February 23, 2021: {AIFD Press Release} AIFD Calls on People of Conscience to take action to stop the crimes of the Iranian Islamist regime perpetrated against the Bahai minority community

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact:
Mischel Yosick
Mischel@ZLiberty.com
480 225 7473

AIFD Calls on People of Conscience to take action to stop the crimes of the Iranian Islamist regime perpetrated against the Bahai minority community.

Phoenix, AZ, February 23, 2021 – The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) denounces the decisions of Iranian appellate courts in August and October of 2020 to confiscate the land of Bahais living in the village of Ivel.
  • Specifically, AIFD condemns a recent ruling by an Iranian court to endorse the confiscation of all property belong to Bahais in the Mazandaran Province’s Village of Ivel, as well as a decision by an Iranian Court of Appeals that ruled in favor of 11 perpetrators who destroyed and seized the property of roughly 50 Bahai homes in Ivel.
  •  On August 1, 2020, Tehran’s Special Court for Article 49 of the Constitution, which gives authority to the government to confiscate private property, issued a “final and binding” order, concluding that it was illegal for Bahais to own property in the Village of Ivel. This ruling confirmed the decision of the lower court, which wrote, on November 4, 2019, that “there is no legitimacy in their ownership. […] The perverse sect of Baha’ism is confirmed as heretical and nejasat [ritually unclean].”
  • On October 13, 2020, in a separate but related lawsuit, the Court of Appeals of Mazandaran Province ruled on a years-delayed appeal brought by 27 injured Bahais against 11 individuals involved in the June 2010 demolition of some 50 Bahas homes and seizure of their property in Ivel. The Court ruled in favor of the perpetrators, finding that their actions violated no laws, and cited the August 1, 2020 decision of Branch 54, which claimed that ownership of the property by the 27 plaintiffs lacked legal validity due to their membership in the Bahai Faith.
  • These unjust rulings constitute brazen discrimination based on the religious beliefs of Bahai families, many of whom have owned these properties for decades, as far back as the mid-1800s. These specific injustices against the Bahai minority only highlight the multi-generational nature of the supremacist Islamist terror regime of the Khomeinists in power since 1979 which has systematically oppressed and wiped out dissenting, minority views within Islam or outside Islam via their ruling Islamic Supreme Council of clerics (their mullocracy).
  • Past confiscations of Bahai property in Iran have occurred largely due to alleged technical violations of zoning rules or construction permits. The courts were usually careful to conceal, at least in their written opinions, the discriminatory motives behind their decisions. However, these recent decisions targeted the Bahai religion, and thus are potentially precedent setting in that they could be used as criteria to dispossess, displace, and impoverish Bahais throughout the country.
  • The AIFD calls on the American government and the greater international community to take action by increasing pressure and sanctions on Iran and by demanding the return of property to their rightful owners in the Bahai community.
  • The open and ongoing persecution of Iran’s indigenous Bahais, a community that constitutes the nation’s largest religious minority, has yet to be adequately addressed by the international community. Under Iran’s theocratic regime, the Bahais are denied access to education, imprisoned for teaching the Bahai faith, and forbidden to work in any profession. Their holy places have been bulldozed throughout the country and, in some locations, replaced by mosques. Members of the Bahai faith are routinely subjected to violence, torture, discrimination and arbitrary arrest. Some 200 members have been hanged since the 1979, Islamic Revolution. Iran’s state-sponsored media regularly spreads anti-Bahai propaganda, including conspiracy theories accusing them of spying for Israel.
  • With the additional report recently released by the United Nations, which exposes Iran’s shocking use of electric shock therapy, hormone injection, and strong psychoactive medications on LGBT children in order to “cure” their sexuality, AIFD urges international medical associations and conferences to forbid Iran’s participation in such forums. A government that publicly stones and hangs its citizens based on their sexuality, imposes the death penalty for those who engage in same-sex relations, has executed between 4,000-6,000 members of the LGBT community since the start of the revolution, and tortures its own children, should be grounds for its complete expulsion from international scientific and humanitarian affairs.
  • These recent actions against the Bahais and LGBT community should remind American Muslims and all Americans that the Iranian regime is an ideologically corrupt entity that does not respect religious freedom or the fundamental rights of its citizens, whether women, regime critics, the LGBT community or ethnic and religious minorities. The Iranian government must be held accountable for its abounding human rights violations.
AIFD highlights these crimes against humanity inside Iran to help further shed light on the evil that is the theocratic fascism of the Khomeinist regime of Iran and the need for the world community to stand up for the rights of the most vulnerable, such as the Bahai and LGBT minorities.

February 7, 2021:

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A Trojan Horse for the Islamists

By any measure, the first few days of President Biden’s administration are sending signals to domestic and foreign Islamists movements and their leaders that this White House will be their friend. Candidate, Joe Biden’s so-called moderation is quickly turning out to be a veneer, a Trojan Horse, that concealed the extent to which the Red-Green Alliance of the far left progressives and Islamists are being given the reins.

The signs of then candidate Biden’s complicity with Islamist ideologues were obvious throughout his campaign. Sadly, few paid attention. President Biden was simply parroting the talking points of leading Islamist lobbying groups in America. This penetration by Islamist groups was exemplified by the July 2020 kerfuffle inside the Voice of America Urdu news service over the posting of a blatantly political video from Emgage USA -a 501c4 organization- featuring then candidate Biden. In the video, Biden proudly proclaims among other Islamist mantras that, “I’ll be a president that seeks out and incorporates and listens to the ideas and concerns of Muslim Americans on everyday issues that matter the most to our communities. That will include having Muslim American voices as part of my administration.” While he may have said “Muslim Americans”, he clearly meant “Islamists”. For the rest of us more ideologically diverse members of Muslim American communities, the Islamists behind Emgage and their lobby speak only for the vocal theocratic minority (plurality) of the Muslim population while claiming to speak for all of us. This Islamist lobby group is a confluence of graduates from a wide swathe of American Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups.

The Biden campaign presented itself as a supposedly “unifying platform,” promising to lead from the center and take a moderate position within the Democratic Party. Yet, many of us knew their obsequiousness with Islamists indicated that nothing moderate was forthcoming.  Sure enough, in less than 30 days since his inauguration, recent appointments -and slew of executive orders ripped from the pages of American Islamist wishlists- has empowered the Islamist’s frontline soldiers like never before. The artificially “moderate” veneer of Sen. Biden’s own campaign was clearly a Trojan horse that now amidst the political climate of 2021 has empowered and brought to the fore the most radical of the American “Red-Green alliance.” The Left’s radical progressives and their Islamist allies are now putting their domestic and foreign policy positions into the hands of Pres. Biden, who is signing off on them without question.

Many of the previous successes of the Trump administration and Secretary of State Pompeo against the threats Islamists posed, after being unchecked by the Obama years, are already in jeopardy.

Emgage USA and its fellow Islamist assets across the country are already doing a victory lap within but days after Pres. Biden’s first day in office as he signed an executive order ending the falsely named “Muslim ban”.  Their fundraising indicates this is but the first step in their coming deep operation. They are calling now for a “no ban” act in Congress among an extensive Islamist platform of fabricated victimization and false allegations of a discriminatory policy waged against Muslims in the United States.

Any rational review of the six countries listed in the previous ban, now lifted by Pres. Biden, makes clear that countries like Iran, Syria, and Somalia are led by oppressive anti-American regimes that cannot be trusted to supply accurate vetting information on any citizens that may travel to the United States. Another EO quickly restored American taxpayer funding of UNRWA -appropriately ceased by the Trump administration because it was giving large sums of money to many radical Islamists including droves of HAMAS supporters in the Palestinian areas. Muslim Brotherhood media arms like Al Jazeera reported the coming reversal with glee.

Reema Dodin, a byproduct of what I call “the American Islamist farm team” was one of President Biden’s first appointees as a senior White House staffer for legislative affairs and liaison with the Hill. She passionately joined Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups, CAIR and the Muslim Student Association as a college student at UC-Berkeley— a mothership for American Islamist training. She infamously stated, while at Berkeley that Palestinian suicide bombers are, “the last resort of a desperate people.” She was a long-time staffer come deputy chief of staff for Sen. Dick Durbin, known for his affinity for Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups like CAIR, an organization with deep roots in Hamas and its supporters. Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Durbin helped fundraise for CAIR in Chicago.

Susan Rice will lead the White House’s domestic policy shop, bringing with her a mostly foreign policy resume rife with Islamist support— from her defense of the Muslim Brotherhood’s President Morsi in 2013 to the appeasement of the Khomeinists of Tehran -and let us not to forget Benghazi. The reportedly appointment of Matt Duss similarly bodes very well for Islamists. Duss’ sympathies for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and longtime denials about the inherent threat of Islamists make him a darling of American Islamist ideologues.

The most flagrant appointment in support of Islamist influence is Hady Amr. Amr was appointed deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern affairs within the State Department. With the penetration and power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar across their nation, there is little doubt that the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center would be sympathetic if not a staunch member and supporter of the global Islamist movement. Qatar has proven repeatedly to be a propaganda arm -if not the proverbial mothership- for the Muslim Brotherhood and its global movement of jihadi groups. Brookings Institute’s Doha offices and founder are sure to toe the line of its primary benefactor. Amr opposed Pres. Trump’s Middle East peace initiative of the Abraham Accords and has parroted most Brotherhood positions.

These are but a few examples of Islamists and their sympathizers in just the first days that are on the front lines of engagement domestically and globally for the Biden administration. Clearly all signs point to the empowerment of the most extreme elements of the Red-Green alliance on the far left or radical progressives allying with radical Islamists. This is also quickly sending a signal (as seen with Rep. Omar’s recent incredulous promotion) to the rest of the establishment that Islamists will be rewarded, no holds bar.

This new climate where Congressional leadership proudly flaunts the ascension of an avowed Islamist to the House Foreign Affairs Vice-Chair is a climate where extremists lead, not just join. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was recently elevated by Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) to the position of vice-chair on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee. This heralds a new era of extremism where a member of Congress who chooses to defend Iran’s Khomeinist regime, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Erdogan’s Islamist AKP to name a few global Islamists, ahead of American interests and our allies in the Middle East will now be in a position of leadership in the Democratic Party on the Hill. This is only to be bolstered with echoes from her colleagues, Rice and Dodin, liaisoning for the White House.

