Tag Archive for: Islamic Society of North America.

Hamas-linked CAIR and other US Islamic Groups have a #MeToo Problem

First, Ahmad Saleem, a community organizer for CAIR in Florida, was busted after showing up to molest what he thought was a 12-year-old girl he had met over the internet. When Ahmad showed up in a car with a plate, “Invest in Children”, the cops were waiting for him instead.

The son of Pakistani immigrants had headed up the local Muslim Students Association at the University of Central Florida before moving up the ranks at CAIR. Then it was off to prison.

Now it’s Hassan Shibly’s turn. The Syrian immigrant who headed up CAIR Florida was accused of assaulting his wife, threatening to kill her, and sexually harassing CAIR employees. Shibly was also accused of threatening some of his accusers, and trying to pay them off.

An NPR article noted that CAIR leaders had been aware of the accusations as far back as 2016 and that no action was taken. “CAIR National has a history of turning a blind eye to many incidents over the years, and the information is coming out. No NDA will save them from what’s to come,” a former CAIR employee tweeted.

forum for CAIR victims on Instagram quickly filled up with stories of a CAIR chapter head who “was found to be sexually harassing a member of staff and other women also complained about his behavior” only to be protected by the local CAIR governing board, a CAIR leader grooming an employee into a sexual relationship, a CAIR leader using “his religious belief that men can have 4 wives to manipulate women into having affairs with him behind his legal wife’s back”, and a “lawsuit with an imam and a little girl.”

This kind of thing happens a lot.

When the various Islamist groups set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar networks operate in this country, they use the laws of Sharia that they intend to impose on Americans.

Two years ago, Zia ul-Haque Sheikh, a former ISNA board member, and the Imam at the Islamic Center of Irving, was accused of sexually exploiting a 13-year-old girl. He allegedly tried to marry the girl, when she came of age, even though he already had two wives at the time.

Also at the Islamic Center of Irving, a security guard was accused of molesting a third-grader, and there was an incident of a foreign man kissing minors at the mosque.

Sheikh’s accuser claimed that she had reported this to the president of the Islamic Center of Irving board, Nouman Ali Khan, who “discouraged her from sharing what she experienced because it would harm Sheikh’s reputation.”

Khan, an Islamic preacher and a Pakistani immigrant, had headed up the Bayyinah Academy before being accused of latching on to troubled women at Islamic events and then exploiting them. The Islamist cleric had frequently appeared at ISNA and other Islamist events, and had previously defended the Sharia practice of lashing those accused of immoral behavior.

Sheikh Usama Canon, the Islamic cleric who founded the Ta’leef Collective, had been a frequent speaker at CAIR and ISNA events, an instructor at the Islamist Zaytuna Institute, and an advisor to the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN).

Canon, a black convert to Islam turned preacher, was ousted after allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior that included grooming women. He still remains involved in various Islamic institutions and organizations including the Downtown Islamic Center of Chicago.

Muslim feminist activists insist that the answer is more female leadership, but Linda Sarsour, probably the most prominent female Muslim activist in America, was herself accused of enabling sexual harassment back when she was working at the Arab American Association.

“She oversaw an environment unsafe and abusive to women,” a former employee, who claimed to have been repeatedly groped, alleged.

The Islamist apples rarely fall far from the tree.

Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and probably the leading Islamist figure in the West, has been accused of raping a series of women.

Ramadan’s alleged assaults took place in Washington D.C., in Paris, London, and major cities around the world. The victims who have come forward included a disabled convert to Islam and former teenage students: including one as young as 14 years old.

The disabled woman described meeting Ramadan after a conference on Islamophobia and Palestine before he beat her, raped her, and then urinated on her.

Abuses happen in all religions and among secular intellectuals, but Islam is unique in that its theology provides a license for sexual abuse. A number of the Muslim leaders caught in the #MeToo moment employed the toolbox of Sharia law to perpetrate their abuses. They used the legal fiction of “temporary marriages” to force women into illicit affairs and the codes of a religion whose founder married a 7-year-old girl and where children are married off well before they hit puberty to justify abusing underage girls. And the Islamist infrastructure around them, tapping into the Sharia demand for multiple witnesses to a rape charge, ignored their accusers.

