Tag Archives: Nihad Awad

CAIR Books Radicals for Fundraising Banquets

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Hassan Shibly, Nihad Awad, Zair Shakir, Kifah Mustafa and Siraj Wahhaj (clock-wise from left)

Hassan Shibly, Nihad Awad, Zair Shakir, Kifah Mustafa and Siraj Wahhaj (clock-wise from left)

By Ryan Mauro:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is using Islamist radicals to raise money throughout the country, according to a Clarion Project review of their fundraising banquets. CAIR calls itself “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group,” but has been labeled a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity by the federal government and attacks the integrity of its moderate Muslim rivals.

The Cincinatti and Columbus, OH chapters of CAIR turned to Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a cleric with indisputable credentials as a radical Islamist, for their fundraisers. He has been recorded saying “America is the most wicked government on the face of the planet Earth” and “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

In 1995, Wahhaj was named as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Commenting afterwards in a sermon,  Wahhaj said, “I’m not frightened by no list, by no government! I thank Allah. I’m honored that they thought enough of me to put me on a list.”

The Chicago chapter of CAIR had some fundraising help from keynote speaker Zaid Shakir, Safaa Zarzour and Kifah Mustafa.

Shakir’s radicalism has been documented in detail by the Clarion Project. This includes preaching that Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon was not a terrorist attack, justifying attacks on U.S. soldiers and expressing a hope to see America governed by Sharia law.  Safaa Zarzour has served as the Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America, another unindicted co-conspirator labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

Kifah Mustapha is designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. He is listed among “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Palestine Committee was set up by the Brotherhood to support Hamas in the U.S. Mustapha’s mosque has extensive links to the Brotherhood and he sang in a band that performed pro-Hamas songs.

Remarkably, 56 public officials in Illinois endorsed CAIR-Chicago for the event, including Governor Pat Quinn, Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

The Minnesota chapter of CAIR’s fundraiser did not feature any prominent radicals as speakers, unlike last year when Kifah Mustapha was booked. Despite CAIR’s well-documented Islamist background, Rep. Keith Ellison and Senator Amy Klobuchar spoke at its banquet.

Noticeably absent as a sponsor was Best Buy. Last year, The Clarion Project initiated a petition (signed by 12,000 people) that called for a boycott of Best Buy until they agreed to stop its donations to CAIR-Minnesota. However, this year’s sponsors include Walmart, the University of Minnesota Law School and the Hamline University School of Law. They were joined by American Muslims for Palestine, an Islamist group, and the Muslim American Society, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

The Michigan chapter of CAIR was helped by Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. There is video of him saying that homosexuals are cursed. The Clarion Project has also documented his mosque’s extremism time and time again, including strong links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Read more at The Clarion Project

Boston Bomber Exposes Islamist Secret

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596_largeIPT News:

Now he’s in trouble.

It is one thing for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to be seen on security camera videos placing one of the bombs that killed three people at last week’s Boston Marathon.

But now he’s really crossed a line.

Tsarnaev is telling investigators he and his brother were motivated by religion to plot their carnage, media reports citing anonymous federal sources say.

Radical Islam. It’s a label banned by the Obama administration. National Islamist groups say it doesn’t belong in conversations about terrorism. Tsarnaev didn’t get the memo.

Recovering from multiple gunshot wounds, Dzhokhar told investigators from his hospital bed that he and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev were driven by religious fervor and took their instructions from al-Qaida’s Inspire magazine, NBC News reports. Anger at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fueled their rage, the Washington Post reports.

That motivation echoes justifications offered by Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan for the Fort Hood shooting spree that killed 13 people and Faisal Shahzad’s sentencing rant about his attempt to bomb Times Square in 2010. “The crusading U.S. and NATO forces who have occupied the Muslim lands under the pretext of democracy and freedom for the last nine years and are saying with their mouths that they are fighting terrorism, I say to them, we don’t accept your democracy nor your freedom, because we already have Sharia law and freedom,” Shahzad told the court. “Furthermore, brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me only a first droplet of the flood that will follow me.”