It shouldn’t take long to disabuse anyone from harboring the delusion that now Pres. Biden or then candidate Biden was going to govern as a moderate from the center. There should remain little doubt that he is clearly handing over the reins of American policy domestically and abroad to the most radical of the Red-Green alliance and those who tow the line of the Islamist way of thought. Make no mistake about it. Pres. Biden is a Trojan horse of a moderate empowering the anti-American Islamist movements. It is sure to be beyond challenging for any anti-Islamist Muslims to get any acknowledgement of our voice among the diversity of American Muslim thought and activism.

December 7, 2020: Muslim Reformer Discusses Middle East Peace, Islamist Terror in Europe

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December 7, 2020
The American Spectator
by: Steve Postal

Muslim Reformer Discusses Middle East Peace, Islamist Terror in Europe

I interviewed Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser in January 2017, July 2017, September 2018, May 2019, and February 2020 on a range of topics including Islamism and what he believes is its antidote, the Muslim Reform Movement. This is a follow-up interview, in which Jasser and I discuss Middle East peace and Islamist terrorism in Europe, among other things.

Jasser is president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), and author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith. He is a practicing Muslim.

He is also an active physician and former U.S. Navy officer whose parents fled Syria in the 1960s, the host of the Blaze Radio Podcast “Reform This!,” and founder of TakeBackIslam.com.

Domestic Developments

Postal: Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative, the Center for American Progress’ Fear, Inc., and the Council on American-Islamic Relations associate with you with “Islamophobia.” How do you respond to such accusations? 

Jasser: We at the AIFD and the MRM have been dedicated to long-overdue reforms against Islamism (political Islam) and its propagandists. I have spoken at length about the differences between Muslim reformers and Muslim Islamists in our first interview. I reject the term “Islamophobia.” It is a mechanism used by Islamist movements and regimes to prevent criticism of Islamism. Islam has yet to go through an enlightenment and reform against theocracy and for individual liberty and universal human rights. The dominant “establishment” of the Muslim community in the West and abroad supports Islamism and its believers, the Islamists. The Muslim reformers, on the other hand, believe that freedom and universal human rights should ultimately prevail.

Those at the Bridge Initiative, “Fear, Inc.,” and Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups like Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Students Association (MSA), and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) do not accept that devout Muslims exist who reject their ideas. Instead, such groups attack us as anti-Islam and blasphemers. Like theocrats, Islamists and their sympathizers see faith as monolithic and do not tolerate diversity of interpretation.

Postal: According to NPR, 35 percent of Muslims voted for President Trump in November. And according to NBC shortly before the election, 78 percent of eligible Muslim voters were registered to vote, up from 60 percent in 2016. To what do you attribute these statistics?

Jasser: The NPR statistic is very revealing on a number of levels. I covered this in depth in my weekly podcast of “Reform This!” that week. Essentially, American Muslims reject the Obama–Biden policies that fueled Iran’s proxy wars across the Middle East and deepened sectarian conflicts between Sunni and Shia radicals. Many American Muslims see that Islamism has destroyed the Middle East and were tired of the Obama–Biden administration’s appeasement of Islamists.

Postal: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) just reintroduced a bill that would recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. Saudi Arabia recently reaffirmed its designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, joining Muslim-majority nations like the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan and the Libyan House of Representatives in declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization or otherwise banning it. Should the U.S. follow in their footsteps?

Jasser: There is little doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood global organization has given birth to Sunni Islamism and groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. As I stated in my testimony, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Global Threat,” to then-Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) in July 2018, designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terror organization should be taken on a country-by-country basis, with branches in Libya, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen being the most obvious candidates.

However, the Muslim Brotherhood in the West is more of an amorphous, underground idea with front groups and ideologically sympathetic travelers. Shutting down legacy Brotherhood groups in the West is a slippery slope that harms free speech. Instead, we need to defeat the Brotherhood’s bad ideas with better ideas. Closing Brotherhood affiliates by force will only empower Islamists.

Islamism in Europe

Postal: In 2020 alone, there were at least five Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe: three in France (stabbing in Paris, leaving two wounded; teacher beheading in a suburb of Paris; and stabbing in Nice, killing three), one in Germany (stabbing in Dresden, killing one and wounding another), and one in Austria (four dead, 22 injured in Vienna shooting). Why is Europe in the situation it is now?

Jasser: Europe has always had bad Muslim immigration policy, and this worsened after the mass immigration from Syria since 2011. The cultural, social, political, and religious shock to Europe is massive. Even if we conservatively estimate that 10 to 20 percent of these immigrants sympathize with ISIS while 30 to 40 percent are sympathetic to nonviolent Islamism and reject the social contract of Western secular liberal democracies, this combined population of militant and non-militant Islamists are insurgents. Security agencies have claimed that there are too many flagged individuals to follow. It is hard for me to understand why this hasn’t led to European countries reevaluating their immigration policies to better screen for Islamists.

But the best weapon against Islamists is non-Islamist Muslims. European governments must create partnerships with Muslim communities to marginalize Islamists. The European governments must work with non-Islamist Muslims to equip them with four things: patriotism to the nation state, a liberal education, critical thinking against tribalism, and faith and morality not in conflict with the above. The goal is to create Muslims that would want to serve and die for their nations, not jihad. If young French, German, Swedish, or Austrian Muslims are not positively engaged, the Islamists will fill that void.

Postal: French President Emmanuel Macron has waged war on “Islamist separatism” while supporting citizens’ right to draw cartoons of Mohammed under freedom of speech. What are your thoughts on Macron’s approach?

Macron has been great at diagnosing but horrible at treating the disease of Islamism. Macron must enfranchise reform-minded Muslims and resist implementing illiberal draconian measures. The nations of Europe must protect themselves from Islamist insurgents and their violence, but not at the expense of Europe’s core values and social contracts.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in Austria also diagnosed the problem correctly as “political Islam,” but seeks to criminalize thought by criminalizing Islamism itself. This approach is not only illiberal and counterproductive but demonstrates to Islamists that the West is authoritarian.

The best way to counter nonviolent Islamism is with good ideas. Pushing Islamism underground empowers its supporters, as Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Syria have learned. The American approach, which allows hate speech as long as it does not promote imminent acts of violence (as per Brandenburg v. Ohio) is the most rational and effective approach. But those who advocate for terrorist acts should be arrested.

Middle East Peace

Postal: Your organization, American Islamic Forum for Democracy, released a statement praising the Israel–UAE peace deal. What are your thoughts on the Abraham Accords?

Jasser: The Abraham Accords are the first genuine reforms within the Muslim world against Islamist anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, with the UAE and Bahrain paving the way. Across the UAE and Bahrain, imams acknowledged the need to recognize the state of Israel and reject anti-Zionism, and respect Jews and Judaism. We saw Arab leaders and journalists go from being blind supporters of the Palestinian cause to criticizing the Palestinian leadership for its failures and radicalization of its people.

Postal: Rumors abound that Saudi Arabia and even Qatar could be next in making peace with Israel. Is durable peace possible between Israel and Saudi Arabia and Qatar, or are there irreconcilable differences?

Jasser: I see durable peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia possible. The Islamist threats to Saudi Arabia including populist Sunni Islamism, ISIS, al Qaeda, and Shia Islamism have shaken the foundations of the Saudi state and forced it to reckon with the Islamist monster that it created. This pivot has also pushed the Saudi state closer to Israel. While the Trump administration was critical to this, true, durable peace will occur only when the Saudi establishment genuinely reinterprets the anti-Semitic interpretations of the Qur’an and Hadith that it has propagated for years.

As for Qatar, we should close our base there and find other options for our regional security. Its ownership of Al Jazeera, which has peddled Holocaust denial, and its relationships with Iran and Turkey render it incapable of being an ally of the United States. The Al-Thani royal family also supports the Muslim Brotherhood and its spiritual guide, Yusuf Qaradawi. In a sermon on Qatar TV back in 2013, on the topic of interfaith debate, Qaradawi said, “If you invite the Jews, I will not participate. I will participate in a Muslim–Christian meeting, but with the Jews there should be no debate.” I see no prospect of reform from Al Jazeera or Qatar’s leaders and imams.

Postal: How do you think a Biden–Harris administration would impact prospects for Middle East peace, and Muslim reform both at home and abroad?

Jasser: The Biden–Harris administration will reverse the progress the Trump administration made against Islamists domestically and abroad. I believe that Reema Dodin, selected to be a senior White House staffer for legislative affairs in a new Biden–Harris administration, is sympathetic to an Islamist worldview. She joined Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups CAIR and the Muslim Student Association as a college student at UC-Berkeley. She also stated, while at Berkeley, that Palestinian suicide bombers are “the last resort of a desperate people.” Given the above, at the White House, Dodin will likely contribute to policy in favor of appeasing Iran and other Islamist interests domestically and abroad.

Indications that the Biden–Harris administration will “de-emphasize” the Pentagon and the military at the expense of greater diplomacy is troubling. Weakening our military would invite more, not less, war in the Middle East.

Postal: How can the Muslim Reform Movement gain traction in the Middle East?

Jasser: A possible path for Muslim Reform in the Middle East is for countries in the Middle East to evolve from absolute to constitutional leadership that allows for civil society institutions to modernize Islamic thought, defeat Islamism, and promote universal human rights. The UAE and Bahrain provide hope for this model. I am less optimistic about Saudi Arabia relinquishing its interpretation of Islam even as the Saudis openly condemn and declare war on “political Islam.”

Postal: Recently, there were two terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia: a stabbing outside of the French consulate and an Islamic State attack directed at French nationals wounding three in an Armistice Day ceremony at a cemetery. The Islamic State had previously threatened Saudi Arabia following its tacit support for the UAE and Bahrain normalization deals with Israel. What are your thoughts on these developments?

