“Why would Bill Clinton be participating in programs that teach Sharia in foreign countries where that is the specific objective of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and al-Qaeda,” asked counter-terrorist analyst Stephen Coughlin in a recent interview with the Daily Caller.
Former President Bill Clinton has taken millions of dollars in fees from a Dubai-based “education” company that promotes the teaching of Sharia Law. And, one-eighth of the proceeds of GEMS Education are used to fund Islamic Jihad.
Not only has Clinton taken $5.6 million from GEMS, he even served as honorary chairman of GEMS Education.
According to GEMS, it is the only foreign group allowed to provide educational services in Saudi Arabia, which observes Wahabism, the strictest form of Sharia. In Saudi Arabia, women are not permitted to drive automobiles and must be clothed with the hijab, which covers everything but their eyes and hands.
The Clintons have not yet released their tax returns from 2015, so it is uncertain whether they have received money from GEMS since 2014, and if so, how much. But, in 2014, the last year that tax records were released, Clinton took in $2.1 million. In 2012, Clinton was paid $1.25 million and $1.75 million in 2013 by GEMS.
When GEMS posted a job opening in 2014 for a director of “Islamic and Cultural Studies” for its campuses in Saudi Arabia, they stipulated that the applicant would need to have proficiency in Sharia to assist in developing the schools’ curriculum.
GEMS operates 51 separate schools in the Middle East, with 250,000 students in its program in 170 nations. In addition to its schools operating in Middle Eastern Islamic-majority countries, GEMS also has campuses in Kenya, Uganda, Asia, and the United Kingdom. Chicago boasts two schools.
In addition to direct payments to Clinton, GEMS has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, and was an official sponsor of the 2013 and 2014 Clinton Global Initiative.
The CEO of GEMS, Sunny Varkey, is a native of India, and his Varkey Foundation chipped in an additional $250,000 to $500,000 to the foundation.
Two banks that loaned money to GEMS last August — Emirates NB and Noor Bank — have been accused of conducting illicit banking deals with Iran.
Noor Bank helped Iran process foreign currency receipts, while Emirates has also been criticized for its financial dealings with Iran, considered a state sponsor of terrorism.
Shortly after leaving the White House, Bill Clinton took $15 million in an investment deal with the Dubai Investment Group, which involved the country’s absolute ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin-Rashid al-Marktoum. In 2011, Clinton was paid $500,000 by the royal family of the United Arab Emirates for one speech he made in Abu Dhabi.
So, what is Sharia Law, the foundation of the curriculum in the schools from which Clinton has pocketed millions of dollars, while serving as GEMS’ “honorary chairman”?
The term Sharia is an Arabic word, which means a body of moral and religious law, which Muslims claim came from religious prophecy, and not from humans. It covers virtually all aspects of life, including crime, marriage contracts, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting.
If Sharia was a simply a voluntary system of rules for those within a religious community, it would not be so controversial. But it is the major source of laws in many majority-Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Mauritania, Yemen, and Qatar. Those who violate some parts of Sharia can face very harsh penalties, including beheading, flogging, and stoning.
Since the 1970s, support has grown in Muslim-majority countries to make Sharia the sole source of laws, for not only Muslims, but all persons living in the country. The doctrine of Hisbah allows any Muslim to accuse not only another Muslim, but also ex-Muslims and non-Muslims of any behavior, or even beliefs, that may cause harm to Islamic society.
In other words, under the Sharia law taught in the schools run by the company from which the spouse of the Democratic Party nominee has taken millions of dollars, a person must follow certain Islamic rules of thought and behavior, whether or not one is a Muslim. Religious liberty is not a concept recognized as valid under this system.
Witnesses, in a Sharia court system, must be a Muslim, with male Muslims considered more reliable than female Muslims. The testimony of a non-Muslim is regarded as worthless.
Testimony to establish that a crime of rape has been committed requires four Muslim male witnesses.
According to Human Rights Watch, in Saudi Arabia’s Sharia courts, “The calculation of accidental death or injury compensation is discriminatory. In the event a court renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male, the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a Muslim male would receive; all other non-Muslims [Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Atheists] are only entitled to receive one-sixteenth of the amount a male Muslim would receive.”
There is some disagreement among Sharia scholars whether the life of a Christian or Jew is worth one-half or one-third that of a Muslim.
Hillary Clinton has vowed to crack down on federal aid that flows to for-profit higher educational institutions, arguing, “There are students who take out loans to pay for an expensive degree from a for-profit institution — only to find little support once they actually enroll, or they graduate and discover that, when it comes to finding a job, their degree isn’t worth what they thought.”
But apparently a for-profit educational system that promotes Sharia Law is acceptable to the former first lady who now wants to return to the White House. And it is not only GEMS that has filled the bank accounts of the Clintons. Former President Bill Clinton also took in more than $16 million from 2010 to 2014 as the honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit company that runs 80 educational institutions around the world.
Four of its six U.S. colleges are having their access to financial aid monitored by the U.S. Department of Education because of issues of financial responsibility.
The Laureate Institute has donated somewhere between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton stepped down as honorary chancellor of Laureate, within days after his wife entered the presidential race.
Douglas Becker, the CEO of Laureate, is a major donor to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. When she was secretary of state, the State Department gave $55 million to the International Youth Foundation, which Becker chairs! This was at the same time that Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, was serving as “honorary chancellor” of Becker’s Laureate International Universities.
“Honorary” this or that appears to be a common title for Hillary’s husband. In 2010, GEMS Education became a strategic partner of the Clinton Global Initiative. Then, a few months later, Varkey’s GEM Foundation was launched, naming Clinton as its “honorary” chairman.
“There will rarely be people who launch something with so much potential to lift the hopes and spirits and dreams of children as this foundation has done tonight,” Clinton said when the GEMS Foundation was launched in December 2010. “The benefits from an educated child will affect not only the child itself, but his or her family and the wider community. The Varkey GEMS Foundation’s commitment will bring opportunity to millions more children around the world.”
And, no doubt, in a pattern that has become all too clear, millions of dollars into the pockets of the Clintons.