Despite this candor from terrorists, the Obama administration and Islamist groups have argued that referring to terrorists’ religious motivations somehow grants them religious legitimacy. “Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against jihadists,” CIA Director John Brennan said in 2009 when he was White House terrorism adviser. “Describing terrorists in this way, using the legitimate term ‘jihad,’ which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal, risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

Similarly, Attorney General Eric Holder and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul Stockton squirmed and obfuscated when asked about the role radical Islam played in past terror plots.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tried to stem the tide about radical Islam that Tsarnaev unleashed by issuing a news release Tuesday. It decries the focus on a radical Islamic motive for the Boston Marathon bombings as inherently bigoted. The “wave of inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” is solely due to the Tsarnaev’s Muslim faith, the statement said.

CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad “said the recent spike in hate rhetoric comes in the wake of a coordinated long-term effort by Islamophobic activists and groups to demonize Islam and marginalize American Muslims.”

One imagines they’ll give Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a good talking-to for demonizing Islam in his statements to investigators.

The Tsarnaev case threatens the Islamist narrative that radical Islamic ideology in terror attacks should be ignored or minimized.

Read more at IPT

Largest U.S. Muslim Group Features Terror in Flagship Publication

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2422069_origBy Joe Kaufman:

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is the largest Muslim organization in the United States and Canada. It encompasses youth movements — including the largest Islamic collegiate group, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) — as well as hundreds of mosques throughout North America.

ISNA issues a bi-monthly publication titled Islamic Horizons. At face value, the magazine seems innocuous. However, it is filled with features and advertisements linked to radical Islamic thought and activity.

A feature story from the January/February 2013 issue covers the life of Nihad Awad, and how he came to found the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR was established as a part of an umbrella organization created by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. Awad founded CAIR with two others via the then-American Hamas propaganda wing [1], the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), in which Awad held a leadership position.

The article conveniently leaves out the associations with Hamas of Awad and CAIR.

Another story in the same issue promotes Siraj Wahhaj, the imam of Brooklyn’s al-Taqwa mosque. This is the same Siraj Wahhaj named by the U.S. government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” for a trial dealing with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, an act which resulted in the deaths of six innocent Americans. Wahhaj had been linked to the bombmaker of the attack [2], Clement Rodney Hampton-El, and during the trial he was a character witness for the spiritual leader of the attack — “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman — whom Wahhaj has openly praised.

Page 2 of last month’s issue of IH carried a full-page advertisement for Islamic Relief, asking readers to donate $10 for “Palestine emergency aid.” In May 2006, Israel labeled Islamic Relief a front for Hamas [3] after arresting the group’s Gaza program manager, Ayaz Ali, for providing “funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations.” Ali admitted that he had cooperated with local Hamas operatives.

Read more at PJ Media

Joe Kaufman is an expert in the fields of counter-terrorism, foreign affairs and energy independence for America. He has been featured on all major cable networks, including Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and C-SPAN. Kaufman has served as a consultant to different government agencies, and he has been instrumental in getting U.S.-based terrorist charities shut down and terror-related individuals put behind bars. Exactly one month prior to the September 11 attacks, Kaufman predicted the attacks by stating that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was not an aberration and that it would happen again.

Jacksonville City Council Could “Kill the Human Rights Controversy”

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City_council_meeting_pic-630x286by Randy McDaniels:

Mayor Alvin Brown’s nomination of Parvez Ahmed, former National Chairman of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) for a second term on the Human Rights Commission has the City Council and its citizens divided on the issue.

Parvez Ahmed

Parvez Ahmed

The 2010 Jacksonville City Council had an opportunity to “Kill the Controversy” surrounding Parvez Ahmed dead in its tracks.  That Council received Information from Former Muslims United, which if properly acted upon would have answered any question about the suitability of Parvez Ahmed to sit on a Human Rights body and done so in a manner which would have reasonably appealed to the sensibilities of those on both sides of this nomination.

In 2009, Former Muslims United (FMU) sent a “Pledge for Religious Freedom” to approximately (46) Florida Mosques, Islamic Centers, and other recognized Islamic leaders to include Parvez Ahmed.  The letter cites authoritative Islamic Law or SHARIA from (8) renowned sources to include (3) Islamic legal bodies within North America, and all call for capital punishment for those who commit apostasy or treason by leaving the nation of Islam.

Note:  Since Sharia governs all aspects of the nation of Islam, it is not really a religious legal code, but in fact a political system.  Political Islam or Sharia, governs not only religion, but all aspects of Islamic life to include social, economic, political, military, and legal matters…many of which address those outside the faith of Islam irrespective of their personal rights or beliefs.