Jasser: Acts of terror and threats against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain are the beginnings of a much longer war. Normalization between Israel and some Arab states has weakened the Islamist platform considerably. For too long, governments of Muslim-majority countries have been radicalizing Muslims towards Islamism and its anti-Semitism. For example, Islamist and anti-Semitic Qatar and Turkey supports Islamist and anti-Semitic Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of the Gulf states are pulling away from the Palestinian national movement, and with it distancing themselves from the Islamism and anti-Semitism of both Hamas and Fatah/the Palestinian Authority. We hope that the UAE and Bahrain will serve as the catalyst for other Muslims who love their faith to ultimately defeat the ideology of Islamism.

The author would like to thank Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser for participating in this interview.

A wish for you for a most Blessed Eid al-Adha (Holiday of the Sacrifice) Friday, July 31, 2020

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Eid al-Adha

Those of us at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy wish you a most Blessed Eid al-Adha (Holiday of the Sacrifice) on this 10th day of   
Zul-Hijjah,  Friday, July 31, 2020.

 

May this holiday inspire each of us to increase our awareness of and gratitude for the many blessings we have been given as well as the enormous  responsibility we have to serve and aid others. We are so proud of our many accomplishments and programs that our community at AIFD and the Muslim Reform Movement continue to do every day.  

We will continue to keep you up to date on our latest as it happens here! We are so blessed to have all of your support and community. 

As our nation and the world continues to grapple this year with the pandemic,  we pray for the safety, security and health of all, and know that our nation will unite after this stronger than ever and in gratitude for the freedom and liberty God  has bestowed upon us. The virus knows no faith, no nation, no peoples. It tests our unity and our resolve in maintaining normalcy in the face of the unknown. On this day of sacrifice we especially thank all those in humanity who have given so much on every front-line to keep us healthy and safe. Blessings to all of you and your families! 

May we, as brothers and sisters in humanity, use this Eid al-Adha to grow closer to each other and to our Creator, and seize this opportunity to recommit ourselves to the universal values of human rights, individual liberty, and love for all mankind.

At the core of being American is religious liberty to celebrate our most spiritually fulfilling of days. And we hope to continue to live up to our responsibilities to keep our nation free and open to unrestricted worship. 

Enjoy your families, communities, and nation on this day and may all of your prayers and supplications be accepted. May the Hajj (pilgrimage) of all those who performed it this year also be accepted. 

 

 

Yours forever in liberty,

June 16, 2020: CAIR censors college professor

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CAIR Sues to Muzzle Arizona Community College Professor

by John Rossomando
IPT News
June 16, 2020

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wants to censor discussion of links between Islamic doctrine and terrorism at Arizona’s Scottsdale Community College (SCC).

A lawsuit filed June 2 in Arizona federal court seeks an injunction against the Maricopa Community College District, which SCC is part of, and Professor Nicholas Damask to block use of course materials deemed to “have the primary effect of disapproving of Islam.”

MCC and Damask, the lawsuit claims, violated student Mohamed Sabra’s civil rights when Damask – chairman of the school’s political science department – linked Islamic doctrine and terrorism. The class was about world politics, and included a section on Islamic terrorism.

Three questions on a quiz in Damask’s online class drew Sabra’s ire:

· Q. Who do terrorists strive to emulate? A. Mohammed

· Q. Where is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law? A. The Medina verses [i.e., the portion of the Qur’an traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career]

· Q. Terrorism is _______ in Islam. A. justified within the context of jihad.

“The only objectively reasonable construction of Damask’s actions is that his primary message is the disapproval of Islam,” the lawsuit reads. “Damask’s module quiz forced Sabra to agree to his radical interpretation of Islam. When Sabra did not, he was penalized by getting the questions wrong and impacted his grade.”

Sabra told Damask the quiz offended him and his religion. Damask responded in two emails, saying the quiz questions came from the course reading materials. Sabra then posted a screenshot of the quiz to social media, which resulted in death threats against Damask and the school.

To add insult to injury, school officials asked him to apologize, but the MCC district that oversees Scottsdale Community College – where Damask works, as well as nine other community colleges near Phoenix – defended his academic freedom and they backed down.

“This is America, not Pakistan,” Damask said. “There is academic freedom here.”

Kathleen Winn, a defender on the MCC board, argued that the suit is an assault on his academic freedom.

“The College has protocols if a student has a complaint,” said District Governing Board member Kathleen Winn, speaking for herself, told the Arizona Independent News Network. “This student didn’t file a formal complaint. Professor Damask’s academic freedom is protected. I hope CAIR is not using this student to forward their agenda without regard for the student’s interests, freedom of speech, and academic freedom.”

CAIR is intent on dictating the content of his course and keeping the good, the bad and the ugly about Islam from being discussed in class, Damask said.

CAIR’s Arizona chapter sent out a fundraising solicitation off the lawsuit last Friday. It claims that Damask’s class threatens Muslim lives.

The solicitation also links to a form letter to the MCC district for supporters to sign. “We cannot sit by and allow the forces of hate to permeate our education system,” it says. “As we highlighted earlier: Islamophobia kills. Anti-Semitism kills. Anti-Blackness kills. All forms of bigotry result in violence against marginalized communities.”

Ironically, CAIR invokes “academic freedom” when it suits its purposes, such as defending academics who participate in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS seeks to delegitimize Israel with a regime of boycotts, financial divestments and sanctions.

“They want to make it absolutely impossible for the West to connect forms of Islam to our strategy [against terrorism],” said Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). “First of all, it’s a bit rich for the Islamists to endorse and push the establishment of their religion when they’re a majority, [and here they] are wrapping themselves in the very thing that’s the treatment against political Islam, which is our Establishment Clause.

“It’s absurd to say that these questions apply to all Muslims.”

CAIR has long fought to sanitize educational texts of considers derogatory against Islam. It entered into a formal partnership in 2010 with the 57-nation global Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) to “redress the image of Islam and Muslims in textbooks.” Like CAIR, the OIC condemns connecting Islamic doctrine and terrorism in the minds of Westerners as “unfair,” saying it has “created an unfair misinterpretation of the Islamic message in the Western and Non Muslim worlds.”

“Education and engagement are key to challenging the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia,” CAIR co-founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad said at the 2010 OIC conference.

CAIR took issue with Damask’s use of Walid Phares’ book, Future Jihad, calling Phares an “Islamophobe” who supports anti-Islam ideologies, an accusation that Phares rejects.

“Within this mandatory reading assignment,” the lawsuit says, “Phares explains that jihad is not a ‘spiritual phenomenon that would be and was abused by extremist ideologies,’ but rather a call for physical action. Damask failed to articulate that other more acceptable, and in fact ‘mainstream’ views of jihad have nothing to do with violence, but instead he improperly urged students to accept his personal opinions.”

CAIR’s assault is hypocritical, Phares told the Investigative Project on Terrorism, considering that several groups and individuals that it endorses promote the very ideas that it’s seeking to censor at the community college.

“The Brotherhood scholars read terrorism differently than the U.S.,” Phares said. “Always limit the reading of Islam to the Brotherhood reading because there are multiple readings of Islam.

“The Brotherhood and CAIR [are] trying to impose a vision of their own on all Muslims in America.”

CAIR was created out of a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Hamas-support network in the United States, internal documents seized by the FBI show. Awad was a part of that network, known as the Palestine Committee.

The OIC, meanwhile, has justified Palestinian suicide attacks and other forms of terrorism saying they are acts of resistance. OIC representatives decided in 2002 that Hamas and similar groups weren’t terrorists.

Similarly, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who CAIR has referred to as a voice against terrorism, defended and upheld suicide bombings.

Qaradawi, one of the most popular Islamist preachers in the world, rejects defining jihad as purely spiritual.

“As for the first unacceptable meaning, it is to diminish Jihad in the Way of Allah, and play down its status and virtues in Islam, and its necessity in defending the being of the Ummah (Muslim nation) and its holy sites, if attacked by aggressors and affected by arrogant tyrants,” Qaradawi wrote in 2016.

The lawsuit alleges that Damask “intentionally distort[ed]” the Quran and Hadiths (stories about Muhammad’s sayings and actions) to “support his gross misinterpretations of ‘the alleged theological mandate for jihad.'”

This alleged distortion includes Damask teaching that the Quran advocates the “establishment of Islam through violent struggle against non-Muslims.”

Damask points to Surah 4:95 as a justification for terror, the lawsuit says. Classical Quranic commentaries note that this verse implies that “the person who fails to fight can only be a hypocrite, and God holds out no good promise for such a person unless there is good reason, for example, genuine disability.”

“I’m informing my students that Islamic terrorist groups cite these and other similar Medina verses that permit or advocate violence to justify their actions and motivate others to join them,” Damask said.

“There’s a literal mountain of Islamic terror literature, manuscripts, newspaper articles, videos, social media postings, etc. that make these sorts of references,” he continued. “CAIR is insisting that I hide from my students these references to Islamic law and doctrine made by the terror groups.”

May 11, 2020 – AIFD Review of Facts on Scottsdale Community College handling of student quiz complaint and Islamist viral mob

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Scottsdale Community College Teaches the World how Cowardice in the Face of Islamist Mobs Actually Radicalizes Muslims

By AIFD Research Staff

Posted May 11, 2020 (this will be updated regularly as the story evolves with additions and dates at the end of the piece)

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy is based in Phoenix, AZ. Our founder and president, M Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., lives in Scottsdale and has been a frequent speaker at the Scottsdale Community College (SCC) campus for a number of classes and events. For example, only a few months ago, he spoke there for Turning Point USA on the topic “Taking on the Islamist Establishment” and in addition back in 2010 he had a pivotal debate with the lead imam in Arizona from the Islamic Community Center of Tempe, Ahmed Shqeirat, on “Does Islam Need Reform? And if so, how?”.

With that background, a number of friends of our forum contacted us last weekend, May 2, 2020, in order to let us know about recent developments at SCC. They, including supporters as well as other faculty at SCC, were all very concerned about the following:

  1. The unprofessional and incompetent conduct of the school’s top administration in its handling of a very simple student informal, but rather public, complaint about three questions on a quiz.
  2. The safety of a professor who, within 48 hours of information regarding one of his quiz’s being made public, was receiving death threats from across the planet, while the school’s administration responses only added fuel to the fire.
  3. The overall impact this rapidly evolving case would have on academic freedom across the campus and even wider.
  4. Should the Muslim community be treated like adults or infantilized and coddled after every one of their tantrums? What’s the impact of that bigotry of low expectations upon general radicalization?

