How a freedom-fighting pharmacist showed me the complex truth about Syria’s sectarian conflict

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How a freedom-fighting pharmacist showed me the complex truth about Syria’s sectarian conflict

Luke Harding, The Guardian, Mon 13 Aug 2012
The grinding 17-month war is being fought by many different factions, but the battle lines are not as clear as many think
It was 5am, and Mohamad Baree was hiding with his fighters behind a large rock. Some 300 metres away, a column of Syrian army tanks was advancing towards Aleppo through the countryside. The group of rebels were waiting for it. Baree watched. He then set off a powerful roadside bomb. It blew two of the tanks up. The others staged a panicky retreat to their base in the northern city of Idlib.
“From a military point of view the operation was successful,” Baree tells me a week later, as we bump along in the back of his unit’s battle-scarred minivan. Baree, 27, is dressed in khaki fatigues. He carries a Kalashnikov and a pistol. Despite his appearance, he explains that he is actually a pharmacist who has spent seven years living in Odessa; his brother, another fighter in Syria’s revolution, a lawyer.
Syria’s grinding 17-month war has typically been portrayed as a sectarian conflict. In this version, Bashar al-Assad’s embattled Shia Alawite sect – about 10% of the population – is pitted against the country’s Sunni majority. To an extent, this is true. But the reality is more complex. Some of Baree’s co-fighters are members of what could loosely be called the rustic poor – carpenters, decorators, farmers. Others are educated. Baree says that a professor of chemistry has been giving the rebels tips on bomb-making, helping their military effectiveness. There are army defectors, medics, video activists, even information officers.
The sectarian faultlines are blurred as well. Baree acknowledges that his own group of around 150 rebels, from the village of Korkanaya, near Idlib, is predominantly Sunni. But he says many of his friends are Alawite. “We talk over the internet. They don’t like what Bashar is doing either,” he says. Baree says he has broken off with one childhood friend, a Sunni and a local teacher; the teacher had implacably supported the regime ever since Syria’s uprising began in spring 2011.
The situation in Aleppo, Syria’s largest metropolis, engulfed by fighting since July, meanwhile, is also many-layered. Aleppo is one of the most ancient cities on the planet, home to various Christian denominations, historically a large Jewish population, now all fled, as well as wealthy Sunni traders, many favourably disposed to the regime.
In the mountains just outside Aleppo you find the ghostly ruins of Byzantine churches. There are poor Kurdish hamlets. I find the frontline town of Anadan semi-wrecked and abandoned.
One Aleppo resident I speak to, an engineer living in a regime-controlled district, says he supports the revolution. But he admits many of his neighbours don’t. “If I were to generalise I would say the middle class and upper class don’t want the rebels. They want everything to be how it was,” he says. Many poorer Aleppines had welcomed the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA); others viewed it as a bunch of dangerous extremists; almost all were terrified of what the fighting would bring.
According to Baree, Syria’s revolution has little to do with external forces, or Islamist radicalism. It is, he tells me, the product of Syria’s own domestic dynamic and a logical reaction to the brutal behaviour of Assad. Assad had responded to the Arab spring and demands for political reform by arresting, torturing, and shelling his opponents, thus turning a few isolated demonstrations into a mass armed insurrection. “We tried to persuade him through peaceful means. But this didn’t work. So we took up weapons,” Baree says. Some guns from outside were arriving in Syria. But none have reached his unit, he adds.
Our conversation takes place as we drive through Syria’s FSA-controlled north, a rustic mini-empire of villages, silver olive groves and boys herding sheep. Even here, the regime is never that far away. At one point we pass within a kilometre of a government checkpoint – a yellow water tower near the Bab el Hawa border with Turkey. Our driver Mohammad puts his foot down and races through an exposed patch of farmland. “He nearly crashed and killed us yesterday,” Baree says of Mohammad, one of many Sunni defectors from the Syrian army.
Just over the border, I meet Thaer Abboud, an opposition activist who fled to Turkey from Syria last year. Abboud is an Alawite from the Mediterranean coastal town of Latakia. Some observers have suggested that Latakia and its surrounding mountain villages could form an Alawite heartland, with the regime and army retreating from Damascus and setting up their own an impregnable mini-state there. Abboud, however, says that far from being a loyalist Alawite fiefdom Latakia is split. Some 50% of the town oppose Assad, including some Alawis, a number of whom have been persecuted: “It isn’t a matter of Alawis versus Sunnis. It’s a political thing. In Syria we don’t have separate communities. There are marriages, relationships between Sunnis and Alawis. We’ve lived together for 1,000 years. We’re not dependent on religion.”
Abboud agrees that Assad has played the sectarian card, telling Syria’s Alawites that without him they were finished, and evoking historical memories of Alawite oppression by both the Ottomans and the French. “Assad’s message is: ‘If the regime stays you live. If we go you will be killed.'” In reality, Abboud tells me, all parts of Syria have been ground down, by the regime’s callousness and feudal arrogance.
Three years ago the government even forbade locals in Latakia to swim in the sea. “People can’t take it any more. Everyone was just waiting for a spark,” he says.
And what of the attack on the tank column? It may have been a military success, but it had tragic consequences. One of the tank drivers who survived the ambush fired a shell into a residential building. It hit a fifth-storey flat on Idlib’s 30th street. Five members of a family were sleeping there. All were killed, the latest victims in Syria’s unrelenting war.