The full “Pledge for Religious Freedom” which can be viewed at the bottom of this article, finishes with a request for leaders in the Islamic community to sign a pledge in affirmation of basic Human Rights:

To support the civil rights of former Muslims, also known as apostates from Islam, I sign “The Muslim Pledge for Religious Freedom and Safety from Harm for Former Muslims”:

I renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates from Islam, in whatever way that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the family of the apostate, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.

 _______________________________

Signed By

 The authoritative Islamic laws (Sharia) cited, not only violate the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness cherished by all Americans who recognize the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, but they also violate the right to Freedom of Religion guaranteed under 1st  Amendment.

More problematic than his refusal to sign the “Pledge of Religious Freedom” is the fact CAIR members whom Parvez Ahmed worked with for years, held and currently hold leadership positions on leading Islamic legal bodies in North America, such as the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which have placed their seal of approval on the “Reliance of the Traveller”, the only official English/Arabic Translation of SHARIA, which sanctions the killing of apostates and is sourced in the Pledge.

Additionally, CAIR’s Co-founder Nihad Awad, and CAIR National Board Members Muzzamil Siddiqi and Jamal Badawi sit on the Shura Council of North America, which is tasked with overseeing the implementation of Sharia law and guiding the work of the Muslim Brotherhood inside the United States.  CAIR boldly honored the founder of (IIIT) Jamal Barzinji with a lifetime achievement award in September of 2012, which suggest CAIR continues to support Sharia and Muslim Brotherhood.

The Shura concept of democracy is quite different than western concepts of democracy in that a literal translation of “rule of the people” cannot occur within Islam, because all sovereignty belongs to ALLAH, meaning Sharia not the U.S. Constitution shall be the Supreme Law of the Land.

This view is also supported by leading 20th century Muslim thinkers like Sayyid Qutb (Shepard 1996:110, Hoffmann 2007:297) and Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi (1969:215). They base their argument on Quranic verses 6:57, 12:40, and 12:67, all of which contain the phrase “in al-hukm illā li-llāh” meaning that the decision or power is God’s alone (Fatwa no. 98134 (n.d.) at IslamQA.com).

An example, which goes to the heart of why it is paramount to determine the mindset of Parvez Ahmed is (Fatwa no. 22239 (n.d.) at IslamQA.com.), which states that legislative systems which rule on matters already decided by divine intervention – such as abolishing polygamy or outlawing capital punishment – “go against the laws of the Creator” and this “constitutes disbelief (kufr)”.  Those who issue Fatwa’s, look to authoritative Islamic legal text such as the “Reliance of the Traveller” in order to support their legal opinions.

By signing a document which directly renounces Sharia or “Goes against the laws of the Creator” a Sharia Adherent Muslim would render himself an enemy of the Islamic State (Apostate) unless he was under threat of death or extreme duress, at such times it is permissible deceive and/or lie even about such grave matters as religous belief, which is normally forbidden.

Holy Deception (Taqiyya) and Permissible lying are basic tenants of the Islamic legal and religious code, which make lying and deception obligatory on all Muslims if the action is obligatory.  The Hijrah (migration) to settle enemy lands for eventual Islamic conquest and Jihad – Islamic warfare against non-Muslim to establish the religion are obligatory actions.  Jihad can take many forms to include information warfare (propaganda, dawah/outreach, as well as financial warfare (Sharia Compliant Finance (SCF)), however Jihad Qital or violent Jihad is the most revered.

Note:  CAIR advertises they are Zakat eligible on their website.  Meaning, CAIR can collect money for the (8) categories of Islamic giving which includes JIHAD.  However, CAIR boast all of their giving goes for Zakat Fi-Sabilillah or entirely for the purpose of Jihad and has since Parvez Ahmed held the position of National Chairman.

The specific language crafted in the “Pledge for Religious Freedom” strips the ability a political Islamist to wordsmith in order to give a misleading impression of tolerance and moderation where such moderation may not truly exist.

For example:  Under Islamic Legal definitions, non-Muslims are sub-human and guilty of sin (not Innocent) since they are not Muslim.  Terrorism is understood as the UNJUST killing of a Muslim only (The killing of an apostate, homosexual, and Kufr are all justified).

In light of these Islamic Understandings, consider the following statement:

“In my religion we are forbidden from killing any innocent human being and I unequivocally denounce terrorism in any form it may take.”

