Muslim CAIR fears big Christian prayer event
Islamic lobby instructs Detroit-area mosques to step up security
Posted: November 05, 2011
12:40 am Eastern
WND
His Washington-based organization has been implicated by the U.S. in the financing of Hamas. More than a dozen of his colleagues have been indicted or convicted in terrorism cases. The FBI has evidence his group was founded as an American front for the Muslim Brotherhood. But Dawud Walid is worried about Detroit-area Christians who are planning a big prayer meeting next week.
Islamic lobby instructs Detroit-area mosques to step up security
Posted: November 05, 2011
12:40 am Eastern
WND
 Dawud Walid |
Walid, executive director of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is alerting local mosques to step up their security when churches gather at Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions, to pray and fast for their city and nation.
Walid met Wednesday with Muslim activists to express his concern that the event will include anti-Muslim rhetoric, the Detroit News reported.
"There's a bigger force or movement behind this prayer summit and how they're literally demonizing Muslims," the CAIR leader charged, according to the paper.
Detroit pastors involved in the event, "The Call Detroit," however, told the News the gathering is about helping Detroit.
"I don't know anything about that," said Bishop Edgar Vann of Second Ebenezer Church. "People are coming here to pray for our city and that's what I'm concerned about. Christians will be praying, but it's open to anyone."
The event, organized by a Kansas City, Mo.-based ministry known as The Call, has put on similar stadium prayer gatherings over the past decade around the country. The Call Detroit begins Friday, Nov. 11, at 6 p.m. and runs 24 hours.
In a report by WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Walid played a video posted on YouTube of a conversation with two church leaders he said were associated with the prayer event. One leader is heard lamenting "an attempt to make Michigan our first Muslim state."
"Islam is in our face everywhere we turn," he says.
Walid told the Detroit station on camera: "There's actually advocating, potentially, for stakes to be driven in the ground to bring out the demons from the Muslims. That is really ridiculous."
Walid, noting that Friday, the day the event begins, is the Muslim holy day of prayer, and so he is asking mosques to "step up" security.
He advised the heads of local mosques to "maintain security at all entrances, and make sure to notify the police immediately if suspicious persons congregate on mosque property."
A description of the event on The Call's website referred to "the rising tide of the Islamic movement." The site says the event is calling Christians to "gather to this city that has become a microcosm of our national crisis — economic collapse, racial tension, the rising tide of the Islamic movement, and the shedding of innocent blood of our children in the streets and our unborn."
A local pastor insisted to the Detroit paper that the event is not anti-Muslim.
"It's not to pray against anybody," said senior pastor Jerry Weinzierl of Grace Christian Church in Sterling Heights, Mich. "It is a very positive movement of Christians gathering together to pray." Islam expert Robert Spencer, the author of a dozen books about Islam, highlighted CAIR's reaction to the event on his JihadWatch.org website.
Noting the recent firebomb attack on the offices of a French newspaper that published a satirical image of Islam's prophet Muhammad, Spencer said the "Hamas-linked CAIR," he said, "is yet again trying to portray Muslims as victims."
"This time, they're pretending that Muslims in the Detroit area are threatened by Christians who are coming to the city to pray," he said. "Perhaps Dawud Walid of Hamas-linked CAIR is so used to Muslims storming out of mosques after hearing the Friday sermon and rioting or terrorizing non-Muslims that he assumed a Christian gathering would work the same way."
CAIR critic Andrew Whitehead, director of the website Anti-CAIR, has pointed out that Walid defended the radical Detroit imam who was killed in an October 2009 shootout with the FBI, Luqman Ameen Abdullah.
Walid described Abdullah as a benevolent, "very quiet" man who possibly was set up and murdered by the FBI. Whitehead notes, however, Abdullah once told followers that they should not "carry a pistol if you're going to police. You give them a bullet."
U.S. counter-terrorism officials regard CAIR as a front group for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of most of the major Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas and al-Qaida. CAIR and some of its leaders were named unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terror finance case in U.S. history. The Washington, D.C.-based group is suing a father-and-son team that conducted an undercover probe that came up with 12,000 pages of internal documents confirming CAIR's role as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the U.S. The findings were published in the WND Books best-selling expose "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America"
As WND reported, Walid was a headliner at a conference in Detroit recently along with the co-author of a report that slanders critics of radical Islam, including Spencer, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson. Anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist also was featured at the National Leadership Conference Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, sponsored by the Arab American Institute.
