California Conservative

That’s the essence of this NY Times article. I’ll respond to that with a question: Is it wrong for non-Muslims to question the actions of Rep. Keith Ellison, who claims that he’s a mainstream Muslim, when he speaks at the MAS-Minnesota convention? Is it a mainstream Muslim belief that they can spew anti-Semitism on their websites but then pretend to be friends of Jews? Is it a mainstream Muslim practice to refuse to denounce the anti-Semitism found on MAS-Minnesota’s website? That’s what Rep. Ellison has refused to do for over 90 days.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of stereotype is “a too-simple and therefore distorted image of a group, such as “Football players are stupid” or “The English are cold and unfriendly people.” How is it stereotyping when we’re providing specific, accurate reasons for mistrusting specific Muslims? According to the Dictionary.com definition, stereotypes are categorical in nature. The questions I have are specific and directed at specific people and organizations.

Since the definition of stereotyping is essentially oversimplification, doesn’t my referring to specific events and people prove that I’m not stereotyping? For instance, I’m not saying that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a terrorist or a terrorist-sympathizer. I won’t make that statement without there being a basis in fact for the statement. Here’s something from the NY Times article that plays into the ’stereotyping’ meme:

A fresh example cited was an open letter from two Republican House members, Peter Hoekstra of Michigan and Sue Myrick of North Carolina, that attacked the Justice Department for sending envoys to the convention because, the lawmakers said, the Islamic Society of North America was a group of “radical jihadists.”

The lone Muslim in Congress, Representative Keith Ellison, Democrat of Minnesota, the keynote speaker here, dismissed the letter as ill informed and typical of bigoted attacks that other minorities have suffered.

Being lectured by Keith Ellison on the issue of bigotry is insulting. Since Rep. Ellison refuses to denounce the anti-semitic statements found on the MAS-Minnesota website, why should we take his accusations of bigotry seriously?

I’d further challenge Rep. Ellison to provide proof that ISNA isn’t a “group of ‘radical jihadists’”. Here’s my proof that they are:

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was co-founded by convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian. Here’s a list of former ISNA members and their profiles:

Sirhaj Wahhaj:

Siraj Wahhaj was named by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as a possible co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and testified as a character witness for convicted terror mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. According to Salon.com, in a 1991 speech before the Islamic Association of North Texas, Wahhaj called Operation Desert Storm “one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history,” and predicted that America will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has openly expressed his desire to see the American government replaced with a caliphate.

Muzammil Siddiqi:

Muzammil Siddiqi is the former president of the board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Saudi-funded organization that is used by the Muslim World League (MWL) to finance and exercise control over most of the mosques in the United States. Prior to his work at ISNA, Siddiqi was a top figure in the MWL, whose American headquarters in Virginia were raided by a Treasury Department task force in March 2002 on suspicion of ties to terrorism. Siddiqi has also chaired the Religious Affairs Committee of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada. In addition, he is a member of the Fiqh Council, another government-raided entity.

Abdullah Idris Ali:

Abdullah Idris Ali served as president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) from 1992-1997. ISNA enforces Wahhabi theological writ in some 1,200 American mosques, determining who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there. Ali is a member of the board of trustees for the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a Saudi Wahhabi financial institution that, according to a CAIR report, owns about 27 percent of the estimated 1,200 mosques in the United States. Wahhabism is the most extreme, intolerant, violent form of Islam. Ali is also on the board of advisors for the American Muslim Council (AMC), whose founder and leader, Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, has publicly proclaimed his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Moreover, Alamoudi was arrested in September 2003 for illegally failing to notify the U.S. State Department of his numerous trips to Libya; illegally accepting $10,700 from the Libyan mission to the United Nations; and using two American and one Yemeni passport for at least ten of those trips.

I can further add that Alamoudi was the chief fundraiser for the legal defense funds for Omar Abdel Rahman and Mousa Abu Marzook:

Hillary Clinton has worked particularly closely with the head of the AMC, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who has openly collected funds for the legal defense of Mr Marzook, the Hamas chieftain arrested at JFK Airport, and for Mr. Abdel-Rahman, who organized the World Trade Center bombing.

In other words, ISNA’s leadership over the years was littered with men convicted of terrorist activities. They’ve even raised money for Hamas chieftains and the Blind Sheikh, the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing. Given that type of history, why shouldn’t Rep. Hoekstra and Rep. Myrick call ISNA “a group of ‘radical jihadists’”?

It goes even further than that. Here are the speakers at this year’s ISNA Convention:

• Abdalla Idris Ali
• Abdullah Adhami
• Aisha Al-Adawiyya
• Altaf Husain
• Hamza Yusuf
• Ihsan Bagby
• Ingrid Mattson
• Jamal Badawi
• Maha Hamoui
• Muneer Fareed
• Muzammil Siddiqi
• Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson
• Siraj Wahhaj
• Umar F. Abd-Allah
• Zaid Shakir

I find it strange that ISNA invited Siraj Wahhaj, who testified as a character witness for the Blind Sheikh, to be a featured speaker at their 44th annual convention. I find it perplexing that they’d invite Muzammil Siddiqi to be a featured speaker at their convention, especially considering he was the man responsible for enforcing the teaching of extremist Wahhabist teachings in mosques all across the United States. It’s noteworthy that al-Qa’ida practices Wahhabist Islam.

Considering all this information, how can Rep. Ellison say that Rep. Hoekstra and Rep. Myrick are “ill-informed” whose letter was “typical of bigoted attacks that other minorities have suffered”? Rep. Ellison should have to explain why he thinks Rep. Hoekstra and Rep. Myrick are bigots. Their criticism of ISNA isn’t based on this definition of bigotry:

stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one’s own.

Quite the contrary, Myrick’s and Hoekstra’s accusations against ISNA are based on actions, mostly based on the illegal actions of ISNA’s past leadership. Myrick’s and Hoekstra’s accusations don’t come close to fitting the official definition of bigotry. Ellison’s accusations of bigotry should be ignored. Rep. Ellison, like his CAIR friends, use the word bigotry as frequently as they use the word Islamophobia.

Leaders of American Muslim organizations attribute the growing intolerance to three main factors: global terrorist attacks in the name of Islam, disappointing reports from the Iraq war and the agenda of some supporters of Israel who try taint Islam to undermine the Palestinians.

I’ll speak only for myself. The reason I’ve criticized specific Muslims is because of their verified actions. My criticisms don’t have anything to do with “disappointing reports from Iraq.” They certainly don’t have anything to do with what supporters of Israel are saying. Most of the people that I’ve criticized in this post have been convicted of criminal activities relating to terrorists. I’d doubt that the average person would say that my criticisms are bigoted, though I’m certain that Rep. Ellison and other CAIR/ISNA mouthpieces would instantly criticize me as an ill-informed, and possibly bigoted, Islamophobe.

That’s just part of the territory when reporting on people who’ll say anything to draw attention away from their illegal and unsavory behavior.

Technorati Tags: ISNA, Keith Ellison, MAS, Bigotry, Anti-semitism, Blind Sheikh, Sami Al-Arian, Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas, Terrorists, Peter Hoekstra, Sue Myrick

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 2:02 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Homeland Security, Intel, Liberals, Subversives, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.