Florida synagogue to host lobbyist for Islamic Republic of Iran

Robert Spencer from Jihad Watch reports:

Reza Aslan is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC),which has been established in court as a lobbying group for the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Said Michael Rubin: “Jamal Abdi, NIAC’s policy director, now appears to push aside any pretense that NIAC is something other than Iran’s lobby. Speaking at the forthcoming ‘Expose AIPAC’ conference, Abdi is featured on the ‘Training: Constituent Lobbying for Iran’ panel.”

According to Charles C. Johnson in the Daily Caller: “Iranian state-run media have referred to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) since at least 2006 as ‘Iran’s lobby’ in the U.S.” Iranian freedom activist Hassan Daioleslam “documented over a two-year period that NIAC is a front group lobbying on behalf of the Iranian regime.”NIAC had to pay him nearly $200,000 in legal fees after they sued him for defamation over his accusation that they were a front group for the mullahs, and lost. Yet Aslan remains on their Board.

Also, Aslan has tried to pass off Iran’s genocidally-minded outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer and has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with the jihad terror group Hamas.

Aslan has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as “the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,” as well as the anti-Semitic, misogynist, Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Aslan wrote: “The Muslim Brotherhood will have a significant role to play in post-Mubarak Egypt. And that is good thing.” Millions of Egyptians obviously disagree.

He has also applauded and called for denying the freedom of speech to those he hates.

So why is a synagogue in Florida giving him a platform?

Temple Judea: (561) 624-4633 Email: contact@gotj.org. Be polite, courteous and informative.

“Member Appreciation Event, Dr. Reza Aslan in honor of Rabbi Joel and Susan Levine,” from Temple Judea, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida:

Help us begin our year long journey of honoring Rabbi Joel and Susan Levine for their 32 years of service and create their legacy…

Kick off event Tuesday, October 8th
4:00 PM at Temple Judea
Our first scholar in residence presenting in honor of Rabbi Levine
Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is the founder of AslanMedia.com, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues; Abraham’s Vision, an educational, conflict transformation organization for Israeli and Palestinian youths; PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world; and the Levantine Cultural Center, which builds bridges between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world through the arts. Aslan’s first book is the International Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books .

Also, recalling Aslan’s recent arrogant and inaccurate touting of his own credentials on Fox, in praise of his even more inaccurate new book, I came across this in the Jihad Watch archives yesterday while working on my own new book. It seems as if Aslan has a long-standing habit of arrogantly citing his credentials as if they themselves proved what he was saying to be correct:

REZA ASLAN: There’s no such thing as values in Sharia law, that is what I was trying to explain, it’s understood in thousands of different ways by tens of thousands of different institutions, who really disagree with each other far more than they disagree with people of other religions, the values that you bring to Sharia are whatever values you yourself have, if you are a bigot, misogynist and a violent person, your interpretation of Sharia will be bigoted, violent and misogynistic, if you are a democrat and a pluralist and someone who is peace loving, that’s how you’ll see the Sharia.JENNY BROCKIE: Nonie, a response from you?

NONIE DARWISH: This is very evasive – Sharia law is a Malignant law, it’s totally based on the interpretation of the Koran and the Hajid [sic], and the way Islam and the profit [sic] lived. I don’t know understand why he’s white washing the meaning of Sharia – Sharia is a set of laws…..

REZA ASLAN: I’m a scholar of Sharia, that’s why.

Is there anything this intellectual and moral titan is not a scholar of? We know that Reza Aslan lies without any apparent pangs of conscience about the New Testament, people he hates, Israeli “atrocities” (that will go over big at Temple Judea), the extent of Islamic supremacism in U.S. mosques, and about Muhammad’s career, and so there is no reason to assume that he will ever acknowledge that he is not the master of some subject or other.

EDITORS NOTE: Reza Aslan is the author of ZEALOT: The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth and No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.