Dr. Jasser spoke to the professor last week and broke the story on his May 4, 2020 Episode 68 of his podcast, “Reform This!”. This investigative report in the following will remain a collection of the actual facts in this case apparently lost or of no concern to most Islamist keyboard activists, the school’s administration, and traditional media.

Who is Professor Nicholas Damask, Ph.D.?

Dr. Damask as been a professor at Scottsdale Community College for over 24 years. He hails from Dayton, Ohio, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in political science and an M.A. in international relations from American University. His dissertation was on terrorism and its funding in the mid-90’s. He has been teaching this ever since and is a leading expert in this field in Arizona. A quick review of his public teaching scores from his students reveals impressive ratings. While AIFD had not had direct contact with Dr. Damask previously, he had come to a number of our presentations and events at SCC and is very supportive of our counter-terrorism and counter-islamism work.

In Dr. Jasser’s conversations this week with Dr. Damask, it is imminently clear that he is not someone who approaches Islam with prejudgment, bias or any hate whatsoever. His course is on political science and its history in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Only 15 percent of the curricula of the course in question, POS102, is related to terrorism and a part of that to Islamist terrorism. This is someone simply trying to teach his students what the root causes and underpinnings are for the Islamic militants. That is it. His is not a course in theology at all, but simply political movements.

Apparently all it takes for an anonymous student to take-down a professor and have his administration repudiate him reflexively while also diminishing the reputation of the entire College is a few publicly released snapshots of quiz questions with no other inquiries?

It is breathtakingly malicious and incompetent to conclude that he is a bigot based upon three questions out of context in a quiz. Let’s look at how this kerfuffle evolved?

Timeline of social media instigated cultural terrorism

  1. January 2020: Course opens and students can at their own pace work through the course curricula including lectures and study guides and then complete the quiz at each section. They have until May 1 to complete the entire course. The quiz questions can be reviewed later and the correct answers are provided for each section for the student to review. In this case the student finished the quiz for the section on Islamic terrorism on April 29th, 2020. This section was approximately 15% of the total curricula and the quiz in question was 25 questions total. Dr. Damask tells us that while he has a number of questions that he rotates through the course over the past many years these questions are not new. Dr. Damask also confirms that there is a honor code involved where other students taking the course online are assumed not to share snapshots and answers of the quizzes provided by those who finished them earlier.
  2. Wednesday, April 30th, 2020: the anonymous student took his quiz on Tuesday, April 29, 2020 then emailed the professor the next day (April 30) with a generic email saying that “you have insulted my religion” and “I am sick to my stomach”.

a. With no initial specifics, Dr. Damask responded kindly, saying, it certainly was not his intent, and he appreciated the students feelings and wanted the student to know that he was only trying to teach about international politics and in no way meant to insult him or his faith. Damask then later that day received a second email in which the student provided the screenshots of the three quiz questions that offended him out of the 25 total questions. He added that they “were distasteful to Islam.”

b. Damask then responded again that his course is not a commentary on religion and only about the ideas of the Islamic terrorists. He did note that the timeline of the emails makes it obvious that the student had obviously already sent the questions to the entire planet by sharing them on social media prior to his emails.

c. The student shared them apparently with an online comedian, prankster and general social media bully @g_dulla_mulla. He posted the following (post 1), apparently now a deleted post: “One of my followers sent me this. Look what schools are teaching now. SMH (shake my head) absolutely disgusting!!”. He has 239k followers. His YouTube channel is full of childish, if not thuggish pranks, some where he proudly accosts customers at Walmart and brags about getting kicked out of four Walmart’s So this is what appears to be the primary source (patient zero) of the viral spread of the three quiz questions.

  • Post 1

He then posts another question (post 2)  from the quiz, stating, “Wow, SMH! This class needs to be shutdown! Please don’t forget to report this disgusting school. I can’t believe what they are teaching those students”

His final post (post 3) was “This is the school. Please let’s all report this nasty ass school to the chancellor for racism! Let’s put them on blast.” Put them on blast is a rough translation for an Arabic colloquialism regarding loud, continuous protest and focus. Needless to say the comments under it were a clinic in Islamist radicalization, bullying and misinformation regarding the school, the professor, his course and the quiz. He identified the school to his followers and directed them to SCC.

3. May 1, 2020: If that wasn’t enough, the school likely began receiving a flurry of social media mentions and contacts through various channels. So what could be better than giving this Islamist mob a place to post their radicalism on the school’s Facebook and Instagram page under a groveling letter from the school’s head? Then, in barely 12-24 hours from the first viral posting, the school’s PR team led by Eric Sells had their Interim President, Chris Hines, post the following on both Facebook and Instagram. Thousands of comments later, the professor would be forced into hiding.

And then thousands of comments followed. Here are a few poignant examples the school has left up for over a week. The tenor of these comments speak to the incompetence of the school in giving platform to social media bullies and a student who bypassed professional avenues of complaint through his department and school.

  • Social media

There are thousands of comments like this now on the SCC social media.

The “comedian” @G_dulla_mulla that lit the fuse to this mess has since deleted his initial post but the next surrogate is also a comedian, Abdullah Jasim. He posts it with a video that essentially includes the next stage of radicalization—as is typical for Islamist agitprop—he invokes American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as morally equivalent “terrorism” to Al Qaeda, ISIS, HAMAS and other radical Islamist movements. He does this with a backdrop of SCC’s Instagram page and sarcastic, caustic commentary on the three quiz questions to another 125k followers who then proceed to make this “story”—a fuse lit from three quiz questions—go viral.

The facts about Dr. Damask’s course on “Political Science POS102” and the quiz

A section (about 15 percent) of Dr. Damask’s course is on terrorism. He shared a slide deck of his curricula with us and it is well referenced and rather balanced. He teaches about other examples of faith-based radicals from Jewish zealots to the Hindu thuggies. He also discusses what he describes as left and right wing terrorism and goes on to talk about how the constructs of faith can be used by militants in the abstract to drive terrorism.

He has taught this course for 24 years and has intermittently changed the questions and used similar ones, never having a complaint about his perspective regarding Muslims and terrorism. A couple quiz questions are not a barometer for evaluating anything let alone a conviction on bigotry.

Let’s look at the quiz questions:

And then the questions broadcast by the student?

Had the professor known his questions were going to be broadcast across the planet, to folks who hadn’t taken his course nor seen the other questions, Dr. Damask may have added more clarifying lines prior to the questions. Perhaps a phrase like, “For the terrorists…” or “the interpretation of Islam by the terrorists is…”. But that does not then mean that the questions were poorly worded or bigoted let alone the professor or the school being bigoted.

Clearly the context of the questions is related to the thought process of Islamist militants. As I’ve written about extensively in my book, “A Battle for the Soul of Islam”, and as we discuss almost daily at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the great debate that needs to happen within the House of Islam is, “which Islam, whose Islam?” Dr. Damask’s course is not a theological discourse but rather this section of his course was about the root causes of terrorism and the underlying mindset of major global movements like Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, Nasrallah’s Hezbollah or Al-Baghdadi’s ISIS, or Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas. To release the above questions to the world as a measure of every Muslim’s Islam requires a breathtaking amount of dishonesty, deception and misinformation. This all sadly mattered little to any of the commenters who were too busy enacting a form of asymmetric cultural warfare – basically the same immoral construct as terrorism where the ends justifies the means. Like a bully, intimidation is not about the facts of a case but striking fear into the hearts of any and all that may question the Islam of theocrats like the massive global Islamist movements.

An appropriate question has to be, did the student even read the rest of the curriculum from the course? Did he even review the PowerPoint? See (link) The hundreds of thousands or more that were offended by the questions certainly did not. Dr. Damask talks about the radical’s own theo-political justification for terrorism?

This course is not about all Islam or all Muslims. Part of it was about terrorism and terrorists. It is not about the mosque down the street or the Muslims in his class or that we may know. In fact the penchant of grievance based Islamist organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations to use manufactured incidents like this to condition (radicalize) Muslims that schools, professors, and Americans are anti-Muslim bigots.

Islamists laugh at how easy a mark SCC was

Nothing rewards a mob of Islamist bullies for their libel of a teacher, his school and Americans, more than an immediate response from the university president with a public apology. The Islamists from across the world were like sharks who saw meat in the water. The posts on the school’s Facebook page demonstrated how unleashed they all felt after the school’s top leadership posted a groveling apology with no due process. The power clearly lied with the Islamist grievance machine. Here are a few poignant examples:

Students should always be empowered to question teachers and schools. However that conversation does not begin with radical Islamists across the planet virally exploiting a couple of quiz questions. A social media mob and intimidation is not about academic freedom and it is far from supportive of freedom of speech.

Students should protest. Question. Raise their hands. But not start with a global mob of intimidation and their CAIR radicalizers. Sure enough. In this case, 10 days after it began, CAIR waltzes in to “take the student’s case”. Apparently their standards of operation have no problems with the fruit of this poisoned tree that went viral after a few comedians and pranksters took on the case first? The ambulance chasers of anti-Muslim bigotry will take any case that feeds their victimization narrative.

These legal “experts” at CAIR, like the top-level SCC administration, seemed to care little to nothing about due process or any facts in the case. They only cared about exacting punishment and retribution against anyone who ventures into teaching or discussing the connection between Islamism and Islamist terrorism.

Why shouldn’t the Islamists from CAIR or any group look at SCC and laugh at how easy a mark they were? Facts don’t matter. By the way, question #1 is there an honor code where you do things on line but you’re not supposed to distribute proprietary info?

