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Intro­duc­tion: Much media time and energy has been devoted to the polit­i­cal con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the “9/11 Mosque.” Located two blocks from the site of the for­mer World Trade Cen­ter, a Mosque and Islamic cen­ter planned for occu­pancy has led Mus­lims, civil lib­er­tar­i­ans and “pro­gres­sives” to lobby vehe­mently in sup­port of the open­ing of the facil­ity. An amal­gam of oppo­nents dom­i­nated by GOP, Tea Party sup­port­ers and Obama-is-a-Muslim types has opposed the Mosque.

Eclipsed by the rhetor­i­cal blazes is the fact that nei­ther Feisal Abdul Rauf nor the ele­ments around him are “mod­er­ate.” In fact, the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests strongly that Rauf is not only Mus­lim Broth­er­hood but sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Broth­er­hood at that.

Predictably–and tragically–neither side of the debate takes stock of the deadly irony of the deci­sive con­nec­tions between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood milieu and the GOP, Bush admin­is­tra­tion, CIA and State Depart­ment. We must note, as well, the pro­found con­nec­tions between those same inter­ests and the so-called “pro­gres­sive” sector.

The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of an essay by a skilled con­ser­v­a­tive blog­ger Alyssa Lap­pen. After not­ing evi­dence of Rauf’s being sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Alyssa notes that Rauf’s record sug­gests his polit­i­cal and social out­look are more in keep­ing with the views of that Islamic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion. Ms. Lap­pen encap­su­lates Rauf’s polit­i­cal cache in foot­noted bul­let points, not­ing his con­nec­tions to Broth­er­hood fig­ures and insti­tu­tions, his numer­ous state­ments against reli­gious tol­er­ance, alliances with Nazi-style anti-Semites such as for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Mahathir of Malaysia, and his pro­mo­tion and advo­cacy of Jihadist/Brotherhood elements.

In addi­tion to his pro­found Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ties, Rauf was used by first the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and then Obama’s State Depart­ment to rep­re­sent a mes­sage of “mod­er­a­tion” abroad. As we saw in FTR #721, both State Depart­ment and CIA under Bush were actively allied with, and pro­mot­ing, the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Again, one can­not stress too strongly that, although the right wing is cor­rect in not­ing the fal­lacy of char­ac­ter­iz­ing Rauf’s milieu as “mod­er­ate,” they con­sis­tently over­look the pro­found links between the GOP, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and the very Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Bank Al Taqwa milieu of which Rauf is clearly part. That milieu harkens back to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the self-styled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, pic­tured above, left, with his ally and men­tor Adolf Hitler.

The Mosque’s back­ers include Arab busi­ness part­ners of both the Bush and bin Laden fam­ily. Con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Pamela Geller has researched the fund­ing appa­ra­tus behind the con­tro­ver­sial “Ground Zero Mosque” project in New York City–the build­ing of a Mosque and Islamic activ­i­ties cen­ter two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.

It turns out that the fam­ily and milieu of Abdul­lah Alireza are involved with the insti­tu­tions work­ing to finance and real­ize the Mosque project. As dis­cussed in FTR #392, this reveals the mosque financ­ing project to be part of a milieu that involves mem­bers of both the Bush and Bin Laden fam­i­lies, one of a num­ber of inter­ests link­ing the two clans.

Rauf has received fund­ing from Prince Alwaleed. In addi­tion to rais­ing funds for Hamas [whose sol­diers are shown above, left], Alwaleed is the sec­ond largest stock­holder in News­corp, media bea­con of the Amer­i­can far right. (Both are pic­tured at left.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the fas­cist his­tory and asso­ci­a­tions of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood; review of the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids of March 20, 2002; review of the inter­ces­sion on behalf of the tar­gets of those raids by Bush busi­ness part­ner, polit­i­cal ally and per­sonal friend Talat Oth­man; review of Othman’s par­tic­i­pa­tion with Grover Norquist and Karl Rove in the GOP’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sub­sidiary orga­ni­za­tion; review of the Car­lyle Group and Arbusto Energy, two of the Bush/Bin Laden fam­ily busi­ness ven­tures; review of the inves­ti­ga­tion of Sami al-Arian and how it led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids noted above; review of the piv­otal links between Bush asso­ciate al-Arian and the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor.” [Bush and al-Arian are pic­tured above, at right.]