Qatar’s Emir leaves $2 billion ‘deposit’ to Egypt after meeting President Morsi

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Qatar’s Emir leaves $2 billion ‘deposit’ to Egypt after meeting President Morsi

Qatar’s crown prince Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani arrives to Egypt to meet with President Mohamed Morsi to discuss relations between the two countries, promises more Gulf money

Ahram Online, MENA, Saturday 11 Aug 2012

The Qatari Emir met with President Mohamed Morsi on Saturday. According to presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani has come to discuss enhancing co-operation between the two countries.

Following the meeting, the Emir deposited $2 billion in Egypt’s Central Bank.

According to the data issued by the Central Bank of Egypt in July 2012, Qatari investments in Egypt climbed 74 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

Following the January 25 revolution and the rise of Islamists to positions of power, questions were raised by anti-Brotherhood forces regarding the nature of the relationship between Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Some critics claim that the group received funds from the Gulf state during the presidential race. Morsi was the Brothehood’s candidate, after its first choice Khairat El-Shater was unable to run.

Moreover, other rumours circulated claiming the Brotherhood is planning to rent the Suez Canal to Qatar for ninety-nine years thus undermining Egypt’s sovereignty.

The Brotherhood leadership vehemently denied these accusations.

Meanwhile, the president is scheduled to meet with head of the Suez Canal Authority General Ahmed Fadel on Saturday as well.

Yasser Ali dismissed speculation that the president’s meetings with the Emir and General Fadel are connected, describing the rumours of selling the Canal as “absurd and illogical.”

“Those who come up with such claims are ignorant of national issues,” Ali added.

Syrian Arms issue proves need for better U.S. engagement

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Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Syrian Arms issue proves need for better U.S. engagement

Presidential debate should focus on necessity of a coherent U.S. Middle East Strategy

 

PHOENIX (October 16, 2012) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith” issued the following statement on behalf of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy on the Syrian rebel arms scandal and the presidential debate:

“On October 15, the New York Times reported that arms shipped by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Syrian rebel groups are largely being funneled to the worst factions– ‘hard-line Islamic jihadists’.  While this news is alarming, it is hardly surprising since the U.S. has essentially outsourced its leadership role in the region since the start of the “Arab Spring” to countries like the Kingdom and Qatar who have no qualms over working with Islamists.