If this statement was made by a Sharia adherent Muslim, did it violate any tenants of Islamic law?  Understanding Sharia, does this statement in anyway condemn the killing of non-Muslims, homosexuals, or apostates which are contrary to western notions of basic Human Rights?  The answer to both of these questions is no and this statment is in no way moderate.

The vast majority of Jacksonville residents have never heard an honest discussion regarding the numerous concerns surrounding this appointment.  Unfortunately, what they have seen is members of the Council, the Florida Times Union, NAACP, ACLU and even the local Democrat Party jump on the race bait bandwagon with accusations of fear mongering, Islamophobia and outright Racism.

Those opposed to this appointment have cited the fact CAIR was labeled a Co-conspirator in the largest successfully prosecuted terrorism finance trial in U.S. history (US vs. HLF, 2008), as well as evidence which clearly demonstrates the organization which Parvez Ahmed held a leadership position in for over (10) years was created to support HAMAS with funds, media and manpower.

In addition, Parvez Ahmed has gone on record, making direct statements in support of convicted terrorist, terrorist groups HAMAS and Hezbollah, as well as writing numerous articles which appear to support the stated goals of the Muslim Brotherhood in furtherance of their “Civilization Jihad” inside America to include a recent article which suggested criminalizing free speech if it offends Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, or Muslims in accordance with Sharia Slander Law which are being pushed by the OIC at the U.N. via resolution 16/18.

In a rational world, these facts would be more than enough to disqualify this nomination and those courageous councilmen and women who changed their position based on the facts should not have been crucified in the media but commended.

With “Honor Killings” on the rise and a segment of the American population living in fear of persecution and threat death for nothing more than trying to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, the City Council would be derelict in their duty if they did not utilize ever tool available to ensure the Constitutional freedoms of every citizen are protected.

The “Pledge for Religious Freedom” provides an excellent tool to “KILL the Controversy” surrounding Parvez Ahmed’s suitability to hold a seat on a Human Rights Commission and ensue the rights of former Muslims are protected. 

The real question is will City Council take advantage of this Freedom Document?

Read more at The Watchdog Wire

 

Islamist Group Tries to Kill Use of “Islamist”

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IPT News - January 4, 2013

After doing everything it can to ensconce a new word, “Islamophobia,” into conversational English, the nation’s most visible Islamist group is trying to stop use of a well-established word: Islamist.

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper released a column urging journalists to “Drop the term ‘Islamist.’”

It was added to the latest Associated Press Stylebook – the guide for spelling, punctuation and other rules – that is used by journalists at the smallest community papers and the largest television networks, Hooper wrote. AP defines Islamists as “Those who view the Quran as a political model encompass a wide range of Muslims, from mainstream politicians to militants known as jihadi.”

Journalists should ignore that, Hooper argued, because it is used in a negative way, and used by “Islam-bashers” who really hate the faith of Islam but want to cover their tracks. “Yet they fail to explain how a practicing Muslim can be active in the political arena without attracting the label ‘Islamist.’”

Plenty of practicing Muslims work bravely in opposition to Islamist ideology. Britain’s Quilliam Foundation was started by Muslims who walked away from radical Islamist thought and now counter the arguments Islamists offer.

“Challenging extremism is the duty of all responsible members of society,” the foundation’s website says. Not least because cultural insularity and extremism are products of the failures of wider society to foster a shared sense of belonging and to advance liberal democratic values. With Islamist extremism in particular, we believe a more self-critical approach must be adopted by Muslims.” [Emphasis added]

Hooper may have had the Investigative Project on Terrorism in mind with his comment, as we try to distinguish between the faith of Islam as practiced by individuals, and its application as the foundation for political action and law. When devout Muslims espouse this “separation between mosque and state,” Hooper dismisses them as “a mere sock puppet for Islam haters and an enabler of Islamophobia.”

Hooper’s demand that “Islamist” be removed from the lexicon is ironic, since his bosses seemed more than comfortable placing themselves firmly in the world of “Islamists” back in 1993. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad joined two dozen Hamas supporters in Philadelphia for a fall weekend in an urgent meeting called to discuss ways to “derail” the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords.

The FBI bugged the meeting room. Transcripts entered into evidence during a 2008 Hamas-financing trial show the participants referred to “Islamists” dozens of times. Ahmad helped lead the meeting, helping determine who might attend and calling it to order.