1. The bulk of the pro­gram con­sists of an essay by a skilled con­ser­v­a­tive blog­ger Alyssa Lap­pen. Far from being a mod­er­ate, Feisal Abdul Rauf gives evi­dence of being sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. His pro­nounce­ments in favor of “mod­er­a­tion” notwith­stand­ing, Rauf’s record sug­gests that his polit­i­cal and social out­look are more in keep­ing with the views of that Islamic fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion. Ms. Lap­pen encap­su­lates Rauf’s polit­i­cal cache in foot­noted bul­let points:

Rauf’s father Dr. Muham­mad Abdul Rauf (1917–2004), was an Egypt­ian con­tem­po­rary of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB) founder Has­san al-Banna.

Rauf’s father stud­ied and taught at Islam‘s clos­est equiv­a­lent to the Vat­i­can — Al-Azhar Uni­ver­sity — beside Has­san al-Banna, per­pet­u­at­ing the pious fam­ily tra­di­tion of radicalism.

In 1948, Rauf’s father fled Egypt, dur­ing its first MB crack­down; Feisal was born in Kuwait. 3

In 1965, Feisal’s father left Malaysia for New York City to stealth­ily buy two thirds of an E. 96th Street block for an Islamic “per­sonal trust,” reveal­ing its $1.3 mil­lion Islamic money from Kuwait, Saudi Ara­bia and Libya only after con­struc­tion of the MB mosque began in 1984. 4

Like­wise, 46 Orga­ni­za­tion of the Islamic Con­fer­ence (OIC) nations funded the $17 mil­lion Islamic Cul­tural Cen­ter, only after its 1992 open­ing did Rauf’s father reveal that fund­ing source or admit his long-term plans for dis­crim­i­na­tory Muslim-only hous­ing for the Islamic complex.5

Rauf’s father named Feisal as a per­ma­nent trustee of the MB mosque.

Under Feisal’s per­ma­nent trustee­ship, ICC employed Al-Azhar imam Muham­mad Gemeaha. A week after flee­ing the U.S. on Sept. 28, 2001 he stated, “only the Jews” could have per­pe­trated 9/11; Allah says Jews “dis­sem­i­nate cor­rup­tion in the land,” spread “heresy, homo­sex­u­al­ity, alco­holism, and drugs.” Amer­i­cans would exter­mi­nate Jews like “Hitler did” if they knew.

ICC then hired Al-Azhar envoy Omar Saleem Abu-Namous. He too saw no “con­clu­sive evi­dence” that Mus­lims com­mit­ted the atroc­i­ties, but rather saw Mus­lims as inno­cent vic­tims. 6

At Per­dana Global Peace Orga­ni­za­tion, an MB, Hamas and al-Qaeda affil­i­ate, Rauf is sec­ond in com­mand to anti­se­mitic for­mer Malaysian P.M. and Islamic law advo­cate Mahathir Mohamad,7 who in Nov. 2002, incited global anti-West finan­cial war as a “jihad worth fight­ing for.” 8

On May 7, 2010, Rauf him­self stated, “Some peo­ple say … Mus­lims … attacked on 9/11 … ”9

In 2001 on 60 Min­utes, Rauf called U.S. poli­cies “an acces­sory to the crime that hap­pened,” and said, “In … the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.” 10

Rauf wants to impose sharia in the U.S. His 2004 book, What’s Right with Islam, is trans­lated into Malay as the Call from the WTC Rub­ble. 11

In Dec. 2007 Rauf pro­moted the book at a [Ban­dung, Indone­sia] Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) meet­ing. 12 Banned in Ger­many since 2003 and out­lawed in Jor­dan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and Saudi Ara­bia, among other places — the orga­ni­za­tion is ide­o­log­i­cally akin to the MB.