Rape and sexual abuses can happen in a variety of settings, but Islam is uniquely built to justify and protect behaviors that are crimes in the United States, but normative in the Muslim world.

The #MeToo scandals of Islamism are just symptoms of the fundamental divide between two civilizations and their accompanying value systems. The Islamists had always intended to build a state within a state. And within their organizations and communities, the state within a state operates under Sharia law, with legal, but no moral accountability, to the United States.

After 9/11, America’s Islamists increasingly came to align with the Left. The unspoken conflict between Sharia and feminism has yet to explode out into the open because there is too much at stake for both sides. But the #MeToo scandals at CAIR and other Islamist groups are a fracture point between two ideologies that are hostile to America, but also to each other’s values.

The miniature clash of civilizations within the political infrastructure of multiculturalism is coming.

Islamists have injected their policy priorities, support for the Muslim Brotherhood, hostility to Israel, hijabization, and opposition to fighting terrorism, into the Left. But the Left has also injected its own values, including feminism, into the Islamist political infrastructure.

Leftists and Islamists allied in Egypt, Algeria and Iran, among many other places, to overthrow establishment governments, only to have those alliances come apart in blood and tyranny.

The American alliance between Islam and the Left may meet the same end.

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Muslim Brotherhood Supporter Named Veterans Administration Secretary

The U.S. Senate just confirmed Denis McDonough to be the new Secretary of the Veterans Administration.

McDonough has a long history of openly supporting jihadis while in public office.

The counter-terrorism policies and strategies created under his watch as Deputy National Security Advisor and Chief of Staff under President Obama demonstrate his overt support for individuals and entities who openly call for the overthrow of the U.S. government and the destruction of liberty and innocent life.

McDonough’s seditious and unlawful actions are unprecedented in their brazenness and blatant violation of his oath and the law.

For instance, as the Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama, McDonough went to the Muslim Brotherhood’s mosque, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) in Sterling, Virginia with senior U.S. leaders including FBI, DHS, NSC, etc. to PRAISE its imam.

The ADAMS Center imam is Mohamed Magid, a Muslim Brotherhood leader.

See the video of McDonough’s speech at ADAMS HERE. (By the way, Denis McDonough lied when he said Thomas Jefferson held “the first Iftar dinner at the White House.”)

For years, Muslim Brother Imam Mohamed Magid served as the Vice President and then President of one of North America’s largest Muslim Brotherhood organizations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

ISNA was identified by the Department of Justice as a Muslim Brotherhood organization which directly funded Hamas leaders and organizations overseas.

The evidence was revealed in the largest terrorism financing trials ever successfully prosecuted in American history – US v Holy Land Foundation (HLF), Northern District of Texas (Dallas), 2008.

You can see ISNA’s financial transactions sending money to the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas, entered into evidence at the HLF trial HERE.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a designated terrorist organization in several nations, and the U.S. House and Senate both have bills pending to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group in America.  See the bill HERE.

So either Denis McDonough is grossly ignorant and incompetent, as well as criminally negligent for not knowing/understanding basic facts in evidence about ISNA and the Muslim Brotherhood, or he was and is wittingly complicit in aiding and abetting enemies of the United States in violation of his Oath and federal law.

COLUMN BY

John Guandolo is a US Naval Academy graduate, served as an Infantry/Reconnaissance officer in the United States Marines and is a combat veteran, served as a Special Agent in the FBI from 1996-2008, and was recruited out of the FBI by the Department of Defense to conduct strategic analysis of the Islamic threat. He is the President and Founder of Understanding the Threat (UTT).

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Obama to Visit U.S. Mosque Tied to Extremism

On February 3, President Barack Obama will visit a U.S. mosque for the first time during his presidency. Curiously, the president chose a mosque to visit that is deeply tied to Islamist extremism and terror funding.