Here’s the response again from the SCC President Chris Hines as crafted with Eric Sells, SCC’s PR lead. We remind you it was posted within 24 hours of the student’s very public mockery of the school and within 48 hours after he took the actual quiz:

Earlier this week, a student at Scottsdale Community College took a quiz as part of the class coursework. The student expressed concern over the wording of three questions related to Islam on the quiz. SCC senior leadership has reviewed the quiz questions and agrees with the student that the content was inaccurate, inappropriate, and not reflective of the inclusive nature of our college. SCC deeply apologizes to the student and to anyone in the broader community who was offended by the material. SCC Administration has addressed with the instructor the offensive nature of the quiz questions and their contradiction to the college’s values. The instructor will be apologizing to the student shortly, and the student will receive credit for the three questions. The questions will be permanently removed from any future tests. We applaud the student for bringing this to our attention – and encourage any student or employee to speak out. SCC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age in our programs or activities. We value inclusiveness because we all benefit by embracing a diversity of voices, viewpoints, and experiences. SCC cultivates success when individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds are respected and empowered to contribute. — Chris Haines, Interim President. Scottsdale Community College.

This letter, its verbiage, its hurried dismissal of any due process, its weakness, appeasement and general tenor should offend any sensible American. This letter seems to address a heinous hate crime that never happened but President Hines wanted to believe the global Islamist bullies that it did.

President Haines promises an apology which Dr. Damask never agreed to. All he knew was that he was forwarded a letter of grotesque apologetics to fill in a couple blanks and sign his name. Here it is:

Nothing from the president on the student’s violation of process for complaints.

Nothing from the president on the student’s violation of honor codes by snap-shotting quiz questions for mass distribution.

Nothing from the president on the need to adjudicate this and have a hearing to hear both sides of the story.

She concluded the questions were “offensive”

She concluded the professor needed to apologize and more and in fact the student was lionized rather than taught.

Still as of May 10, 2020, there has been no formal complaint filed by the student. Nothing has been filed with the department chair.

On top of this disgusting letter from leadership, tossing their 24 year professor to the global Islamist wolves, Eric Sells, their public relations head asked the professor to fill out this apology letter above. In that letter, Dr. Damask is being coerced into signing a letter admitting that he wrote questions with “offensive material” and that he learned a new lesson in diversity and how to view his material. Never mind it is the leadership who let one monolithic movement of Islamist bullies speak for Muslims and threw away ideological diversity among Muslims with their obsequious apologetics.

This type of university action only radicalizes Muslims more

For the school to parrot the complaints of the student with no due process gives the Islamists the entire narrative. They have shaped what will be understood as the “facts in the case” others be damned.

Such a biased, one-sided approach to complaints about their faith representation from a Muslim (usually Islamists) implies that all Muslims should be coddled and given deference for any complaint with no need for due process or balance. In this month of Ramadan, the Islam we teach here at AIFD is not one of punishment and fear for those who may conflate militant Islam with our Islam, but rather one of humility, compassion and fairness.

This ‘bigotry of low expectations’ as an approach to any Muslim complaint actually radicalizes Muslims. It rewards their mob-like intimidation. Is that not what terrorism’s asynchronous warfare is all about? The cause of the university’s pathological response may be their cowardice, their inordinate fear of that Islamist mob. So in fact are they not then negotiating with cultural terrorists, bullies or a mob? So let’s review. A student gives three simple questions to a half-wit across the world to post and to unleash the global twitter mob. Now this professor is getting threats from around the world especially under the school’s cowardly post of an apology letter. In what planet does any of this make sense for an institution of any semblance of academic rigor, freedom and free speech?

The professor wasn’t even wrong. The questions’ intent is what matters. If you believe those questions are bigotry then you don’t understand anything of why there are 100’s of millions of followers of Islamist political groups all over the world. They are emulating their version of the Prophet Mohammed. They believe that their Islam is the only Islam. Their numbers are not insignificant and they dominate major theocratic regimes from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamist institutions in Egypt, Wahhabi ideology out of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and millions upon millions more.

Our work at AIFD is about reform against political Islam as a root cause of radicalism and its terrorism. The Unites States was formed on the defeat of theocracy. And in today’s America teachers that have the courage to teach that Islamic theocracies are currently normative Islam which many Muslims who are honest would tell you just like Christian theocracy was normative Christianity before the 17th and 18th Jeffersonian religious liberty and freedom were ideas that took centuries in the make and the same thing now with Islamic law. It has to go through the same reformation but simple questions about terrorism and responses like this are not offensive and anyone who thinks they are is either ignorant, in denial or flat out deceptive.

Legacy media pile on along with the global Islamist mob and cowardice of SCC Leadership

With little surprise, the local legacy media covered the kerfuffle and basically regurgitated the Islamist talking points and propaganda from CAIR. Here’s the breathtakingly one-sided headline: “Scottsdale Community College Apologizes after ‘inappropriate’ questions on Islam Surface on Quiz”. They included no other voices from academia or the Muslim community. Dr. Jasser addressed the Arizona Republic reporter here via twitter and the Gannett ‘diversity’ reporter, Lorraine Longhi, did reach out to him and did apologize for excluding our voice. A follow up report is promised after she interviewed him on May 10, 2020. She will hopefully also interview the professor. We will keep you abreast of further developments in this clinic on academic freedom, free speech, religious liberty, ideological diversity, Muslim reform, and the cowardice of the West in the face of global Islamist bullies—“cultural terrorists”.

May 12, 2020 UPDATE:

 

Arizona Republic Gannett reporter Lorraine Longhi provides a more balanced and updated report on the SCC kerfuffle here. We are not sure why the Islamists at CAIR need another round of airing of their radicalizing propaganda. But regardless, this was better than the first story.  See her story here titled: “District to investigate Islam quiz questions, criticizes Scottsdale college’s ‘rush to judgment’.

May 12, 2020 update, the College Fix reported on the impact of a legal warning from FIRE and the interim chancellor of SCC provides an impressively humble apology and defense of Dr. Damask. See their full report here titled: Public college backs off threat to censor professor’s course on Islamist violence after legal warning | The College Fix

About AIFD
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy is a non-profit organization based in Phoenix, Ariz. dedicated to providing an American Muslim voice advocating genuine Muslim reform against Islamism and the ideologies which fuel global Muslim radicalization. AIFD’s mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. In December 2015, AIFD convened and helped launch the Muslim Reform Movement, a coalition of over 12 Muslim organizations and leaders dedicated to reform for values of peace, human rights and secular governance.

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February 4, 2020: United Islamists of America

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February 4, 2020

United Islamists of America
by: David Swindle

One of most prominent Muslims in America today is the cleric Omar Suleiman, founder and leader of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. This Salafi theologian and improbable progressive activist is one of many radical preachers who have exploited the rise of identity politics in America to move beyond their roles as minor religious voices and to appoint themselves instead as a representative voices of all Muslims. Suleiman’s incongruous ability to combine his hardline theology with progressive activism has gotten him far. In 2019, he was given the opportunity to deliver the invocation for the opening of Congress, invited by Nancy Pelosi in spite of his well-documented extremist positions.

But Suleiman’s odd brand of “theo-progressivism” can only get him so far. Now, he is (successfully) seeking the support of other clerics and community leaders from rival Islamic sects. This new-found unity among Islamic communities stands in stark contrast to the internal politics of Islam and Islamism in the past, in which religious disagreements have long divided potential partners.

Clerics of two theocratic movements in particular – Arabia’s Salafis and South Asia’s Deobandis – have spent over a century denouncing each other’s theologies, only pausing, occasionally, for tactical alliances. Over the past few years, however, ecumenical attitudes have begun to change among Western Islamist clerics. As an increasing number of modernist preachers from both movements have stepped forward to establish new forward-facing organizations, cautious longer-term partnerships between the clerical components of the two movements have begun to emerge – providing us with a glimpse of American Islamism in the years to come.

This new-found inclusiveness was recently evident in September 2019, when a Deobandi Islamist seminary, the Institute of Knowledge (IOK) hosted its “Ilmspiration” Conference in Anaheim, California. The purpose of the day-long event was to bring together 14 Islamist scholars and imams from the IOK and two other like-minded, leading institutions: the Qalam Institute, a wildly popular Deobandi religious training organization led by Abdul Nasir Jangda; and the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, a project of Omar Suleiman.

What makes these schools and their leaders so dangerous? Whether Deobandi or Salafi, both movements are adherents to the broader political idea of Islamism, which seeks to impose an Islamic state run under Islamic law. These clerics provide much of the arguments, propaganda, and most importantly, the theology, to persuade Muslims into believing in the supremacy of a medieval religious legal system. This ideology sows the seeds of terrorism both at home and abroad.

In their methods, the new social media-savvy generation of Deobandi and Salafi clerics in the West are very different from the insular, ascetic preachers of the previous generation, but not in their core beliefs. Qalam’s Deobandi leader Abdul Nasir Jangda, who commands a social media following of hundreds of thousands, defends female sex slavery and advocates the death penalty for apostasy. Meanwhile, Yaqeen’s Suleiman, a media darling for his involvement in progressives’ protests against Trump administration policies, warns young women they may be killed by a “jealous dad” if they commit adultery.

So what influence will these organizations exert on American Islam over the next few years? And how will these once hostile sects work together?

In a packed, segregated ballroom, filled with hijab-clad women on the left, men on the right, and families in the middle, the founders of IOK, Qalam, and Yaqeen described their institutions’ goals and methods.

Suleiman went first introducing Yaqeen as a voice of “authentic” American Islam and claiming that his organization’s goal is “to be a think tank with a megaphone.” This “megaphone,” Suleiman explained, was working to change Google search results using search engine optimization (SEO) tricks to direct readers to Yaqeen’s research, videos, and info-graphics. On such search inquiries as “Islam and Apostasy,” “Was Islam spread by the sword?” and “honor killings in Islam,” Suleiman bragged that Yaqeen is now the top result after Wikipedia. He also noted Yaqeen’s ability to influence mainstream media, from the Dallas Morning News to CNN.

In other words, Yaqeen is not just about influencing the public’s perception of Islam; but is also an attempt to impose Yaqeen’s very particular strain of Islam on both the American public and American Muslims.

In fact, Suleiman promised “that all of the organizations in the Muslim community” can use his material for free – from children in weekend schools and teens in private Islamic schools, to adults watching on YouTube and entire congregations making use of his “masjid [mosque] resource kits so the whole masjid can be empowered.” Yaqeen is working to ensure the next generation of American Muslims adheres to a united Islamist creed, “We’re also piloting Islamic school curriculum at 20 different schools right now and it’s going to be free, inshallah, for all Islamic schools to use, Sunday schools or otherwise.”