In the fis­cal year ended Jun. 30, 2009, Feisal’s ASMA accepted at least $1.3 mil­lion, includ­ing $576,312 from Qatar,13 whose gov­ern­ment stands accused of fund­ing inter­na­tional ter­ror­ism, has long har­bored ter­ror financiers, and for decades hosted Mus­lim Broth­er­hood spir­i­tual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Rauf is quite friendly with Qaradawi, a large, found­ing share­holder in terror-funding al-Taqwa Bank who cham­pi­ons sharia law, wife beat­ing and sui­cide bomb­ing. 14

Rauf con­cluded in the Wash­ing­ton Post, shortly after Pres­i­dent Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech, that he’d chal­lenged Mus­lims to “Live up to the tenets of our reli­gion, embrace Shariah law as con­ceived by the Prophet, and see what hap­pens.” 15

Rauf seeks more U.S. legal “lee­way” for sharia — to put Mus­lims above the law — by
[Invit­ing] voices of all reli­gions to join the dia­logue in shap­ing the nation’s prac­ti­cal life, [and allow­ing] reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties … to judge …accord­ing to their own laws.16

On Dec. 9, 2007, Rauf said in Ara­bic to Sa’da Abdul Mak­soud of the Hadi-el-Islam web­site, that cur­rent, unjust gov­ern­ments, “do not fol­low Islamic laws.” He advo­cates estab­lish­ing sharia
“in more [ways than one] … through a king­dom or a democ­racy, [so long as the] fun­da­men­tals of Shariah [exist, with stan­dards of Mus­lim schol­ars] required to gov­ern. …to orga­nize … rela­tion­ships between gov­ern­ment … and the gov­erned.” 17

In March 2010, also in Ara­bic, Rauf stri­dently denounced inter­faith dis­cus­sions. “I don’t believe in inter­faith dia­logue,” he said in an arti­cle that high­lighted his state­ment in its head­line. 18

Rauf’s Man­hat­tan ASMA offices at 475 River­side Drive occupy the suite next door to Coun­cil of American-Islamic-Relations (CAIR) of NY; its national par­ent is the U.S. arm of the MB ter­ror­ist group, Hamas, and an unin­dicted cocon­spir­a­tor in the 2008 Holy Land Foun­da­tion ter­ror financ­ing case in which the orga­ni­za­tion and five offi­cers were convicted.19

At the Jul. 13, 2010 New York Land­marks hear­ing on the fate a 152-year-old wrought-iron era build­ing where a piece of jet fuse­lage fell through its roof on 9/11 — CAIR-NY exec­u­tive direc­tor Zaed Ramadan sup­ported destroy­ing the struc­ture oppo­site Ground Zero to build Rauf’s 15 story mosque, a mon­u­ment to Mus­lim vic­tory to tower above the memo­r­ial site. 20

Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan in 2009 both refused to sign a Free­dom Pledge to pro­tect for­mer Mus­lims from the death sen­tence sought by most sharia inter­pre­ta­tions for Mus­lim apos­tates. On Oct. 20, 2009, For­mer Mus­lims United asked ASMA’s exec­u­tives to pledge to “renounce, repu­di­ate and oppose any phys­i­cal intim­i­da­tion, or worldly and cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, of apos­tates …, [how­ever] that pun­ish­ment may be deter­mined or car­ried out by myself or any other Mus­lim includ­ing the [apostate’s] fam­ily, com­mu­nity, Mosque lead­ers, Shariah court or judge, and Mus­lim gov­ern­ment or regime.”

Rauf’s 2000 and 2004 books both laud sharia and envi­sion imple­ment­ing it in the U.S. – and “reju­ve­nat­ing” the Islamic spirit of 14th cen­tury jurist Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah and his 18th cen­tury heir Muham­mad bin Abdul al-Wahhab. Rauf also lauds pur­ported “mod­ernists” Jamal al-Dinal-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muham­mad Abduh (d. 1905) who revered Wah­habis, Ibn Taymiyyah and like Rauf pre­tended sharia – with peren­nial jihad and count­less stric­tures on non-Muslims and women – com­pli­ments West­ern ideas like those in the U.S. Bill of Rights. 22