Make no mistake, this development is a direct result of the lack of U.S. leadership in the Middle East and an inability of the Obama administration to understand and articulate the importance of the Islamist ideological roots of extremism in the region.  How can we expect the “right people” to get these weapons when the vetting of these rebel groups is being done by the very countries that have propagated and supported Islamist ideologies around the world?

This news is also bolstering the isolationist narrative that would rather see the U.S. entirely leave the region to its own devices. But at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, we see this news as a clarion call for the U.S. to assume the mantle of leadership not with troops but by empowering the emerging forces of freedom in the region.  If we do nothing Islamists will win and the people in the streets will see the U.S. fleeing in the face of hard choices as they see their nations overtaken by new and even more dangerous fascists with a theocratic twist.  If we take a stand for real liberty we may certainly still fail in the short term, but one thing is certain without any American input, the trajectory of the “Muslim World” will go from bad to worse and certainly not towards freedom.  The only sure way for Islamists to dominate the future of the Middle East is for America to remain on the sidelines.

At tonight’s presidential debate it is imperative that we begin to see these candidates outline a vision for American leadership in Middle East policy not from behind but from the front.  We can no longer wait for Russia and China on Syria. We can not sit idly by while Iran begins to dominate the region.  We can no longer ask the Saudis, Turkey, or Qatar to tell us who our friends are in the region.  We must also push back against the elected Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia by developing the liberty minded leaders in these countries in their emerging civil societies as we did in Eastern Europe after the Cold War.

We hope the candidates understand the opportunity and the threat that sits before them in the Middle East and North Africa.  Any discussion on foreign policy, like tonight’s debate, should be focused on the need for a coherent and consistent strategy for a new emboldened Liberty Doctrine in the Middle East and North Africa and squarely against the ideology of Islamism.

Failure to confront these issues head on will lock the U.S. and the Middle East in confrontation for generations to come.”

 

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

 

MEDIA CONTACTS:        Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

Covering Muslim women: The Olympics and beyond

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 By Eva Sajoo, Special to The Vancouver Sun August 10, 2012

VANCOUVER — On Aug. 4, Wojdan Shaherkani became the first Saudi woman to compete in the Olympics. While her judo match lasted a mere 82 seconds, her appearance in the Games has been hailed as a triumph for Muslim women. In part this is because she was granted permission to compete in a headscarf, despite earlier concerns that the drape around her head and neck would pose a safety risk in the ring.

The significance of Ms. Shakerkani’s performance seems limited because Saudi authorities, (along with Qatar and Brunei) only entered female athletes after intense pressure from the International Olympic Committee. It does not change much in the ultra-misogynist Kingdom of the al-Sauds, where women are not even permitted to drive, let alone to engage in sports or physical training at school. These supposedly religious restrictions are actually quite recent— despite the attempt to justify them as Islamic requirements.

Whatever Shaherkani’s appearance may mean for Saudi women, it certainly does not represent progress for Muslim women. The massive coverage of her story ignores the fact that Muslim women have been competing in the Olympic Games (far more successfully that their Saudi sisters) for decades.

Take Nawal El Moutawakel, the Moroccan hurdler who won the 400-metre race in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Her success broke down stereotypes in her country — and earned her royal commendation, including a royal decree that girls born on the day of her victory should be named after her. She has since organized successful local racing events for Moroccan women, and is currently a member of the International Olympic Committee.

Soraya Haddad, an Algerian judoka known as “The Iron Lady of El Kseur” won a bronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This year Iraqi sprinter Dana Abdul Razzaq competed in the Games, and was her country’s flag bearer in the opening ceremony.

There are many other Muslim athletes in London this year, including Egyptian weightlifter Nahla Ramadan Mohammed and Turkey’s female volleyball team, collectively known as the “Sultanas of the Net.”

