07/23/2014 US lawmakers seek answers in ‘troubling’ violation of Sudanese Christian woman’s human rights

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Source: Fox News 

 

As a Sudanese Christian who faced execution for refusing to renounce her faith remains holed up with her family in the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum, a host of religious, human rights and immigration experts have been summoned to Capitol Hill to testify about her plight in the war-torn African nation.

The congressional hearing on Meriam Ibrahim, who gave birth while imprisoned in chains, is aimed at raising awareness of what one lawmaker called a “troubling violation of a basic human right.”

“Meriam Ibrahim has been imprisoned in Sudan in fear of execution, chained during the late stages of her pregnancy, forced to give birth in prison, released from prison and re-arrested on flimsy charges,” Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., told FoxNews.com. “This all is the result of her being Christian in a country in which the ruling authorities refuse to recognize the right of people to choose their own religion. Our hearing will examine this troubling violation of a basic human right.”

Smith, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on global human rights, originally planned to hold the event last month, but it was postponed when it appeared Ibrahim, 27, would be released and allowed to leave Sudan. She was ultimately not allowed to leave the country due to issues with her passport and has since been staying at the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum with her husband, Daniel Wani, and their two children, Martin and Maya.

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07/23/2014 Congress to Sudan: Release Ibrahim family

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Source: World Magazine

 

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers on Wednesday blasted the Sudanese government for continuing to prohibit Meriam Ibrahim and her family from leaving Sudan.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, convened the hearing to spotlight the unresolved case of Ibrahim, a 27-year-old woman whose husband and two children are American citizens. Ibrahim was raised as a Christian by her mother, but a Sudanese court in May sentenced her to death for converting from Islam, the religion of her absentee father.

“Her refusal to leave the faith she had practiced her entire life led to her being in mortal fear for her life,” Smith said.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., who is not a member of the panel but attended the hearing, gave fiery remarks directed at the Sudanese officials who were likely watching. “We will bring the government down,” Wolf shouted. “If Meriam is not out in two weeks, they should never be removed from the sanctions list.”

Smith originally scheduled Wednesday’s hearing in June, but he canceled it after assurances he received in a meeting with Sudanese officials. Three days later, authorities in Sudan released Ibrahim and her children only to detain them the next day while they were trying to leave the country. Media reports said Ibrahim tried to use forged travel documents, but they actually were improper travel documents.

 

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07/03/2014 AIFD applauds swift arrest of radicalized convert; warns of increasing extremism from Syria

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AIFD applauds the swift arrest of Shannon Conley, 19, who was stopped in an apparent attempt to join ISIS in Syria. Conley is said to have met an extremist online, and became radicalized. It is reported that she had a specific desire to help in the targeting of American citizens and our armed forces. A young convert to Islam, she was brainwashed into believing that it was her duty to aid in jihadist efforts against the West.

Shannon Conley’s case speaks to what we at AIFD have been saying for years: our Muslim community must be more vigilant in addressing radicalization in our community well before an individual has boarded a plane with the intent to help terrorists.

Conley is yet another in a growing list of Americans radicalized by jihadist internet traffic out of Syria. As we have said before, the Syrian conflict threatens the United States whether we take sides or not. The Assad regime, with the full support of Iran, has slaughtered nearly 200,000 Syrians and is stoking the flames of jihad in order to justify an even more terminal solution. The conveyor belt of radicalization into and out of Syria has only just started to rear its head on our homeland. It’s time to go beyond a whack a mole program in our absent Syria and regional conflict policy. In the case of Syria, we can only defeat the jihadists by helping to defeat the Assad regime.

05/01/2014 National Intelligence Office unclassified emails reveal cowardly acknowledgement of AIFD message while publicly favoring American Islamists

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Ryan Mauro at the Clarion Project is reporting today that declassified emails from the office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have confirmed that the government agency charged with intelligence against America’s enemies has sadly chosen to rely on pro-Islamist groups such as, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Emails even show that they have even relied upon statements of convicted terrorists at Revolution Muslim to marginalize the work of the American Muslim reform work of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy as “apostasy.”