The Islamic Society of Baltimore, the mosque Obama will visit, is part of a network of mosques of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In 1991, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo placed ISNA at the top of a secret list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The document said the organization’s “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…”

In 2007, federal prosecutors named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity housed in the ISNA building.

See Clarion Project’s profile of ISNA

The U.S. government’s identification of ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity was upheld in 2009 due to “ample” evidence linking ISNA to Hamas.

As if the Islamic Society of Baltimore’s association with ISNA wasn’t bad enough, the mosque’s imam for 15 year, Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, also has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, el-Sheikh served as the regional director of the Islamic American Relief Agency, a group which, according to the U.S. Treasury, funneled funds to Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and Hamas, among other terrorist organizations.

El-Seikh is on record as defending and justifying Palestinian suicide bombing against Israelis.

This is not the first time Obama endorsed and supported the Brotherhood-linked ISNA. In 2013, Obama addressed the 50th annual ISNA convention via videotape, praising ISNA for its partnership with his administration.

To the conference participants, Obama said, “Over the last half-century, you’ve upheld the proud legacy of American-Muslims’ contributions to our national fabric and this gathering is a testament to that tradition.”

Yet, the gathering was anything but a testament to American tradition. A Clarion Project report showed the convention’s roster of speakers included many known extremists, including Zaid Shakir and Siraj Wahhaj.

Shakir has preached that the U.S. Constitution is flawed because it grants equality to Muslims and non-Muslims and Wahhaj, a main speaker at the conference, has a history of anti-American preaching and envisions the day when sharia law will control America. As a current strategy, he advises Muslims to avoid discussion of Sharia because “we are not there yet.”

Ironically, the White House said one of the purposes of Obama’s visit to the Baltimore mosque is to “reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

Religious freedom is hardly a concept promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood and those associated with it.

In fact, Muslims who are genuinely interested in religious freedom for all people have found Obama’s visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore highly offensive.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, called the visit was “insulting.”

“It’s disgraceful that this is the mosque he’s picked to be the first to visit,” Jasser said on “Fox & Friends” Sunday. “This mosque is very concerning…Historically, they are basically a radical, extreme mosque and not representative of the modern Muslims in America.”

Jasser is right. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, only 4% of Muslim-American males and 7% of females chose ISNA as the organization that most represents their interests.

If one of the purposes of visiting a U.S. mosque is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans,” as stated by the Obama administration, he could have started by choosing a mosque and its congregants that are have truly done so.

Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the Obamas with the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in in Jakarta, Indonesia (Photo: © Reuters)

Bill to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as Terror Organization Gains Support

Ten more members of Congress have agreed to cosponsor the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2015 since our last update. The legislation identifies three U.S. – based groups — including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) —  as part of the Brotherhood network linked to financing Hamas.

If passed, the bill would state that Congress believes the Muslim Brotherhood fits the State Department’s criteria of a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The Secretary of State would be required to designate the Brotherhood within 60 days or to provide a detailed report explaining why it does not. Three U.S.-based Brotherhood entities named in the bill are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

The House version of the bill (HR3892) was introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) with Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Randy K. Weber (R-TX), Diane Black (R-TN) and Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as original cosponsors. They are now joined by Reps. Steve King (R-IA); Steven Palazzo (R-MS); Kay Granger (R-TX); Jim Jordan (R-OH); Steve Stivers (R-OH); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Charles W. Dent (R-PA); Bill Johnson (R-OH) and David A. Trott (R-MI).

HR3892 was referred to the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on December 4, 2015. Two cosponsors, Rep. Gohmert and Rep. Trott, sit on that subcommittee.

The Senate version of the bill (S2230) was introduced by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and later cosponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 3. Two of Senator Cruz’s presidential rivals, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) sit on that committee and have not taken a position on the bill.

Although the bill has yet to earn bi-partisan support at this early stage, it is supported by members of Congress from different spectrums of the Republican Party. It includes endorsers of the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich and not only supporters of Ted Cruz.

As our original article about the legislation explained, the bill could be a watershed moment in the fight against Islamist extremism. It is important for voters to know where their representatives stand on this important issue.