The FBI described the group as Hamas members and supporters. “Hamas’ agenda was not only to eliminate Israel,” prosecutors wrote, “but also to sabotage the Oslo Accords and to replace the secular PA regime with an Islamist government that would control all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.”

Awad, who remains CAIR’s executive director nearly 20 years later, addressed the meeting about media strategies.

“The fourth goal is becoming open to the media in the U.S. and the Western society to ease the intensity of the campaign and to explain the legality of the opposition led by the Islamists,” he said. [Emphasis added]

Ahmad, who served as CAIR chairman emeritus until 2009, also discussed media strategy for Islamists in America.

“The first goal was relating to activism among Muslims and Palestinians but we must broadcast our point of view in U. S. media. There is a very good reason for that which is bringing the voice of the Islamists to the surface, keeping them informed and explaining their positions in order to case the severity of allegations of radicalism and other things,” Ahmad said. [Emphasis added] “This will also make our position known to Muslims and sympathizers whom we cannot reach via our media tools.”

A speaker identified only as “Akram” told the group opposition to the Oslo deal did not “have anything to do with any living conditions. We have undisputable rights in Palestine as Islamists. They don’t change with the changing of the events.” Later, he said Islamists were the only ones willing to oppose the agreement publicly.

“We must be clear that we oppose this thing 100% and that we, the Islamists … different from what is being suggested for Palestinian activism,” Akram said. No one disagreed.

Their claim on Palestine was not limited to the West Bank and Gaza, Ahmad said, agreeing it was not a wise strategy to say so publicly.

“We’ve always demanded the 1948 territories,” Ahmad said.

“Yes,” an unidentified speaker responded, “but we don’t say that publicly. You cannot say it publicly. In front of the Americans…”

“No,” Ahmad agreed, “we didn’t say that to the Americans.”

Nearly 20 years later, Ahmad’s organization doesn’t want Americans to say the same words he and his colleagues embraced.

“Unfortunately, the term ‘Islamist’ has become shorthand for ‘Muslims we don’t like,’” Hooper wrote. “It is currently used in an almost exclusively pejorative context and is often coupled with the term ‘extremist,’ giving it an even more negative slant.”

This is revisionist history. In addition to Hamas supporters, fundraisers for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad used the “Islamist” in laudatory fashion. During a 1989 conference by Sami Al-Arian’s Islamic Committee for Palestine, Cleveland Imam Fawaz Damra described heroic battles Islamists waged in sparking the intifada against Israel.

“We acknowledge that Islamists were absent from the arena of jihad for a long while, Damra said. “This is not the time to examine the causes of that absence. But this was their return with an unflagging spirit, determined to do battle and to confront ….an important development. Then occurred the fleeing operation, executed by six mujahideen towards the middle of the fifth month of ’87. This was followed by specific operations executed by these youth, one of the most important of which was the killing of the Military Police chief in Gaza. In other words, the events rekindled the spirit of hope and the spirit of self-confidence in the people.”

Damra would later describe Al-Arian’s committee as “the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine” and urge people to write checks intended for the Jihad to “write it in the name if the Islamic Committee for Palestine, ‘ICP’ for short.”

Evidence also showed that Al-Arian served as secretary on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s governing board.

CAIR defended both men.

CAIR officials also have supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, even as it rammed through a constitution that epitomizes Islamist aspirations and makes religious law the law of the land. The Brotherhood has no problem calling itself Islamist.

If the word is to be used, Hooper wrote, it “should not be used unless a group applies the term to itself.” So the Brotherhood can be called “Islamist.”

CAIR doesn’t use the term itself, not “to the Americans,” anyway, but we’ve offered a tiny sample of the examples of Islamists using the word privately. CAIR’s background – the FBI cut off contact with the group in 2008 over questions about “whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS – should be taken into consideration by anyone entertaining Hooper’s request to serve as language cop.

By the way, the AP did remove a related word from the newest Stylebook: Islamophobia.

CAIR’s Nihad Awad: “US and Islam Are Twins”

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imagesCAVT2NBRMEMRI: CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad: “Islam and the U.S. Are Twins, Linked by Common Values, There Are Accounts that Muslims Discovered America before Columbus”
Iqra TV (Saudi Arabia) – December 27, 2012

Transcript excerpts:

Interviewer: Once again, I greet you from the USA, and specially, from New York. Today’s topic is the American Islamic organizations.