These women don’t make headlines for their religion. Is it because they don’t feel the need to wear headscarves? Or the fact that their countries have not discouraged their participation? The truth is that Wojdan Shaherkani fits much better into the western stereotype of Muslim women: uncompetitive hijabis labouring under patriarchal oppression. North African sprinters who take gold and not scarves don’t get reported as “Muslim.”

Saudi Arabia has been working hard to export its peculiarly backward attitude toward women as the authentic version of Islam for Muslims everywhere. It has had considerable success on this score, considering how widely the Saudi headscarf has been adopted as “authentically” Muslim. Ironically, when western media represent Shaherkani as an example of progress for Muslim women, we inadvertently reinforce the notion that the Saudi version is “real Islam.” How do we know if a woman is Muslim? She wears a headscarf.

The fact that Olympic regulations have been changed to allow women to cover their heads for religious reasons is a step forward. It removes additional barriers for heroic women like Tahmina Kohistani from Afghanistan, who had to overcome extraordinary hurdles in her war-torn and very conservative country just to be able to compete. For her, wearing a headscarf is necessary to avoid severe repercussions at home. Her performance nevertheless presents Afghans with a bold vision of what women can do.

For Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, having women compete in the Olympics is a major change. However, it is worth remembering that participation in sport, like politics and business, is not new for Muslim women. They were active even on the battlefields of the Arabian peninsula centuries ago. In our own time, women drove freely in the streets of Saudi Arabia. Patriarchal forces, like the Saudi authorities, have attempted to wipe out this history. Only such amnesia could make their assertion that female oppression is required by Islam seem credible.

Media coverage that buys this story only reinforces the claim that women who do not cover are somehow less Muslim. This only slows down the progress made by women in conservative societies against barriers that have everything to do with patriarchy and nothing to do with faith.

 

Eva Sajoo is a research associate with the Centre for the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies and Cultures at Simon Fraser University.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/2012-summer-games/Covering+Muslim+women+Olympics+beyond/7072809/story.html#ixzz23TGIvUuf

Female Syrian hurdler disqualified for doping

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Female Syrian hurdler disqualified for doping

USA Today, 8/10/12

LONDON (AP) – A female hurdler from Syria was kicked out of the London Olympics on Saturday after failing a drug test.

The IOC said that 400-meter hurdler Ghfran Almouhamad tested positive for the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine Aug. 3. Her backup “B” sample confirmed the positive finding.

The 23-year-old athlete finished eighth and last in her first-round heat Aug. 5.

The IOC said Almouhamad had been disqualified and stripped of her Olympic accreditation.

The IOC sent her case to the IAAF to officially change the results and consider any further action against the athlete.

Almouhamad was one of 10 Syrian athletes, six men and four women, registered to compete in seven different sports in London. The Syrians came to the Olympics despite the escalating violence in their homeland.

Protests against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in March 2011 and became a civil war activists say has killed at least 20,000 people.

The head of the Syrian Olympic Committee, Gen. Mowaffak Joumaa, was denied a visa to come to London by British authorities.

Almouhamad’s is the seventh positive case reported by the IOC since the Olympic body started its games testing program July 16. She is the second athlete who competed in London to be sanctioned for doping. The others were caught before competing.

American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo was expelled after testing positive during for marijuana, which he said he unintentionally consumed in something he ate.

Gymnast Luiza Galiulina of Uzbekistan and weightlifter Hysen Pulaku of Albania were expelled for failing pre-Games tests. Galiulina tested positive for the diuretic furosemide, while Pulaku was caught for using the steroid stanozolol.

Russian track cyclist Victoria Baranova was disqualified after testing positive for testosterone July 24 in Belarus, and Colombian 400-meter runner Diego Palomeque was suspended for a testosterone positive July 26 in London.

Italian race walker Alex Schwazer was formally disqualified by the IOC after the Italian Olympic Committee removed him from the team for a positive EPO test in Italy before the games.