Jangda went next, explaining that Qalam’s goal is to educate the Muslim ummah. “Every single person should have access to the education and the understanding of Islam,” he said before laying out the broad range of training courses Qalam offered including a seminary for full-time students, “intensives” that last a few weeks, online classes for part-time students, and, for those on-the-go, podcasts – to which 8 million have already listened.

In a pledge familiar to a Salafi audience, the Deobandi cleric spoke of teaching the form of Islam first heard by audiences of Islam’s early leaders, and expressed his hope that Qalam’s “authentic” Islam will consequently be passed on “from generation to generation.”

None addressed the rather important fact that Suleiman’s “authentic” Islam differs on questions of jurisprudence to Jangda’s “authentic” Islam. More important for both, it appeared, is the concept of a united Muslim ummah [global community] – a vital condition of Islamism. In fact, one of the few precursors to the new-found Salafi-Deobandi partnerships in the U.S. can be found in Haitham Al-Haddad, a British cleric who – despite the theological disparities – claims to representant both Salafi and Deobandi ideologies, for the sake of a “united ummah.”

Nomaan Baig, the IOK’s founder and director, went next, thanking his “brothers” Jangda and Suleiman and praising their institutions. Current IOK programs include a K-10 school, pilgrimage services, a Saturday school and after-school programs, and a successful series of podcasts. Echoing the others’ belief in the supremacy of the ummah, he declared that his own efforts at the IOK are “only doable and possible because of our collaboration.” In other words: only by putting theological differences aside can Islamism succeed.

And so with this understanding of the three groups’ differing areas of emphasis and target audiences, the utility of their collaboration becomes clear. As a united Islamist front, the three organizations create a chain of custody: Yaqeen creates the materials for schools and mosques; the IOK then teaches this material at schools and graduate programs, while Qalam works with young adults and future clerics.

The collaboration and its future prospects went so well that near the end of the day, Baig said: “So imam Omar suggested, and Shayk Abdul Nasir and I conferred that inshallah, we’re going to try and make this an annual thing here in Southern California.” Baig described the groups’ strategy as “‘complementation.’ We complement one another… because our propagation is that knowledge.”

Such ‘complementation’ would have been extremely unusual just a few decades ago. Deobandis and Salafis follow different madhahib [schools of jurisprudence]. The founding Deobandi seminary in India urges its students to read books of “deviant” Salafis in order to refute them. In the United States, websites sympathetic to Deobandis are devoted to challenging and denouncing the Al Maghrib Institute, a Salafi religious training organization with which Suleiman has long been involved. Salafi clerics and preachers, meanwhile, denounce Deobandis as “deviants.” Suleiman’s own teacher, the Salafi cleric Salah As-Sawy, criticizes Sufism (in which the Deobandi school is technically rooted), while Salafi activists have established dozens of social media pages and websites to “speak against this SUFI demonic cult who misguide innocent muslimeen.”

It is also important to note that these Deobandi institutions are relatively new – Qalam and the IOK did not exist some years ago, because Deobandi institutions were almost only found in American mosques and madaris [traditional seminaries]. Qalam and IOK are the result of a wave of new modernist Deobandis, likely taking their cue from the modernist Salafis who have rejected the political and theological isolation of the past, instead embracing social media, pan-Islamist activism and even some social justice rhetoric. Omar Suleiman (with his 318,000 Twitter followers) is perhaps the most notable example.

Suleiman does not just ignore the theological divisions of the past; he deliberately obscures his own affiliations, once writing, “Don’t let people box you into a group because they’re too narrow minded to think outside of their own cultish mind barriers.”

“When you talk to [sic] much about politics and social justice, you’ll be deemed ‘Ikhwani.’ [Muslim Brotherhood] When you stress the importance of the Sunnah too much and show aversion to innovation, you’ll be deemed ‘Salafi’ or ‘Wahhabi.’ And when you speak too much about spirituality and how the Ummah is in need of the hearts being rectified as much as it’s [sic] outwardly affairs, you’re a ‘Sufi.’”

Suleiman encourages this new generation of Muslims to “[S]leep peacefully while others waste their days and nights trying to ‘figure you out.’” At the IOK conference, what was once merely talk of a united ummah is no longer speculation, but a working model. Islamic division is being forgotten for the sake of Islamist unity.

And the impact of this alliance? As the last session of the conference began after the three leaders introduced their organizations, the moderator noted: “Inshallah, before we begin I just wanted to make one quick announcement, alhamdullilah, our registration numbers indicate one thing here today: that there are more students here than adults.”

David M. Swindle is a fellow for Islamist Watch and the Southern California associate of the Counter-Islamist Grid. He also works as the Director of Research for The Israel Group. Follow him on Twitter @DaveSwindle

November 20, 2019: “Arizona Muslim Alliance” brings to the Valley radical Islamist, Siraj Wahhaj

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Imam Siraj Wahhaj comes to the valley

This weekend the Arizona Muslim Alliance (AMA) is having its first annual “Celebrate Unity Leadership Summit”. This summit is to be held at the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley in Scottsdale, Arizona on Saturday, November 23, 2019 for most of the day. The summit will feature the so-called “unifying” speaker and Islamic scholar–Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj will also be touring other AMA affiliated mosques in the Phoenix Valley on Friday, November 22, 2019.

Wahhaj is a notorious, well known radical Islamist anti-American cleric whose dossier of Islamist and separatist ideologies is legendary in the United States, even for the dyed-in-the-wool Islamist Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups. The fact that this local upstart “coalition” of mosques –the AMA– is sponsoring Wahhaj and using his radical type as their first impression on the Valley and our Muslim communities is both very revealing and thus consequential in understanding the ideological underpinnings of various mosque leadership involved in this consortium of so called “unity” organization of many of  the mosques in the Valley– the Arizona Muslim Alliance.

We call on Arizonans and especially our Muslim communities to speak out against the fringe ideas of Siraj Wahhaj and guard against his likes and radicalization under the guise of unity.

In fact, apropos to the subject of unity Imam Siraj Wahhaj famously said:

“A brother asked me yesterday. He said, ‘brother Imam Siraj, after you do all this traveling around the country, around the world, what would you like to focus on? What would you like to be your area of focus?’ I said working on the unity of the Muslims. Because you know what brothers and sisters, if we were united nobody could stop us. You wouldn’t have to vote for Bush or Clinton. No, you wouldn’t have to. If we were united and strong we’d elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. And the rest of the world, take my word, 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us” – October 1992. (IPT)

Wahhaj has never repudiated those remarks nor any of the troves of decades of speeches, work, commentary, and radicalization we are about to share with you.

The Arizona Muslim Alliance and its leadership must be held accountable to this man’s ideas and leadership- the man they chose among so many others in America to launch their “celebrating unity leadership summit”

What is this new organization, the Arizona Muslim Alliance?

After you learn below who and what Wahhaj stands for, you may get a better understanding of what the leaders of our local Muslim communities actually agree to have influence their followers and youth. In fact looking at the Arizona Muslim Alliance mission proves this synergy with Imam Wahhaj.

  • Their motto is “AZ Muslims in Unison”. Are they intending to push the impression that Siraj Wahhaj speaks for all local Muslims “in unison”?
  • Arizona Corporation Commission lists Arizona Muslim Alliance, Inc. with an address of the same address as the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley (in Scottsdale) [Arizona Muslim Alliance] and filed by Arizona Muslim Alliance Director Sarfaraz Sheikh. The following members as their Board of Directors: Kristy Sabbah, Ahmed Ewasha, Ahmed Hashim, and Salaheddine Tomeh. The Corporation commission lists the “known place of business” as the same address as the address of Salaheddine Tomeh of the Arizona Cultural Academy, a private Islamic K-12 school.
  • Their posted Vision, Mission, Philosophy and policies:
    1. The AMA is a platform to “bring together the Muslim community in Arizona and act as a unified voice to address the religious, social, economic, and political needs of the Muslims in this land.
    2. Vision: “to be the unifying Federation of Muslim organizations in Arizona, the leading advocate of the diverse Muslim community, and a catalyst for enriching the society at large”
    3. Mission: “uniting the Muslim community in Arizona by establishing effective communication, enhancing cooperation, sharing resources, and correlating activities among Arizona’s Muslim organizations. Representing and defending the interest of Arizona Muslims. Enhancing Muslim participation in the public sphere; encouraging cooperation and partnership with other religious and civic groups for the common good; providing services not available nor provided by individual member organizations.”
    4. Philosophy and policies: they report complying by local state and federal government law. They “will not interfere with member organization procedures, operations, and finances.” They “will represent the interests of main stream [sic] Arizona Muslims who are integral part of the citizens of Arizona… a diverse community, not limited to certain race national origin or ethnicity”. Note that no mention is made of ideological diversity. This is a Islamist monolithic coalition of the Islamist establishment in Maricopa County.
    5. They define main stream [sic] Islam as:
      1. “a complete way of life guided by the authentic sources of Islam; the glorious quarter and in the authentic tradition of the Prophet Mohammed”
      2. “Other traditions, man-made rules, cultures and ethnic behaviors and traditions are not considered as sources of AMA however, reserves the right to follow a ruling agreed upon by the majority of Islamic scholars”– if this isn’t a central Islamist separatist doctrine we don’t know what is.
    6. Organizationally: it is a 501c(3) nonprofit organization apparently with an assembly of voting within a ‘House of Representatives’?
    7. The rest of their definitions and policies are noted at this link.

Local History/Background

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy has previously done in-depth exposes on many of the local imams. It most notably included an in depth expose on “Exposing the ‘Flying Imams’” from the Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2008 edition. Therein, Dr. Jasser exposed the backgrounds, ideologies and track records of some of the leading local imams here in Arizona that led to the case, Ahmed Shqeirat et al. vs. U.S. Airways.  Sure enough, the lead contact imam for Imam Wahhaj’s Celebrating Unity event here in Arizona is again, Ahmed Shqeirat of the Islamic Community Center of Tempe (ICCP).