 

The Clarion Project report on May 1, 2014 provides a window into the mindset of how lead government intelligence officers allow Islamists to dominate the American Muslim community.

 

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) releases the following statement regarding these emails obtained by the Clarion Project that show that ODNI was well aware of AIFD’s work, but chose to favor and work with pro-Islamist groups.

 

“It is a sad fact that neither the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, nor I, have ever been contacted by the office of the ODNI. Certainly, reading these internal emails while I am glad that they see the importance of our work like the open letter I wrote to Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki in 2010 where I countered his radical call to American Muslims to engage in jihad, I am extremely disheartened that this revelation comes after a scouring of declassified emails rather than a smart policy decision by our national security apparatus. These emails lay bare how the ODNI and the Department of Homeland Security allow themselves to be duped by Islamist groups and prevent the reforms necessary to truly counter the Islamist ideologies (violent and non-violent) which radicalize our communities. The emails stating their impression that AIFD has little perceived “credibility” and their decision to engage with pro-Islamist groups is proof that the department discriminates against reformists and anti-Islamist Muslims allowing their policies to be dominated by one strain of Islam—Islamism.” states Dr. Zuhdi Jasser.

 

Dr. Jasser went on to comment that, “As shown through the evidence of these emails, there is no question that in this case U.S. government has a pro-Islamist filter.”

 

 

 

About Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser:

Dr. Jasser is the author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith.  He is also the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). A former Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, Dr. Jasser is a nationally recognized expert on the contest of ideas against political Islam and American Islamist organizations. Dr. Jasser also serves as the Vice-Chair of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. He is called upon to regularly brief and testify before the U.S. Congress on the threat of political Islam..  He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The Dallas Morning News, CNN, CBS, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and BBC in addition to nationally syndicated radio programs. He has spoken at hundreds of national and international events including universities, places of worship, and government venues.

 

Media Contact:

Gordon C. James Public Relations

mloring@gcjpr.com

602-274-1988 (office)

602-697-1396 (cell)

 

SOUNDING THE ALARM ON SILENT JIHAD IN AMERICA

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EXCERPT: LIBERTYNEWS online

“Critical national security issues…have been effectively banned from CPAC” due to the influence of Norquist and Khan, Weiss noted at NSAC, hence the CPAC “Uninvited” description of NSAC. Khan “speaks volumes” with his silence on Jasser and other Muslims in their struggle against Islamism, Jasser declared to NSAC per video. With Khan and Norquist, “their silence becomes an enablement” of MB, “no different than the Germans who were silent during the Nazi era,” Jasser stated at CPAC while decrying Khan’s past denial of MB in America as “absurd.” Khan’s “enablers like Grover Norquist” merited challenge in the conservative movement, Jasser’s NSAC video address stated.

A “filtering mechanism for Islamism” appeared necessary to Jasser at CPAC in light of Khan, absent which individuals like Fort Hood jihadist shooter Nidal Hasan would go undetected. The self-proclaimed Arizona “hawk on immigration” noted that most Muslim immigrants, many of them economic migrants, “do not become by virtue of living in America Jeffersonian.” Thus four mosques Jasser helped establish later became Islamist and Jasser’s encounters with Muslim Congressman Keith Ellision revealed him as “clearly an Islamist.” “There are not a lot of Zuhdi Jassers,” Weiss bemoaned while speaking next to her “hero.”

“Do their rights come from God or do they come from Islam?” was one question Jasser suggested posing to Muslims as well as asking what kind of law they would support when in the majority. Such questions were necessary to find “pious Muslims on the side of liberty” and not “declare war on a quarter of the world population.” To “pick sides within the House of Islam with those who are with us,” Jasser’s NSAC video argued, would form the “head of the spear” against Islamism. The stakes could not be higher; American freedom is an “experiment…not the norm” across human history, Weiss at NSAC warned.
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