Rauf also autho­rized two main­stay MB orga­ni­za­tions, the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Islamic Soci­ety of North Amer­ica (ISNA) to pro­duce “a spe­cial non-commercial edi­tion” of his 2004 book pro­mote “proper [West­ern] under­stand­ing of Islam…”23

Rauf’s ASMA in 2004 estab­lished the pur­port­edly lib­eral Mus­lim Lead­ers of Tomorrow.24 Its lib­eral faces are largely over­whelmed by sharia devo­tees like al Qaeda sup­porter Yasir Qadhi,25 CAIR-NY com­mu­nity affairs direc­tor Faiza N. Ali — who co-authored CAIR’s fal­la­cious “denun­ci­a­tion” of a superb 2008 NYPD report on home­grown jihadists — and CAIR-NY com­mu­nity orga­nizer Deb­bie Almontaser, who once ran the city’s Khalil Gibran Academy.26

Since at least 2006, Rauf’s U.S.-based Cor­doba Ini­tia­tive has part­nered with Gallup Orga­ni­za­tion and “Sunni and Shi’a schol­ars from Morocco to Indone­sia” to cre­ate “an Islamic legal bench­mark for mea­sur­ing ‘Islam­ic­ity’ of a state”—sharia index—for offi­cial, state, pub­lic and press use in the “Mus­lim and West­ern worlds.” He ini­ti­ated the project, funded by Malaysia and many other nations in the 57-member Orga­ni­za­tion of the Islamic Con­fer­ence (OIC). 27

A key sharia index board mem­ber, Jasser Auda, dou­bles on the aca­d­e­mic coun­cil at the U.K. the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) office and in sum­mer 2010 taught with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood heavies—e.g. for­mer ISNA lead­er­ship devel­op­ment head Louay Safi, IIIT v.p. and NAIT found­ing gen­eral man­ager Jamal Barz­inji and Minaret of Free­dom head Imad Ad Deen Ahmad, present at the Beirut ter­ror­ist con­ven­tion in Jan­u­ary 2001. No mis­tak­ing their intent. . . .

“Feisal Abdul Rauf” by Alyssa Lap­pen; 8/17/2010.

2. In addi­tion to his pro­found Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ties, Rauf was used by first the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and then Obama’s State Depart­ment to rep­re­sent a mes­sage of “mod­er­a­tion” abroad.

One of the cen­tral points of the broad­cast is the cog­ni­tive dis­con­ti­nu­ity that exists on both sides of the polit­i­cal aisle in the United States. Although the right wing is cor­rect in not­ing the fal­lacy of char­ac­ter­iz­ing Rauf’s milieu as “mod­er­ate,” they con­sis­tently over­look the pro­found links between the GOP, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist and the very Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Bank Al Taqwa milieu of which Rauf is clearly part.

As we saw in FTR #721, both State Depart­ment and CIA under Bush were actively allied with, and pro­mot­ing, the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

If one were to hear­ken back to the hal­cyon days of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion, one would remem­ber that, when Bush adviser Karen Hughes was appointed Under­sec­re­tary of State for Pub­lic Diplo­macy, the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion saw improv­ing America’s stand­ing among Mus­lims abroad as a part of its national secu­rity strat­egy. And, as such, Hughes set up lis­ten­ing tours, attended meet­ings and worked with inter­faith groups that — shock­ing, by today’s Repub­li­can stan­dards — included actual Muslims.One of those peo­ple was Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.

Con­tem­po­rary press accounts indi­cate that Rauf and Hughes were part of the Feb­ru­ary 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. He was part of a del­e­ga­tion that met with her in March 2006 and held a joint press con­fer­ence. A let­ter to then-Secretary of State Con­doleezza Rice in Novem­ber 2007 indi­cates that con­tacts with Hughes and Under Sec­re­tary for Polit­i­cal Affairs Nicholas Burns had con­tin­ued apace. . . .

“‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Imam Was a Bush-era Part­ner for Mideast Peace” by Megan Car­pen­tier; Talk­ing Points Memo; 8/12/2010.