Additionally, Dr. Jasser wrote this expose for the Arizona Republic on August 23, 2014: “Muslim: I was bullied for criticizing Hamas”. Dr. Jasser laid out how he became the subject of the Eid (Holiday) sermon on so-called Islamophobia by Imam Yaser Ali at the Islamic Center of the Northeast Valley who in speaking against Dr. Jasser, said, “even Muslims can be against their own community”. Dr. Jasser further noted,

Even in America, leading Muslim organizations and clerics bully with threats of ostracism those Muslims who dare to dissent. Old-guard ideologues, too, used to monopoly control, make it crystal clear to their Muslim critics: Take us on and we will make an example of you as a traitor to the Muslim community (the ummah)… Intimidation and intolerance, from the bully pulpit by imams like Yaser Ali, are symptoms of a much deeper and broader conflict between political Islam (Islamism) and modernity — and more specifically, liberal democracy. Reform will not come easily. It must come from within, driven by both love for our faith and frank public critique of our leaders. But it cannot be done without the support of our non-Muslim allies, for universal human rights, freedom of conscience and, indeed, American security hang in the balance.

There has since been little to warrant exposure on our state or national platforms to goings on locally here in Arizona. However this weekend’s upcoming visit by the radical Islamist, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, brings home all of the areas, AIFD has been working to reform locally, nationally, and globally for years since our founding.

This new local coalition organization of the local Islamist establishment, the Arizona Muslim Alliance stands in stark contradiction to the principles of our reformist and anti-Islamist coalition- the Muslim Reform Movement. See our Declaration and compare and contrast what we stand for versus what the Islamists of the Arizona Muslim Alliance claim to stand for while living in this great land of freedom, the United States of America.

Who is Siraj Wahhaj? 

When Dr. Zuhdi Jasser’s Simon & Schuster book,  “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save his Faith” came out in 2012 he noted that Imam Wahhaj’s keynote speech at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America in 1995 was the entire reason he was moved to dedicating his life to defeating the Islamist ideology. Dressed in his Navy

uniform, having represented the National Naval Medical Center at the Islamic Medical Association that met in conjunction with the ISNA meeting, Dr. Jasser saw Imam Wahhaj hold up the Qur’an and declare his desire to replace the US Constitution with the Holy Qur’an and to make America into an Islamic state. Read the three page excerpt from his book about Siraj Wahhaj (Pages 85-87).

Eight years later, Dr. Jasser would found the American Islamic Forum for Democracy to fight that very insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the West.

Wahhaj is an Islamist imam with a long track record of separatism and anti-American anti-semitic vitriol. This imam has a long track record of vilifying America the society it citizens and its culture. The following is only a smattering of many of the radical comments he has made and while the Arizona Muslim Alliance (AMA) claims to be a “diverse” organization, they all seem to have agreed to bring one of the most notoriously radical imams in the United States. When all is said and done, the AMA leadership selected this leader to represent them and teach their population here locally while they claim to be a diverse organization. There are obvious reasons truly moderate, pro-American, reformist  Muslim organizations locally are not part of this Arizona Muslim Alliance and will likely not only never be a member, but will continue to confront their Islamist separatism which they peddle under the rubric of pan-Islamic “unity”. This AMA is simply another Muslim brotherhood legacy group with a penchant to amplify the voices of anti-American separatism and radicalization of leading Islamist icons like Siraj Wahhaj.

Siraj Wahhaj Jr and the recent New Mexico 2018 terror cell

Court records identified that children in a camp were being starved and trained in jihad to imminently shoot up a school and a hospital. After the state of New Mexico incredulously dropped the ball and charges were dismissed as time ran out on them, the FBI and DOJ then moved in with their own charges against the cell leaders. The federal government now controls the fate of the cell.  Following the initial raid, authorities confirmed that the body of the three-year old found in the compound was that of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj. Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj is the grandson of radical Islamist preacher Siraj Wahhaj, Sr coming this weekend to teach Arizona Muslims how to unite. Out of the five suspects arrested in this case, one is Siraj Ibn Wahhaj’s son, and another two are his daughters.

This case and what happened with the younger generation of the Wahhaj family will likely demonstrate the pathways of how American Muslims are often radicalized.  Granted, there is no evidence that the senior Siraj Wahhaj, Sr. had anything to do with the New Mexico compound and his children’s jihadi terror training camp. In a Facebook video the day after the story broke, he stated that he “want[ed] to find out what happened, what made [his] children act in such a dramatic way.” We at AIFD believe that his non-violent Islamist preaching spawned the separatist, violent Islamism that we saw in the New Mexico compound.  The apples do not fall far from the insurgent, separatist tree of Islamism (whether or not imam Wahhaj taught violence or non-violent). But see his teachings below.

Since the New Mexico jihadi compound story broke, the mainstream media has gone to great lengths to avoid any in-depth coverage of this story. Clearly, the mainstream media is protecting the senior Wahhaj’s reputation as well as that of the major network of organizations to which he is tied. Had Siraj Wahhaj, Sr. not been related to this story, the coverage would have been very different. In cases of terrorism linked directly to the families of prominent Islamist activists and preachers, the American Muslim community finds itself at a defining moment.

How American Muslims learn and respond to the slippery slope of non-violent Islamism and its inherent separatism, as evidenced in the Wahhaj family, is critical. Will we remain in hopeless denial of the evils of Islamism? Will we as a diverse ideological community continue to allow the Islamist “establishment” to dominate and oppress our communities? Or will we finally garner the strength to stand up to Islamism and its separatism?  The Wahhaj family patriarch planted the seeds of Islamist separatism for decades. His hateful rhetoric spreads both within his family and in leadership positions throughout our communities. We can stay silent and enable this radicalization process, or we can fight with every fiber of our being against Islamist brainwashing.

While CAIR offered condolences and support for the Wahhaj family in September 2018 when it was exposed that Imam Wahhaj’s children were involved in a terror cell his grandchildren were found in atrocious Third World conditions and a three-year-old died in an exorcism. Rather than acknowledge the role that the imam might have played and radicalization of his own children and thus his grandchildren, CAIR instead thanked him for his contributions and wanted Americans to believe that we still owe him a great debt. They even had the temerity “to condemn as hate groups those who will use this as an opportunity to smear the man”.

Wahhaj is a leading fundraiser for major American Islamist organizations

He is a leading fundraiser and preacher for major American Islamist organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), MAS (Muslim American Society), and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America). , Abdulrahman Alamoudi, the head of the American Muslim Council (AMC) the organization that invited him to give the first Muslim invocation to the US Congress in 1991, is still serving time for trafficking over $300,000 cash from Libyan dictator Gaddafi in a plot to assassinate then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in addition to other terror finance charges.  This was likely an Al Qaeda operation. And Wahhaj still speaks highly of his time giving the first Muslim invocation to Congress, and conveniently ignores that the organization that made it happen has dissolved as its head joined the work of Al Qaeda.

 

 

Imam Siraj Wahhaj in his own words—a radical Islamist

  1. Supremacy of the Islamic state: Imam Wahhaj has a long history of endorsing the supremacy of his Islamic state over the United States or a Western country. He has told his followers according to Paul Barrett in the Wall Street Journal October 24, 2003, quote that: “a society governed by strict Islamic law in which adulterers would be stoned to death and thieves would have their hands cut off, would be superior to American democracy.”
  2. 9-11 truther: Referring to unnamed forces in the government and media he preached “these people want the destruction of Islam” Paul Barrett, WSJ “One Imam Trades the Path of Islam in Black America” October 24, 2003. He further said, “Why is even a truth or who brushed off evidence that Osama bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11 was obvious.” He dismisses bin Laden’s own video pronouncements claiming responsibility for the terror attacks and prefers to remain neutral. He thought it may be a media ruse: “I’m just not so sure want to be the one of the ones who say yeah he did it. He’s a horrible man”
  3. Wants the defeat of America: “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replaces constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word of 8 million Muslims united America the country will come to us.” Source
  4. Close to ’93 World Trade Center bombing master mind, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman: In the early 1990s he sponsored talks by Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman in mosques in New York City and New Jersey. Abdel-Rahman was later convicted for conspiring to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 and Wahhaj was designated a potential unindicted co-conspirator. Source
  5. Close to Al Qaeda operative Alamoudi: As noted above, in that video clip, Wahhaj becoming the first Muslim to provide an opening prayer to the United States Congress. On that same day he was sponsored by the American Muslim Council and its executive director Abdulrahman Alamoudi, an Al Qaeda operative who was later convicted and is currently serving a 25 year sentence for conspiring with the Libyan government to assassinate the king of Saudi Arabia as well as on terrorism charges.
  6. Horrifically anti-Western. In an audio tape recording where Wahhaj was speaking on “the Afghanistan Jihad” on September 28, 1991 he said, “and he alone declared, ‘whoever is at war with my friends, I declare war on them’, ‘who is a friend of Allah your true friend is Allah, the messenger, and those who believe!’ Americans and Canadians? Hear it well hear what I’m telling you well. The Americans are not your friends, hear what I’m telling you hear it well. The Canadians are not your friends. Here what I’m telling you. Hear it well. The Europeans are not your friends. Your friend is Allah, the messenger and those who believe. Those people will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. They will never be satisfied with you.” Source
  7. America is the devil and these punishments are commanded: In this audio he says, “I swear by God, I swear by God, the American government is controlled by Shaitan (the devil)…no doubt about it… If you commit zina (fornication) the punishment is 100 lashes. If you commit adultery the punishment is death by stoning, capital punishment…When you steal, God is angry, cut off their hands”… Woww to the Muslims who take Kafirs as friends. Kafirs will take you away to the remembrance of Allah… surrounded by kafirs making the hearts of our children corrupt. Do not hang out with the non-Muslims. You talk just like them. They are corrupt.”  Listen below to video or see full transcript provided by Middle East Forum here.
  8. On homosexuality:“Brothers and sisters, I don’t believe any of you are homosexual. This is a disease of this society. According to the Kinsey report, some 10% of the American people are homosexual. Over 25 million Americans, one out of ten. Men who prefer men, sexually, and women who prefer women. Now, there may be some who have some little tendency, maybe, among the Muslims, among us, allahu alam, I don’t think so, but hopefully today’s khutbah can get rid of that if you have it in your heart.And number two, I want you to be able to defend against these homosexuals, so you have good argument, Inshallah, and also to remind you last week what I told you, the news that we got from Toronto, supposedly of some Muslims coming out of the closet. Homosexuals, Muslims in Toronto, who want to establish a mosque over the land, for the gays, Muslim gays. We are against that 100%. We don’t accept it. We will never accept it, no matter how much the American government and the Canadian government legislate it in the laws that it is acceptable, it will never be acceptable by the Muslims.”  See the full transcript of this video provided by the Middle East Forum here. Listen below:
  9. Why Muslims should get involved in politics: “I just want to say this. Brothers and sisters, in my opinion what the Muslims do in America will have a profound effect on Muslims everywhere on this earth. As long as you remember that if you get involved with politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don’t get in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.” –source

    END

     

     

    About AIFD

    The American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Muslim led think tank and activist non-profit organization based in Phoenix, AZ, addresses the root cause of the domestic and international threat of radical Islamist terrorism. AIFD’s mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution – liberty and freedom – through the separation of mosque and state and is dedicated to providing an American Muslim voice calling for genuine reform against Islamism and the ideologies which fuel global Muslim radicalization.