We encourage readers to contact their representatives and Senators and ask them for a position statement. Please forward any official statement to the Clarion Project so we can update readers on where they stand on the Muslim Brotherhood. A statement of opposition is just as important as a statement of support.

Of particular interest are the members of Congress who are assigned to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Below is a table of those who sit on those committees and have yet to take a position:

House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration & Border Security Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Ken Buck (R-CO) Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY)
Luis Gutirrez (D-IL) Ben Cardin (D-MD); Ranking Member
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) Christopher Coons (D-DE)
Raul Labrador (R-ID), Vice Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN); Chairman
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR) Cory Gardner (R-CO)
John Ratcliffe (R-TX) Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Tim Kaine (D-VA)
Edward Markey (D-WA)
Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Rand Paul (R-KY)
David Perdue (R-GA)
James Risch (R-ID)
Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

Tom Udall (D-NM)

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of CAIR Founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad (right) with Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesperson and national communications director. (Photo: © Reuters)

Saudi-led Gulf Squabble Spells Trouble for Obama?

The Obama White House and the world media are pre-occupied with Russian President Putin’s grab of the Ukrainian autonomous province of Crimea. There are undertones of “Back to the Future”- meaning a possible return to Cold War era geopolitics with Russia.

Despite that overriding ruckus there was a less well publicized series of events in the Persian Gulf region among members of the Gulf Cooperating Council (GCC). Does this spell trouble ahead for President Obama’s Middle East policies?

At the GCC meeting on March 5th in Riyadh, Qatar was effectively isolated by “sisterly” Sunni Arab states. The Emir of Qatar, a member of the GCC, has been prominent in supporting financial aid and assistance to Muslim Brotherhood (MB) affiliates in Egypt under Morsi, Hamas in Gaza and the Syrian Opposition Council, one of whose leaders is a dual American Syrian citizenLouay Safi.

Virtually on the heels of the squabble at the GCC gathering, Saudi King Abdullah announced decrees on Friday, March 7th. They listed the MB as a terrorist organization along with several AQ affiliates in Syria and Iraq, as well as Shia terrorist groups in North Yemen and in the oil rich Eastern Province. The latter are backed by both Iran’s Qod Force and Hezbollah. This should present problems and potential conflicts of interest for President Obama’s senior National Security advisor Robert Malley and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. Both of these men espouse outreach to the MB, Iran and proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

This train wreck about to happen has been in development since the July 3, 2013 ouster by Egyptian Gen. al-Sisi of President Morsi in Egypt. Morsi was a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood endeavoring to create a Sharia compliant constitution with him as Emir. Egypt’s interim government in December 2013 outlawed the MB. This week an Egyptian court went after Hamas, the Gaza affiliate of the MB banning activities in Egypt. Following, the ouster of Morsi, Saudi Arabia and several of members of the GCC provided upwards of $12 billion in financial assistance to the interim Egyptian interim government. The stage now appears set for Gen. Abdel Fateh al-Sisi to run as the country’s President, a harkening back to the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the possible return of military autocracy in Egypt.

The flashpoint for the GCC isolation of Qatar was the notorious aged Egyptian MB preacher Yousuf al Qaradawi who had been in exile in Qatar before temporarily returning to Egypt in February 2011. He issued Fatwas for the reconquest of Al Quds (Jerusalem) and preached anti-Semitic hatred to crowds in Tahrir Square. In a January 2009 broadcast from Qatar, al Qaradawisaid about Jews: “kill them, down to the very last one.” While in Doha, Qatar he steadfastly refused to participate in annual International Interfaith Conferences.

A news report by Radaw noted the isolation of Qatar by “sisterly” Sunni Arab states because of the mischief of al Qaradawi and sanctuary provided by the Emir:

The Arab states of the lower Gulf are engaged in the latest and potentially most serious of their periodic family squabbles, which this week provoked three of them to withdraw their ambassadors from tiny Qatar.

The Qatar government expressed regret and surprise at Wednesday’s decision by the “sisterly countries” of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, but said it did not plan to retaliate by pulling out its own envoys.

All four states, together with Kuwait and Oman, are members of the GCC.