Nihad Awad: In my view, Islam and the US are twins, linked by common values. The values on which the US was founded are the same values advocated by Islam: freedom, and especially freedom of religion, freedom of speech, protection of minorities, and spreading justice among all sectors of society.

[...]

The combination of my American nationality and the practice of my Islamic religion creates a beautiful blend, I believe. This is a civilized blend, which proves that Islam flourishes in an atmosphere of freedom, and spreads freedom, justice, and equality. Every day I live as an American-Muslim citizen, I rediscover the firm bonds between the humane system that the US created for its people, and the values advocated by Islam. This marriage of Islam and the US will be the best suited for humanity, because the Islamic values are divine values, conveyed by Allah. The Prophet Muhammad lived by these values, and Muslims today must rise to their level. The US is not perfect, but it is moving “toward a more perfect union.”

[...]

It is extremely important to know how Islam began in the US. There are historical accounts according to which the Muslims preceded Columbus, who is said to have discovered the US. Some documents and accounts indicate that Muslim seafarers were the first to reach the US. The bottom line is that Islam played a part in the establishment and development of the US.

[...]

Islam’s worldview is one of coexistence, of respect for pluralism, and of peace. Allah says in the Koran: “Oh Mankind! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes so that you may know one another. The noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the most pious among you.” This is a very important humane, social, and political principle. This is the principle of interacting with the other, be it nations, individuals, institutions, or countries. This verse was conveyed 1,400 years ago. This is a very important principle on how we should interact with others. As Muslims, we are not hostile to other societies. The underlying principle guiding our relations with them is one of respect for the natural differences between individuals, nations, and societies, but there are also common interests. Diversity in Islam is a good thing, not a shortcoming. Most of the wars waged between nations were the result of failure to respect and acknowledge the other.

[...]

When I said that Islam and the US are twins, I was referring to the values upon which the US was founded. I was talking about domestic affairs. US society consists of all of humanity – all the ethnicities, a society of immigrants. The US is the most diverse human union. How did the US manage to create this human fabric? This human experience was, undoubtedly, based on very important principles, which are identical to the Islamic values. The problem lies in the foreign policy. We are not talking about the foreign policy. I am one of the most adamant opponents of my country’s policy… Foreign policy is another matter altogether.

[...]

After 9/11, we saw great interest among the American public in becoming better acquainted with Islam by studying and reading about it. We found that very few books on Islam were available in the public libraries, which are frequented by many Americans, and that most of these books were misleading or anti-Islamic. Therefore, we decided to publish several books on Islam, written by Muslims and non-Muslims. We decided to send them free-of-charge to the American public libraries.

[...]

There are 16,200 public libraries in the US, serving 300 million Americans. We managed to provide this collection, free-of-charge, to half of these libraries.

[...]

With regard to our sister Aafia Siddiqui, this is undoubtedly a sensitive criminal case and a security issue.

Interviewer: Who is she?

Nihad Awad: Aafia Siddiqui is originally from Pakistan, as far as I know. She is incarcerated in the US, having received a long prison sentence, for her alleged involvement in – quote, unquote – “terrorist acts.” We are in CAIR are following this case, through our New York chapter. In 2013, in the coming weeks, we will dedicate more attention to her. We will follow the case, and see what we can do.

[...]

I personally intervened in this case, without talking about it in the media. I can reassure the brothers and sisters who called this show that I have personally dealt with this case on a high level in the US, and even in diplomatic circles. When we have any news, we will let you know.

See also:

CAIR Protests Saudi Radical’s Exclusion From U.S.

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MAS-ICNA annual conferenceIPT News

The head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) vows to complain to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials after they blocked a radical Saudi cleric from entering the country this week to attend a national Islamist conference in Chicago.

Sheikh Ayed al-Qarni was scheduled to speak twice during the Muslim American-Society (MAS)/Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) national convention Dec. 22-25. But a statement released during the convention expressed “the unpleasant and saddening news” that al-Qarni had been removed from his flight from Saudi Arabia despite having a visa from the U.S. embassy, and that he appears to be on the U.S. “no-fly list.” Al-Qarni is described as “one of our great speakers” and as someone known “for his logical discourse and balanced views, he promotes understanding and collaboration between all people, regardless of their faith, background, or language.”