    About M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D.

    Dr. Jasser, president and founder of AIFD, and co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement, is the author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith“, and is also founder of Take Back Islam. Dr. Jasser is an American Muslim and son of Syrian immigrants who fled Ba’athist oppression in 1966. Zuhdi is a physician in private practice and a former US Navy officer. He is a former commissioner and Vice-Chair of U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) appointed by the U.S. Senate serving from 2012-2016. An internationally recognized expert on Islamism, Dr. Jasser is widely published in the field and is featured in many top tier media. He regularly testifies to the U.S. Congress on the threat of global Islamism and domestic and foreign counter-ideology strategy. Zuhdi’s work is dedicated to championing universal human rights rooted in an American and Western identity from within the “House of Islam”. Twitter: @DrZuhdiJasser

    Contact US

    Email: info@aifdemocracy.org
    Phone: 480 225 7473

October 30, 2019 CAIR Silent on the Death of ISIS Founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

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CAIR Silent on the Death of ISIS Founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

By Tyler O’Neil October 30, 2019

 

On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced the death of Islamic State (ISIS) founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. While Americans celebrated the demise of this Islamist terrorist – who had brutally murdered many Muslims, Christians, homosexuals, and more – the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which bills itself as America’s largest Muslim civil rights group, remained strangely silent.

A PJ Media review of CAIR’s Twitter account and press releases found many tweets and press statements drawing attention to CAIR’s upcoming gala but not a single mention of Baghdadi’s death. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, has not tweeted in about a week.

The organization has not responded to PJ Media’s request for comment.

This seems particularly strange, given that even Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) – an outspoken Muslim congresswoman who works closely with CAIR – publicly celebrated Baghdadi’s death. “Abu Bakr al Baghdadi was an evil man and a terrorist, who terrorized the world with violence and a message of hate. The world is a safer place without him,” Omar tweeted. “We have deep gratitude for the brave men and women who carried out this dangerous operation.”

M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim reformer who is founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), drew attention to two statements shared by local CAIR leaders. Jasser, who fights Islamism and Sharia supremacy, champions American-style freedoms and the separation of mosque and state. He noticed an anti-American trend in the local CAIR statements and a tendency to whitewash the Islamist roots of the Islamic State.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director at CAIR Greater Los Angeles, used Baghdadi’s death as an opportunity to … blame America and Israel for terrorism.

“The death of Al-Baghdadi will reduce terrorism, but not end it. Here’s how we end it,” Ayloush began. “Baghdadi’s terror career started in a U.S. torture prison after an illegal and immoral U.S. invasion of Iraq. Baghdadi’s terrorism, for the most part, harmed the people of Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and others and their struggle for freedom. His ISIS terrorism served all the repressive governments that opposed freedom and democracy in that region.”

Ayloush warned that “unless the root cause of the problem is addressed, bloody symptoms such as Baghdadi, Bin Laden, and Joulani [a Syrian terrorist leader] will continue to surface and cause mayhem on innocent people. The root cause is the tyranny and abuses brought down by the autocratic regimes of people like Assad, Sisi, MBS, MBZ, Khamenei, and other dictators and by Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies against the people of that region.”

He warned that terrorism can only be eliminated when Western governments “stop supporting, funding, arming, and protecting such despotic regimes and their practices,” a status quo which involves “the brutal suppression of Muslims and Islam’s universal social justice order (driven by centuries of Western Islamophobia).”

That Islamic “universal social justice order” might be a reference to Sharia (Islamic law), and a desire to see governments in the region enshrine Islamic religious law as civil law. While Ayloush and CAIR interpret Sharia differently than the Islamic State, this Sharia supremacism actually inspired Baghdadi and ISIS to carry out their acts of terrorism. The Islamic State was an attempt to unite Islamic lands under Baghdadi as Caliph – who claimed to be the successor to Mohammed – and create a government run by Sharia.

Yet Ayloush was not the only local CAIR leader to address Baghdadi’s death. CAIR-Arizona Executive Director Imraan Siddiqi retweeted a long statement from Huthaifa Shqeirat (son of the Senior Imam of the Phoenix, Ariz.-area mosque), in which Shqeirat also blamed America for Baghdadi’s radicalism.

“Baghdadi was not a Caliph; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. A demon molded by the cruelty of US soldiers in Abu Ghraib and then set loose to terrorize the local population. As he was killing Muslims, those who created him kept pointing the finger of blame at his victims,” Shqeirat tweeted. He dismissed those who call Baghdadi a “product of Islam” as “fools,” saying the would-be Caliph was not a “Muslim scholar.”

“Bin Laden and Baghdadi are merely symptoms, and unless we seriously address the role of the US in cultivating environments that facilitate the growth and development of terrorism, we will relive this entire cycle again and again, with a worse villain each and every time,” Shqeirat concluded.

“Even when they speak up, they blame America,” Jasser told PJ Media. “I think it’s because their narrative is to blame America for Baghdadi, so their default is to say nothing.”

‘They don’t see ISIS for what it is – a natural manifestation of Islamism, Salafi-Jihadism, and Caliphism,” Jasser added. The messages from local CAIR leaders also confirm “their disgust for America and grotesque penchant to conspiratorially blame America for our own sharia supremacism.”

“They are so deeply anti-American that they can’t even celebrate a victory of the death of the greatest stain on Muslims in the world at the hands of American patriots,” the Muslim reformer told PJ Media. “Instead they again spew a narrative that further radicalized Muslims instead of proclaiming victory of good over evil. They basically claim that we are the source of the evil. That is Islamism.”

“That response is classic ‘Ikhwani,’ the Muslim Brotherhood ‘avoidance’ response to dealing with the salafi-jihadists like al-Qaeda and ISIS, from which they are ideologically upstream,” Jasser concluded.

CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-funding case, and wiretap surveillance reportedly captured proof that CAIR’s original mission was to assist “Sister Samah,” which the government claimed was its founder’s code-name for Hamas. CAIR opened its first office with a $5,000 grant from the Holy Land Foundation.

CAIR claims that the unindicted co-conspirator label is misleading and that it does not maintain connections to Hamas or any other terror group. This Muslim organization’s advocacy is notably different from the extreme positions of Islamist groups like Hamas – CAIR champions LGBT people while under Hamas homosexuality is punishable by death, for instance.

However, CAIR’s silence on the death of Baghdadi is troubling, as is the trend of local CAIR leaders condemning America rather than addressing the Islamist roots of ISIS.

CAIR’s history of attempting to silence critics is also troubling. Joining with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), CAIR has pressured charities to blacklist conservative nonprofits falsely branded “anti-Muslim hate groups.” Early this month, CAIR and the SPLC pressured Mar-a-Lago into cancelling an event with ACT for America, an organization Jasser and other Muslim reformers gladly partner with in the fight against Islamism. After that success, CAIR launched a second campaign against the Center for Security Policy.

Muslims should follow the lead of Zuhdi Jasser in condemning Sharia supremacy, rather than blaming America for the terrorist leader who died in a raid carried out by U.S. troops. American foreign policy blunders did allow for the rise of ISIS, but Muslims cannot overlook the Islamist inspiration of this terrorist group.

October 13, 2019: God Forbid – Islam and the West — who controls the story?

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Radio National

October 13, 2019
James Carleton

It’s been 18 years, but 9/11 is still affecting the lives of Muslims in the West. This week’s has a spirited discussion about sharia law, political Islam and Western colonialism in the Middle East.

In this episode:

On his trip to Australia earlier this year, American Muslim commentator Dr Zuhdi Jasser says Salafists and Wahhabis have too much influence over what is taught in mosques in the West, but Dr Yassir Morsi disagrees, saying Australian Muslims are much more diverse than they’re given credit for. They are joined by Dr Chloe Patton from RMIT University’s School of Global and Social Studies where she researches Islamophobia.

The idea of ‘creeping sharia’ persists in Australian political discourse — particularly around election time. But implementing religious law in civil statutes happens in Australia more often than you might think, to little concern at all. So what does that look like?

Islamism is a term so broad it covers everything from the theocrats of the Saudi Royal Family, to their sworn enemy Al Qaeda, to completely non-violent, democratic Islamist parties of South-East Asia. Religiously-inspired political parties are common across the world, but nobody can agree if they are a threat to democracy or the purest expression of it.

Guests:

Dr Zuhdi Jasser is founder and president of the American Islamic Forum of Democracy. He’s the author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save his Faith, and he was in Australia on a speaking tour earlier this year.

Dr Yassir Morsi is lecturer in politics at La Trobe University and author of Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-Radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies.

Dr Chloe Patton is an academic at RMIT University’s School of Global and Social Studies. She researches Islamophobia and was formerly research fellow at London’s Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.

Presenter:

James Carleton

Producer:

Rohan Salmond