 

Respond to attacks with caution, Valley experts say

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Respond to attacks with caution, Valley experts say

by Michael Clancy – Sept. 12, 2012 04:27 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com

The United States should do its best to understand what happened in attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and a consulate in Libya before it definitively reacts, according to several experts in aspects of radical Islam and conflict in the region.

It’s just too soon to respond with sanctions, military action or other steps, they say.

Chad Haines, a professor of religious studies at Arizona State University, who has worked in Pakistan and Egypt, said blame and accusations will have anti-American repercussions. Policymakers need to recognize that both Egypt and Libya are still in the midst of dramatic changes after last year’s so-called Arab Spring.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician who founded the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy, said the movie is just a distraction. He describes events in the area not as an Arab Spring, but ongoing convulsions. In such reactions, “governments like ours will be collateral damage.”

“It’s a long battle,” he said. “Democracy is not a light switch you can turn on.”

While the United States should be cautious in its response, it should not withdraw altogether, he said.

Jasser, who is from Syria and has family engaged in the conflict there, said the civil war in Syria and the incidents in Egypt and Libya are all part of the same reaction to the modern world.

“This may wake us up,” he said. “The war on radicalism is not over.”

Sid Shahid, a Muslim who works with the Arizona Interfaith Movement, said the United States needs a strategy for dealing with the implications of the incidents.

“Some of these incidents are very isolated,” he said.

Matt Kuivinen, who worked as a diplomatic security officer in Afghanistan and Yemen, noted that without the host country’s assistance, there is little a security staff can do in response to mob violence.

Using sanctions, such as threats to withhold foreign aid to nations like Libya and Egypt, can help provoke a government response, he said.

Kuivinen, who runs a security consulting business in Phoenix, said most radical rhetoric never leads to violence, and that security officials cannot react to all intelligence leads.

“You can only cry wolf so many times,” he said.

Shahid, who has given numerous talks in the community about his faith, said, “This is really disturbing for Muslims in general, especially American Muslims like myself.”

Mohamed El-Sharkawy, chairman of the Muslim Community Advisory Board in Phoenix, said community members are condemning the attacks.

“This is not the way true Muslims believe,” he said. “The people who were killed were our guests, and they deserved respect.”

He said the Muslim community would hold a candlelight vigil in memory of those who were killed will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Moeur Park, Curry Road and Mill Avenue, in Tempe.

AWOL soldier gets life term for Fort Hood plot

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AWOL soldier gets life term for Fort Hood plot

Published August 10, 2012

Associated Press

WACO, Texas –  An AWOL soldier convicted of collecting bomb-making materials for what he told authorities would be a “massive attack” on a Texas restaurant full of Fort Hood troops was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, a Muslim, was planning a religious mission to win “justice” for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a recorded jail conservation with his mother played for jurors at trial.

U.S. District Judge Walter allowed Abdo to represent himself at the sentencing after the 22-year-old told him last month that he and his attorneys weren’t communicating effectively.

A federal jury convicted Abdo in May on six charges, including attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. He was AWOL from Fort Campbell, Ky., when arrested with bomb-making materials last summer at a Fort Hood-area motel.

He also was found guilty of attempted murder of U.S. officers or employees and four counts of possessing a weapon in furtherance of a federal crime of violence.

In a recorded police interview, Abdo said he wanted to carry out the attack “because I don’t appreciate what my unit did in Afghanistan.” His plan, according to what he told authorities, was to place a bomb in a busy restaurant filled with soldiers, wait outside and shoot anyone who survived — and become a martyr after police killed him.

According to testimony, Abdo told an investigator he didn’t plan an attack inside Fort Hood because he didn’t believe he would be able to get past security at the gates.

Abdo grew up in the Dallas suburb of Garland and at age 17 decided to follow Islam. He enlisted in the military in 2009, thinking that the service wouldn’t conflict with his religious beliefs.

But according to an essay that was part of his conscientious objector status application filed in June 2010, Abdo reconsidered as he explored Islam further.