Al-Qarni has advocated jihad in the past and his preaching on the subject has been described as influential among al-Qaida followers.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad told an Arabic news outlet that he would protest al-Qarni’s exclusion with DHS and State Department officials. “We defend all Muslims who are subject to arbitrary measure, and by this logic, we will act but not formally plead, unless we obtain authorization from him.”

It’s an ironic protest to make in light of a public relations campaign orchestrated by CAIR’s Chicago chapter. “MyJihad” aims to show non-Muslims that the term jihad is more about peaceful, personal attempts at overcoming challenges than about calls for violence and terror.

Through Awad, also a listed speaker at the convention, CAIR is fighting to bring a Saudi cleric into the United States who has argued the exact opposite message. During a 2005 sermon flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), al-Qarni called the jihad against American forces in Fallujah ”a source of pride … downing their planes, destroying equipment, slaughtering them, taking them hostage, and proclaiming ‘Allah Akhbar’ from the mosques, and the worshippers and the preacher cursing them in their prayers, and then come others begging for forgiveness, and requesting a dialogue and a ceasefire and negotiations. Who can say even one word against this true Jihad against these colonialist occupiers?” [Emphasis added]

He belittled Muslims who failed to take action, including “harming the Jews.” He invoked Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, saying he prayed that Allah “will destroy the Jews and their helpers from among the Christians and the Communists, and that He will turn them into the Muslims’ spoils. I praise the Jihad, the sacrifice, and the resistance against the occupiers in Iraq. We curse them all of them every night and pray that Allah will annihilate them, tear them apart, and grant us victory over them…”

“Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered,” al-Qarni said. “This is the path to victory, to shahada, and to sacrifice.”

This was no one-time rant.

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Fraud and Racketeering at CAIR

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Picture-11-450x309By Daniel Greenfield

35,000 Pakistanis have been killed in Muslim terrorist attacks since September 11. The death toll in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, which mostly consist of Muslim-on-Muslim violence, is swiftly rising through the tens of thousands. While it’s obvious that Islamists victimize non-Muslims, it’s not always noted that they victimize Muslims first.

The first goal of every Islamist movement, from your political Islamists to your unfriendly neighborhood Islamist militia toting its black flags and assault rifles around the yard, is to set up a corrupt totalitarian system in a Muslim country that will dismantle what few human rights and legal protections had existed earlier and replace them with a judicial system run by the three blind men who memorized the most Koran verses while sitting in a corner somewhere. This system is invariably much worse than what came before it. And those who live under it are mostly Muslims.

The Islamist tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood are every bit as unethical and as abusive as their parent organization. In Australia the country’s leading Islamic group is under investigation for not only defrauding the Australian government, but for also defrauding its own associated Muslim schools. And in the United States, David Yerushalmi’s lawsuit against CAIR’s abuses of its own clients has continued wending its way through the courts for four years.

The lawsuit in question is much less glamorous than those that deal directly with CAIR’s terrorist associations, but it also goes to the heart of the corrupt and corrupting nature of Islamist organizations.

On Nov 23, 2008, Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of CAIR, was served with a summons by Dave Gaubatz of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE) on behalf of the former clients of CAIR who had been defrauded by CAIR and by Morris J. Days, a convert to Islam, who worked as CAIR-Virginia’s civil rights manager and resident attorney, despite not actually being licensed to practice law.

Dave’s son Chris had uncovered the fraud while working undercover as an intern when he was asked to shred documents as part of a cover up by CAIR of their part in what would become known as the Days Fraud Scheme.

During the Days Fraud Scheme, for two years Morris Days fraudulently took money from clients while CAIR stood by and allowed the fraud scheme to continue. Days had never been to law school and had no license. His legal work on behalf of the clients that CAIR introduced him to was at about the level you would expect from a man who had leafed through more drunk driving convictions than law papers and had spent some time in prison. Days falsely claimed to have filed cases that he never filed, cadged money for personal loans and strung his clients along.

It is a testament to CAIR’s conspiratorial mindset that its default mode was the cover up. CAIR did not take any action against Days until the complaints against him grew too vociferous. They did not make any restitution to Days’ clients or even inform Days’ clients that the CAIR resident attorney, who had represented 100 clients and taken payments from 30 of them, was not actually an attorney at all.