Rogues gallery of terror-tied CAIR leaders
As former FBI agent Mike Rolf acknowledges in "Muslim Mafia," "CAIR has had a number of people in positions of power within the organization that have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country." According to another FBI veteran familiar with recent and ongoing cases involving CAIR officials, "Their offices have been a turnstile for terrorists and their supporters."
A review of the public record, including federal criminal court documents, past IRS 990 tax records and Federal Election Commission records detailing donor occupations, reveals that CAIR has been associated with a disturbing number of convicted terrorists or felons in terrorism probes, as well as suspected terrorists and active targets of terrorism investigations. The list is long and includes:
 FBI agents arresting CAIR founding director Ghassan Elashi in 2002. |
- Ghassan Elashi: One of CAIR's founding directors, he was convicted in 2004 of illegally shipping high-tech goods to terror state Syria and is serving 80 months in prison. He was also convicted of providing material support to Hamas in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial. He was chairman of the charity, which provided seed capital to CAIR. Elashi is related to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook.
- Muthanna al-Hanooti: The CAIR director's home was raided in 2006 by FBI agents in connection with an active terrorism investigation. Agents also searched the offices of his advocacy group, Focus on Advocacy and Advancement of International Relations, which al-Hanooti operates out of Dearborn, Mich., and Washington, D.C.
Al-Hanooti, who emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq, formerly helped run a suspected Hamas terror front called LIFE for Relief and Development. Its Michigan offices also were raided in September 2006. In 2004, LIFE's Baghdad office was raided by U.S. troops, who seized files and computers. Al-Hanooti is related to Sheik Mohammed al-Hanooti, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Muthanna al-Hanooti, wearing traditional headgarb"Al-Hanooti collected over $6 million for support of Hamas," according to a 2001 FBI report, and was present with CAIR and Holy Land officials at a secret Hamas fundraising summit held in 1993 at a Philadelphia hotel. Prosecutors added his name to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case.
Although Al-Hanooti denies supporting Hamas, he has praised Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs" who are "alive in the eyes of Allah." - Abdurahman Alamoudi: Another CAIR director, he is serving 23 years in federal prison for plotting terrorism. Alamoudi, who was caught on tape complaining that bin Laden hadn't killed enough Americans in the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa, was one of al-Qaida's top fundraisers in America, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
- Siraj Wahhaj: A member of CAIR's board of advisers, Wahhaj was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The radical Brooklyn imam was close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and defended him during his trial.
Imam Siraj Wahhaj"Muslim Mafia," citing co-author's Sperry's previous book "Infiltration" as well as terror expert Steven Emerson's research, reports that Wahhaj, a black convert to Islam, is converting gang members to Islam and holding "jihad camps" for them. With a combination of Islam and Uzis, he has said, the street thugs will be a powerful force for Islam the day America "will crumble."
Wahhaj was a key speaker at CAIR's 15th annual fund-raising banquet in Arlington, Va., in 2009. - Randall "Ismail" Royer: The former CAIR communications specialist and civil-rights coordinator is serving 20 years in prison in connection with the Virginia Jihad Network, which he led while employed by CAIR at its Washington headquarters. The group trained to kill U.S. soldiers overseas, cased the FBI headquarters and cheered the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. Al-Qaida operative Ahmed Abu Ali, convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush, was among those who trained with Royer's Northern Virginia cell.
- Bassam Khafagi: Another CAIR official, Khafagi was arrested in 2003 while serving as CAIR's director of community affairs. He pleaded guilty to charges of bank and visa fraud stemming from a federal counter-terror probe of his leadership role in the Islamic Assembly of North America, which has supported al-Qaida and advocated suicide attacks on America. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison and deported to his native Egypt.
- Laura Jaghlit: A civil-rights coordinator for CAIR, her Washington-area home was raided by federal agents after 9/11 as part of an investigation into terrorist financing, money laundering and tax fraud. Her husband Mohammed Jaghlit, a key leader in the Saudi-backed SAAR network, is a target of the still-active probe.