Abdo said in his discharge request that other soldiers harassed him about his religion during basic and advanced training. As he neared deployment, he said he studied Islam more closely to learn “whether going to war was the right thing to do Islamically.”

Abdo’s unit was deployed to Afghanistan without him. He said he would refuse to go even if it resulted in a military charge against him.

His conscientious objector status was put on hold after he was charged with possessing child pornography in May 2011. Two months later, during the Fourth of July weekend, Abdo went AWOL from the Kentucky Army post.

In the essay included in the conscientious objector status application, Abdo described the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage that left 13 dead and dozens wounded as “an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam.”

Maj. Nidal Hasan faces the death penalty in the shootings at the Army post if convicted. His court-martial is set for later this month at Fort Hood.

Many Muslims are loyal Americans, including doctor to Congress

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Many Muslims are loyal Americans, including doctor to Congress

AZ Capitol Times, 8/10/12

It has come to my attention that some members of the Arizona community are “warning” us that all Muslims are a threat to the United States.

Such an assertion is false on its face! There are many Muslims who are loyal Americans. I will cite but one example of the many I know. I preface the discussion by pointing out that I am a Jew. And I am a Jew speaking out against this slander of lumping all Muslims together as “enemies.”

The one example I will cite is my very dear friend and my personal physician, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser.

Jasser served honorably in the U.S. Navy for more than a decade. During part of that service, he was assigned at Bethesda Naval Hospital as chief resident in internal medicine. Following his service at the primary hospital of the Navy, for the next two years he was assigned to the Office of the Attending Physician to Congress (OAP). That office, with its clinic inside the U.S. Capitol Building, provides medical care for members of both houses of the legislative branch and to members of the Supreme Court.

I suggest that Congress and the Supreme Court do not ask for just any doctor to be assigned to the OAP. I suggest that they demand the best physicians available.

I, a Jew, happily put my life in the hands of a Syrian Muslim (American Muslim of Syrian extraction) who I know to be more loyal to the United States than those who want to paint him with a brush of bigotry.

Jasser is but one example out of many I could cite. I hope this will bring a swift closure to such specious arguments.

— Bob Rosenberg, Phoenix

Ex Brotherhood Official Showcases Islamist Doublespeak

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Ex Brotherhood Official Showcases Islamist Doublespeak

IPT News
August 10, 2012

It “is no difficult task for Allah” to bring America to its knees, a prominent former Muslim Brotherhood official said at a recent discussion in Egypt.

American leaders are “all criminals” plotting to stifle Arab revolutions and defend “that criminal and plundering state of Israel,” Kemal Helbawy, the Brotherhood’s former spokesman in the United Kingdom, said in a video dated July 26 and posted this week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“If we use all the capabilities at our disposal properly, America will be brought to its knees and will be defeated like the Soviets in Afghanistan,” he said. “This is no difficult task for Allah.”

The remarks came during a sit-in outside the American embassy in Cairo.

Behind him is a poster of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheik considered the inspiration behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who is serving a life sentence in the United States for a subsequent plot to bomb New York tunnels and landmarks. New Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has promised to seek Abdel Rahman’s release when he meets U.S. officials.

Helbawy left the Brotherhood last spring, blasting the group for trying to monopolize power in Egypt after a peaceful revolution ousted former President Hosni Mubarak. But Helbawy remains a staunch Islamist and, despite a long record of violent rhetoric, is welcomed among American Islamists and academic groups.

He hailed Osama bin Laden as “a great mujahid” last year just after the American raid in Pakistan killed the al-Qaida leader. He prayed that bin Laden “join the prophets, the martyrs, and the good people” and questioned whether America’s proof al-Qaida was behind the 9/11 attacks “was a trick and a bait … All evidences and indications refer that the Americans are the ones who planned this matter, not the Afghans who have weak resources.”