When CAIR had to communicate with Days’ clients, it lied to them and claimed that he was a contractor, not an employee. CAIR bullied some into signing a Release of Claims Document that prohibited them from discussing Days’ actions with law enforcement or their own lawyers on penalty of having to pay CAIR $25,000 in damages.

Days’ clients, who had already paid hundreds and thousands of dollars to him and entrusted him with sensitive and important cases, including a divorce proceeding and an immigration status case, were further damaged when CAIR conspired to conceal from them that they had been the victims of a fraud scheme and that the legal work done on their behalf was severely compromised by a fraud who was not actually an attorney.

CAIR further victimized their fellow Muslims to protect their own reputation. In some cases, Days’ clients continued paying him money even after CAIR had ended its association with him, because CAIR officials failed to inform them that Days was not an actual attorney.

CAIR’s cover up, which extended to shutting down CAIR-Virginia, led to a RICO lawsuit. The case is still ongoing, four years later, and while it may not seem like a very glamorous legal matter, its existence serves as a reminder that while CAIR pretends to be a Muslim civil rights group, it is only interested in and invested in its own agendas.

With the Days Fraud Scheme, CAIR put its own power and personnel ahead of the welfare of its Muslim clients. It not only demonstrated the same blatant disregard for the rules that has become the hallmark of an organization so closely linked to terrorists, but by employing Morris Days it showed that its interest in representing Muslim clients in their legal cases was only a front for pursuing its own lawfare agendas disguised as civil rights cases.

Like the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR exists only to exploit and coerce Muslims and non-Muslims in its relentless pursuit of power. Its goals do not include helping anyone, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, but are solely concentrated on positioning the front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States as the official representatives of Muslims in America.

It is a given that CAIR, like all of the Muslim Brotherhood’s front groups, will act to deceive non-Muslims, but the Days Fraud Scheme reminds us that like all Islamist groups, CAIR begins by deceiving and using Muslims. Islamist oppression begins with Muslims and then extends to non-Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood, in all its forms and guises, is a predatory organization, and a secretive and dishonest one. All those behaviors were on display at CAIR-Virginia in the Days Fraud Scheme. CAIR claims to be a civil rights organization dedicated to protecting Muslims, but its actions in the Days Fraud Scheme case suggest that even Muslims are in need of protecting from CAIR.

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Dems Tap Radical Islamists for Cash

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by Steve Emerson and John Rossamando:

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Democratic Party fundraiser with leaders of Hamasand Muslim Brotherhood front groups in May of this year.

The invitation-only fundraiser was sponsored by Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn.; Andre Carson, D-Ind.; and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and took place on the evening of May 16, 2012, at the W Hotel in Washington D.C.

In attendance were about 20 members of a Syrian dissident group and 10 officials representing Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups. Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad was perhaps the most prominent attendee and played a key role in organizing the event.

CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas money-laundering trials, was described in FBI testimony as having been created by Hamas. In a 2007 federal court filing, prosecutors described CAIR as conspiring with other branches of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.

The FBI officially severed relations with CAIR in 2008 because of its ties to Hamas.

Awad has openly championed Hamas and defended suicide bombings as “legitimate resistance.”

Also in attendance was Jamal Barzinji, a founding father of the Muslim Brotherhood in America and co-founder of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an incubator for Islamic radicalism in North America. MSA was the forerunner of Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).

Barzinji was named in a federal affidavit as being closely associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. His name appears in a global phone book of Muslim Brotherhood members recovered by Italian and Swiss authorities in Nov. 2001 from the home of Al-Taqwa Bank of Lugano founder Youssef Nada, one of the leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood.

During the fundraiser, Pelosi sat at the same table with Awad and Barzinji.

Speaking to the attendees in her 10-minute address, she said the Democratic Party should become the natural home of Muslim-Americans, because Republicans fan the flames of “Islamophobia.” She focused exclusively on Islamophobia, a term devised by radical Islamists and their apologists to silence critics, while avoiding any mention of terrorism carried out by Islamists in the United States.

Also speaking were Israel, Ellison, Carson, and Reps Alyson Schwartz, D-Pa., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn. Israel and Murphy were said to have been the most vehement among the members of Congress in attendance in terms of their incendiary accusations of Republican-incited Islamophobia. One observer said that it was striking that “there was not a scintilla of comments in defense of U.S. national security.” However, they welcomed each of the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups represented at the event into the “Democratic community” without any mention of their well-documented terror links.

Read more at IPT