3. The Mosque’s back­ers include Arab busi­ness part­ners of both the Bush and bin Laden fam­ily. Con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor Pamela Geller has researched the fund­ing appa­ra­tus behind the con­tro­ver­sial “Ground Zero Mosque” project in New York City–the build­ing of a Mosque and Islamic activ­i­ties cen­ter two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center.

It turns out that the fam­ily and milieu of Abdul­lah Alireza are involved with the insti­tu­tions work­ing to finance and real­ize the Mosque project. As dis­cussed in FTR #392, this reveals the mosque financ­ing project to be part of a milieu that involves mem­bers of both the Bush and Bin Laden fam­i­lies, one of a num­ber of inter­ests link­ing the two clans.

. . . . The Attor­ney Gen­eral must exam­ine and inves­ti­gate the alleged ties and fund­ing by Xenel Cor­po­ra­tion and Imam Rauf and Daisy Khan. Who is Xenel? They fund the Imam and .....The web­site lists Xenel Indus­tries Ltd. as a pri­mary donor to the Al-Falah Pro­gram. Xenel, a Saudi owned con­glom­er­ate, “pro­vides devel­op­ment, man­u­fac­tur­ing, invest­ment, trad­ing and ser­vices through­out a wide range of areas of inter­est” rang­ing from health­care and infra­struc­ture to oil and real estate, accord­ing to the company’s web­site (www.xenel.com).

On Decem­ber 10, 2002, the Orlando Sen­tinel pub­lished an arti­cle describ­ing the research of a local trade union regard­ing Xenel, who had just been awarded a $100 mil­lion con­tract to build the city of Orlando a new state-of the-art con­ven­tion cen­ter. The arti­cle reveals that Xenel CEO Abdul­lah Alireza sits on the exec­u­tive board of Dar al-Maal al-Islami (DMI), a bank based in Switzer­land. Hay­dar Mohamed bin Laden, half brother of Osama bin Laden, also sits on the twelve mem­ber exec­u­tive board.

Accord­ing to State Depart­ment records and the August 2002 brief filed by the fam­i­lies of 9/11 vic­tims, DMI is involved in “al Qaeda financ­ing through sev­eral of its sub­sidiaries, includ­ing […] Faisal Islamic Bank and Al Shamal Islamic Bank.” Dur­ing the 2001 trial of those sus­pected in the 1998 embassy bomb­ings in East Africa, Faisal Islamic Bank was impli­cated directly in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties by for­mer al Qaeda oper­a­tives: Ahmed al-Fadl, a finance man­ager for al Qaeda, tes­ti­fied that al Qaeda accounts in Khar­toum were held at Faisal Islamic Bank. . . .

“Bin Laden/Al Qaeda Fund­ing Ground Zero Mosque Imam Rauf” by Pamela Geller; Atlas Shrugs; 7/31/2010.

4. Rauf has received fund­ing from Prince Alwaleed. In addi­tion to rais­ing funds for Hamas, Alwaleed is the sec­ond largest stock­holder in News­corp, media bea­con of the Amer­i­can far right.

. . . . Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post reported last May, the King­dom Foun­da­tion, al-Waleed’s per­sonal char­ity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Mus­lim Lead­ers of Tomor­row, a lead­er­ship and net­work­ing project spon­sored jointly by two of Rauf’s orga­ni­za­tions, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety for Mus­lim Advance­ment and the Cor­doba Ini­tia­tive. Al-Waleed owns a 7 per­cent, $2.3 bil­lion stake in News Cor­po­ra­tion. Like­wise, News Cor­po­ra­tion owns a 9 per­cent, $70 mil­lion stake — pur­chased in Feb­ru­ary — in Rotana, Al-Waleed’s Saudi media con­glom­er­ate. Put another way: Rupert Mur­doch and Fox News are in busi­ness, to the tune of bil­lions of dol­lars, with one of the “Ter­ror Mosque Imam’s” prin­ci­pal patrons. . . .

“News Corp’s Number-Two Share­holder Funded ‘Ter­ror Mosque’ Plan­ner” By John Cook; Yahoo.com; 8/20/2010.