The London-based Quilliam Foundation, which works to counter jihadist influence,called this “the latest example of senior Muslim Brotherhood members giving different messages to different audiences. When speaking to mainstream audiences Helbawy presents himself as a moderate reformer; when speaking to Islamists he praises Osama bin Laden. This doublespeak undermines trust between Muslims and non-Muslims and hinders genuine efforts to tackle extremism and terrorism.”

Quilliam warned western governments to treat the Brotherhood “with the greatest suspicion,” adding that there are moderates in the group, but “anyone who thinks that the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole has ‘reformed’ is clearly deluded.”

Helbawy demonstrated that doublespeak two years earlier, during the 10th annual conference of the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy. The event attracted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and first Muslim elected to Congress.

He was on a panel on “Improving Relations between the U.S. and the Muslim World.” In his abstract for the conference, Helbawy waxed fondly about the benefits of democracy and life in the West. As a Muslim, he said he he “deeply appreciate[s] most of the values and blessings of the democratic society and wish that Muslim countries were more like the UK or Europe in this respect.”

“God created us into different nations, tribes, people, ethnic groups and races to know each other,” he wrote, “so as a Muslim I am fulfilling one of the many aims and objectives of my existence when I meet and know and work with other people to improve community relations. More broadly, living in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society enables us to appreciate our differences and overcome obstacles towards greater understanding.”

That lovely, humanistic embrace was absent in Helbawy’s 1992 speech in Oklahoma City before the Islamic Association for Palestine – a Hamas propaganda wing – and the Muslim Arab Youth Association:

Do not take Jews and Christians as allies. For they are allies to each other. Oh Brothers, the Palestinian cause is not of conflict of borders and land only. It is not even a conflict of human ideology and not over peace. Rather, it is an absolute clash of civilizations, between truth and falsehood. Between two conducts – one satanic, headed by Jews and their co-conspirators – and the other is religious, carried by Hamas, and the Islamic movement in particular, and the Islamic people in general who are behind it.

Lastly I am going to say something about Imam Hassan al-Banna, may he rest in peace, who had been trying to establish 70,000 fighters, and he started with the first battalion with 10,000 fighters, and today the Palestinians became strong fighting battalions. Let us stand and support this great nation and the future is for Islam. And I ask God’s forgiveness for you and for me and the Muslims. We ask God to give victory to our brothers and we ask God to release the leader of the Intifada, [Hamas founder] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, praise be upon him.

Statements like that may have prompted government officials to prohibit Helbawy from coming into the United States in 2006 for a New York University conference. It’s not clear why the Obama administration saw fit to reverse that course, or why Secretary Clinton would agree to appear at a conference with someone espousing such hostility toward Jews and Christians and outward support for terrorist groups like Hamas.

In addition, Helbawy frequently appears on Iran’s official FARS News Agency, a rarity for someone from the Sunni Brotherhood movement. In 2010, he was interviewed on Iran’s English-language television outlet, Press TV, along with Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper about “Islamophobia” in America. CAIR officials routinely appear on the Iranian media outlet.

Fear of Islam “has the highest level in America unfortunately,” Helbawy said. “This implied democratic superpower in the world.”

Hooper didn’t challenge the statement, and blamed the Tea Party movement, saying it “unfortunately has given bigots a voice.”

The discussion was prompted by a Florida pastor’s threat to burn the Quran. Helbawy hinted darkly at widespread violence.

“You’re seeing the demonization of the faith itself. If you demonize the faith of Islam and you have millions of American Muslims, what is going to be done with those people? There are logical conclusions to ideologies. If you say Islam is intrinsically evil and Muslims are intrinsically evil, you must have a policy that flows from that very dangerous thing.”

It’s an odd concern from someone who envisioned “America will be brought to its knees” because it continues to incarcerate a convicted terrorist and who praised Osama bin Laden as “a great mujahid.” The Quilliam Foundation called on British Muslims to distance themselves from Helbawy’s radicalism last year.

It’s time American Muslims, along with government and academic officials, did too.