Press Release: American Islamic Forum for Democracy Hails the Holy Land Foundation Verdict

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The American Islamic Forum for Democracy Hails the Holy Land Foundation Verdict

Phoenix AZ- — November 25, 2008 — The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) hails the verdict released Monday, November 24, 2008 in the Holy Land Foundation Trial which found the five defendants guilty on all counts.

�Monday�s guilty verdict against the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the five indicted co-defendants may ultimately represent a sea-change in the willingness of the American public to hold Islamists accountable for their countenance of front charities and organizations which support terrorism either directly or indirectly,� says M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, President of American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

We should not forget the absurd conclusions of CAIR and MAS leaders after last year�s mistrial. After the mistrial in October 2007, Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the MAS Freedom Foundation stated, �that the mistrial was evidence of the power of religious freedom�and we aren�t going to let the American government make it a crime.� Nihad Awad, Executive director of CAIR compared the HLF case to McCarthyism after the initial mistrial telling the Dallas Morning News, �Today�s campaign has a different name and a different target� the campaign is anti-terrorism and the target is the American Muslim community.�

AIFD emphatically states on the heels of this week�s guilty verdict on a landmark case which has been years in the making that, �such victimology has no place in representing the interests of Americans and of Muslims. It was not the American government who made it into a crime, it was a jury this week of our peers who heard the same facts and unanimously convicted these criminals on all charges. Their crimes of financing and contributing to terrorism are obvious to all fair-minded individuals who heard the case fully made by the prosecutors.�

�This verdict proves that, in fact, the target of the Department of Justice is not the American Muslim community, but rather the target is terror promoting and facilitating criminals who in this case happen to be Muslims. Any American who knowingly finances an organization which uses terrorism as a tactic should now bewarned. Mr. Awad, Mr. Bray and other Islamist leaders and their followers in the United States should now be on notice that Americans and our juries will not dismiss Islamists from their moral responsibilities to counter terrorism and their moral responsibility to stop charity organizations from contributing to causes affiliated with radical Islamism and terrorism,� adds Dr. Jasser.

The coming reaction or fallout from American Islamist organizations and their ilk will speak volumes to their real agenda. This trial did a major service in exposing to the American people the real agenda of loosely ideologically affiliated Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the U.S (unindicted coconspirators). In the fallout these organizations will most likely continue their Islamist agenda of deception and victimization. This verdict is a character defining moment for American Muslims and their organizations. Will they take the side of victimization and wallow in defeat or will they take the side of truth, justice, and the HLF jury of Americans?

In AIFD�s estimation, this jury verdict will be looked upon in history as the beginning of a sea change in the American body politic against Islamists and their transnational networks. The American people are now waking up to understanding that we expose and hold accountable organizations which finance and apologize for acts of terror. The HLF trial demonstrated that the five defendants went far beyond apologetics and actually funneled over $60 million to HAMAS. Defense attorneys tried to argue that the charity was non-political and legitimate, but the prosecution effectively demonstrated from wiretapped conversations, for example, quite the contrary, that the defendants actually celebrated and invoked the name of God after terror attacks upon civilians in Israel.

It is this endemic corruption excusing acts of terror and using a charity to camouflage their real political transnational goals which ultimately brought their downfall.

Slowly, Islamist organizations are going to be held accountable for their Islamist ideologies and how they run against American principles of Constitutional law and of morality.

About American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD)

AIFD is a think tank and activist Muslim organization which provides a platform for a movement to separate spiritual Islam from the political.

AIFD openly engages and challenges all American Muslims to proactively be in the forefront of the domestic and foreign struggle against the primary driving force of militant Islamism and its terrorist offshoots�the ideology of political Islam. Militant Islamists are fueled ideologically by a radicalization of the faith of Islam. This radicalization is fueled by both militant components and a more central political desire (Islamism) to establish Islamic states. Islamists view secular pluralistic societies like America as an anathema to Islam.

AIFD rather seeks to build coalitions of Muslims which not only reject the means of terror as an anathema to Islam but more globally reject the ends of the Islamic state which Islamists seek.

AIFD believes that the only way to genuinely wage the contest of ideas and counter the root cause of terrorism is for Muslims to be given ample opportunity for debate between one another– especially within the mosques. AIFD believes that the outcome of these debates between political Islam and non-political Islam will ultimately be one of the primary reasons globally for the decrease in the threat of homegrown terrorism. For more information see www.aifdemocracy.org