them to exert pressure on North Korea to scale back its belligerent rhetoric and, eventually, return to nuclear talks.

Pope Faces Tough Decisions as Vatican Reforms Loom
Pope Francis has spent much of his first month as pope charming ordinary Catholics with his ordinary yet extraordinary papal ways and making clear he is very much the boss when it comes to decisions as small as the shoes he wears to where he rests his head at night.

Rick Warren Publicly Forgives Seller of Unregistered Gun in Son's Suicide
Pastor Rick Warren has shared some of his thoughts via Twitter during the past week as he and his wife Kay grieve the loss of their youngest son, tweeting Thursday (April 11) that he has forgiven the person who sold Matthew the gun used in his suicide.

Ireland to Build One of Europe's Largest Mosques As Islam is Now the Fastest Growing Religion in Ire
Apr 13th, 2013
Daily Newswired.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

City planners in the Irish capital, Dublin, have given the go-ahead for the construction of a sprawling mega-mosque complex that will cater to Ireland's burgeoning Muslim population.

The massive €40 million ($50 million) "Islamic Cultural Center" will be built on a six-acre site in Clongriffin, a new and as yet unfinished suburb at the northern edge of Dublin.

According to the Dublin City Council, which approved the project on March 7, the Clongriffin Mosque will consist of: (a) a three-story domed mosque and cultural center with towering minarets; (b) a two-story conference center including a reception foyer, conference room, restaurant, banquet hall, kitchens and ancillary accommodation; (c) a three-story 16-classroom primary school and a two-story 12-classroom secondary school; (d) a two-story fitness center with a gym, sauna, steam room and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool; (e) a bookshop, library and mortuary; and (f) three four-story blocks of two-bedroom apartments with ground floor shops.

The Clongriffin Mosque will cater to some of the 30,000 Muslims living in Dublin, which is home to around 60% of the estimated 50,000 Muslims living in Ireland.

Although the number of Muslims in Ireland is relatively small (1.07% of the overall population), when compared to other European countries, the rate of growth of the Muslim population in Ireland has surged exponentially (1,170%) over the past 20 years, and Islam is now the fastest growing religion in the country. The total population of Ireland is 4.6 million.

According to Irish census data for 1991, the number of Muslims in the country was 3,875. After 1991, the Muslim population jumped, due to the arrival of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers from Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia.

According to the Irish census data for 2002, the number of Muslims was 19,147; by 2006, that number had swelled to 32,539. In the 2011 census, the number of Muslims was 49,204.

Ireland's Muslim population is projected to almost triple over the next twenty years, according to the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center. A report entitled, The Future of the Global Muslim Population: Projections for 2010-2030 forecasts that there will be 125,000 Muslims living in Ireland by 2030.

The Clongriffin Mosque is being promoted by a Dublin-based Muslim organization called the Dublin Welfare Society Limited, an opaque group that was incorporated in April 2010 and has no formal activities other than to lobby for the mosque project.

The mega-mosque will be developed by a local real estate mogul, Gerry Gannon, on extensive land he owns at Clongriffin. According to the Irish Times, the project is a "coup" for Gannon, who hopes to sell hundreds and possibly thousands of newly built homes to Muslim families using the cultural center.

Clongriffin is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of Dublin. Also known as the North Fringe, most of the land on which Clongriffin is being built was previously farmland. In July 2003, the Dublin City Council granted permission to begin developing a new suburb comprising houses and apartments, as well as schools, retail stores, supermarkets and a multi-screen cinema.

But construction in Clongriffin came to an abrupt halt after the Irish property bubble burst in 2009, and the country needed to be rescued in November 2010 with an €85 billion ($109 billion) bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Before Ireland's real estate crash, Gannon invested millions of euros on developing Clongriffin, including the construction of a railway station linking the suburb to downtown Dublin. With the approval of the mega-mosque project, Clongriffin suddenly has a new lease on life... and so does Gannon.

Planning documents show that the Dublin City Council has approved the construction of 3,678 new homes near where the mega-mosque will be built. Gannon hopes the Clongriffin Mosque will fuel demand for the homes he is eager to sell.

But critics worry that Clongriffin is in danger of becoming an exclusively Islamic suburb on the outskirts of Dublin where Muslims will establish a parallel society rather than integrate.

An Islamist website called "Islamic Vanguards: Spearheading Ireland's Transition" recently warned that Gannon's greed would be Ireland's undoing: "If there's one thing the west yearns, it is money.

For it has worshiped this false god without fail for as long as they have departed from the worship of the true God. And it is this weakness, nay addiction that will see what they hold precious being wrenched from their spindly hands.

Already as we speak vast swathes of the London metropolis are in Muslim hands, Dublin is set to follow as the wealth that Allah has blessed His servants with is used to reclaim the land for His glory."

In any event, the Clongriffin Mosque will not be the only mega-mosque in town: the new mosque on the northern edge of Dublin will compete with another mega-mosque, located in Clonskeagh on the southern edge of Dublin.

The mosque complex at Clonskeagh, which also goes by the name "Islamic Cultural Center," has been in operation since 1996. Its sprawling four-acre campus was financed by Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the deputy ruler of Dubai.

The Clonskeagh Mosque is home to the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), an Islamist group which seeks to have Islamic Sharia law recognized throughout Europe.

The ECFR is an integral part of the Brussels-based Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), an umbrella group that unites more than 30 Muslim Brotherhood organizations in Europe, and acts as the main vehicle for propagating Muslim Brotherhood ideology in Europe.

The ECFR is chaired by the Egyptian-born, Qatari-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the influential Islamic scholar who is also a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Al-Qaradawi -- a spiritual advisor for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas who has defended suicide attacks against Jews as "martyrdom in the name of Allah" -- has been banned from entering Great Britain and the United States.

Al-Qaradawi speaks openly about the goals of Islam: "What remains, then, is to conquer Rome. (...) This means that Islam will come back to Europe for the third time, after it was expelled from it twice. (...) Conquest through Dawa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through our Dawa."

According to a leaked US State Department memo dated July 7, 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood is stronger in Ireland than anywhere in the world outside of Qatar, and al-Qaradawi "runs Islam in Ireland."

The Muslim Brotherhood, which is heavily influenced by the extremist ideology of Wahhabism, subsidized by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, may be about to tighten its grip over Islam in Ireland even further.

Rumors abound that the new mega-mosque at Clongriffin will be financed by Qatar, which has been engaged in a multi-million euro spending spree to spread Wahhabi Islam around Europe.

Wahhabism -- which not only discourages Muslim integration in the West, but actively encourages jihad against non-Muslims -- threatens to radicalize Muslim immigrants in Ireland, according to the Irish Times.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who has long cultivated an image as a pro-Western reformist and modernizer, has vowed to "spare no effort" to spread the fundamentalist teachings of Wahhabi Islam across "the whole world."