The official reason for the diplomatic spat is Qatar’s alleged failure to live up to a recent commitment not to interfere in the internal affairs of fellow GCC states.

The three conservative states are particularly distressed that Qatar continued to provide a platform for Yousuf Al Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Egyptian cleric, to use his fiery sermons to attack Saudi Arabia and the UAE despite Riyadh’s threat to freeze relations unless he was silenced.

The scope of King Abdullah’s terrorist designations was reported by Al-Jazeera:

Saudi Arabia has listed the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization along with two al-Qaeda-linked groups fighting in Syria.

The decree against the Brotherhood, whose Egyptian branch supported the deposed Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, was reported on Saudi state television on Friday.

Egypt in December listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, prompting the arrest of members and associates and forcing the Islamist group further underground.

Saudi Arabia also listed Jabhat al-Nusra, which is al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Sham) (ISIS), which has been disowned al-Qaeda, as “terrorist organizations”.

It also listed Shia Huthi rebels fighting in northern Yemen and the little-known internal Shia group, Hezbollah in the Hijaz.

Early in February, 2014, Ayman al Zawahiri at Al Qaeda Central announced that the global Islamic terrorist group had no association with ISIS, instead providing support for the Al Nusrah front fighting against the Assad regime in Syria.  ISIS however has rampaged across the Anbar province in neighboring Iraq overtaking the Sunni town of Fallujah.

About the same time as the AQ ISIS declaration, King Abdullah had announced new counterterrorism policies that were directed against so-called reform movements in the Saudi Kingdom. The Washington Post  reported the new law “states that any act that ‘undermines’  the state or society, including calls for regime change in Saudi Arabia, can be tried as an act of terrorism.” This Saudi law appears  to be in violation of human rights taken for granted in the West, but clearly viewed as seditious in the autocratic and Sharia compliant Wahhabist Kingdom.

These latest Saudi initiatives could have significant implications for the Obama Administration and Secretary Kerry. Kerry is endeavoring to fashion an Israel- Palestinian final status agreement and resolution of the 37 month civil war in Syria.  We noted earlier the presence of Louay Safi as spokesperson for the Syrian Opposition Council at the recent Geneva II plenum talks. Safi was Research Director at the northern Virginia- based MB supported International Islamic Institute of Thought. Moreover, he was also Leadership Development Director at the MB front, the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008  Federal Dallas  trial and convictions of leaders of the Holy Land Foundation. The Muslim charity group had been accused of funneling upwards of $35 million to MB affiliate Hamas. Safi was also invited by the US Army Chief of Staff to lecture troops on Islam at Fort Hood in early December 2009 following the massacre perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Hassan a month earlier. Clearly, Safi’s rise to prominence in the Syrian Opposition Council is indicative of the MB controlling presence.

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and senior National Security Aides were present at the May 2012 meetings of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. They were engaged in outreach to MB officials from Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab states and facilitated assistance to ousted President Morsi. Obama Appointments of MB members, especially Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Policy, Arif Alikhan and Senior Advisory board member Mohamed Elibiary have been problematic. National Security Advisor Malley was a former Middle East foreign policy aide to President Clinton during the failed 2000 Camp David Israel-Palestinian negotiations between former Israeli PM Ehud Barak and the late Yassir Arafat. Malley had accused Israel of nixing the agreement, when it was evident that Arafat had purposely sabotaged it. Malley went on to become head of the Middle East and North African program of the International Crisis group and later advised then Senator Obama and was part of the President’s transition team. He holds views that may further complicate Administration Middle East policies.  Malley propounded speaking with terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the MB. Malley, was recently appointed to the National Security Council. He has the portfolio for Israel -Palestinian peace talks and the Iran nuclear P5+1 diplomatic initiative.

Now that Egypt and Saudi Arabia have designated the MB as a terrorist group, would the Obama Administration dare follow their lead? How Messrs. McDonough, Malley and Secretary of State Kerry will contend with a plethora of problems arising from efforts by the Egyptian government and now the Saudi led GCC targeting the MB is a ‘puzzlement’.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.