Jaghlit sent two letters accompanying donations – one for $10,000, the other for $5,000 – from the SAAR Foundation to Sami al-Arian, now a convicted terrorist. In each letter, according to a federal affidavit, "Jaghlit instructed al-Arian not to disclose the contribution publicly or to the media."
Investigators suspect the funds were intended for Palestinian terrorists via a U.S. front called WISE, which at the time employed an official who personally delivered a satellite phone battery to Osama bin Laden. The same official also worked for Jaghlit's group.
In addition, Jaghlit donated a total of $37,200 to the Holy Land Foundation, which prosecutors say is a Hamas front. Jaghlit subsequently was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case.
Nihad Awad
- Nihad Awad: Wiretap evidence from the Holy Land case puts CAIR's executive director at the Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders and activists in 1993 that was secretly recorded by the FBI. Participants hatched a plot to disguise payments to Hamas terrorists as charitable giving.
During the meeting, according to FBI transcripts, Awad was recorded discussing the propaganda effort. He mentions Ghassan Dahduli, whom he worked with at the time at the Islamic Association for Palestine, another Hamas front. Both were IAP officers. Dahduli's name also was listed in the address book of bin Laden's personal secretary, Wadi al-Hage, who is serving a life sentence in prison for his role in the U.S. embassy bombings. Dahduli, an ethnic-Palestinian like Awad, was deported to Jordan after 9/11 for refusing to cooperate in the terror investigation. (An April 28, 2009, letter from FBI assistant director Richard C. Powers to Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. – which singles out CAIR chief Awad for suspicion – explains how the group's many Hamas connections caused the FBI to sever ties with CAIR.)
Awad's and Dahduli's phone numbers are listed in a Muslim Brotherhood document seized by federal investigators revealing "important phone numbers" for the "Palestine Section" of the Brotherhood in America. The court exhibit showed Hamas fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook listed on the same page with Awad.
Omar Ahmad
- Omar Ahmad: U.S. prosecutors also named CAIR's founder and chairman emeritus as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case. Ahmad, too, was placed at the Philadelphia meeting, FBI special agent Lara Burns testified at the trial. Prosecutors also designated him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's "Palestine Committee" in America. Ahmad, like his CAIR partner Awad, is ethnic-Palestinian.
(Though both Ahmad and Awad were senior leaders of IAP, the Hamas front, neither of their biographical sketches posted on CAIR's website mentions their IAP past.)
Nabil Sadoun
- Nabil Sadoun: A CAIR board member, Sadoun has served on the board of the United Association for Studies and Research, which investigators believe to be a key Hamas front in America. In fact, Sadoun co-founded UASR with Hamas leader Marzook. The Justice Department added UASR to the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land case. UPDATE: In 2010, Sadoun was ordered deported to his native Jordan. An immigration judge referenced Sadoun's relationship with Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation during a deportation hearing.
- Mohamed Nimer: CAIR's research director also served as a board director for UASR, the strategic arm for Hamas in the U.S. CAIR neglects to mention Nimer's and Sadoun's roles in UASR in their bios.
Mohamed Nimer
- Rafeeq Jaber: A founding director of CAIR, Jaber was the long-time president of the Islamic Association for Palestine. In 2002, a federal judge found that "the Islamic Association for Palestine has acted in support of Hamas." In his capacity as IAP chief, Jaber praised Hezbollah attacks on Israel. He also served on the board of a radical mosque in the Chicago area.
- Rabith Hadid: The CAIR fundraiser was a founder of the Global Relief Foundation, which after 9/11 was blacklisted by the Treasury Department for financing al-Qaida and other terror groups. Its assets were frozen in December 2001. Hadid was arrested on terror-related charges and deported to Lebanon in 2003.
- Hamza Yusuf: The FBI investigated the CAIR board member after 9/11, because just two days before the attacks, he made an ominous prediction to a Muslim audience.
"This country is facing a terrible fate, and the reason for that is because this country stands condemned," Yusuf warned. "It stands condemned like Europe stood condemned because of what it did. And lest people forget, Europe suffered two world wars after conquering the Muslim lands."
No comments:
Post a Comment