MP3: 30-Minute Segment
REALAUDIO
NB: This RealAudio stream contains FTRs 662 and 663 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute segment.
Continuing For The Record’s examination of attempts at discrediting President Obama, the broadcast examines sinister Muslim Brotherhood elements involved with “moderate” Muslim outreach to the President. Some of these individuals figured in the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. After noting economist and columnist Paul Krugman’s opinion that the GOP is adamantly opposed to a “new New Deal,” the program highlights sinister foreshadowing of devastating terrorist incidents “on Obama’s watch.” As noted by a former Bush speechwriter and former Vice President Dick Cheney (who recently predicted a nuclear or biological terrorist incident during the next five years), such an occurrence would minimize the Democrats’ electoral chances for many years to come. It would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that the GOP would love to see just such an occurrence. In light of the links between the GOP and elements of the Muslim Brotherhood, the possibility that such an incident might be aided and/or abetted by Underground Reich elements within the Republican Party should also be seriously considered.
The bulk of the program consists of analysis of a very important article indicating that GOP-connected Muslim Brotherhood elements are the so-called “moderates” reaching out to Obama. A “moderate” involved with the AMCE is Abubaker Ahmed al-Shingieti, an assistant to President Omar al-Bashir, the genocidal head of Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood government. Two of his assistants are Jamar [al] Barzinji and Yaqub Mirza, both centrally involved with the milieu that was targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002. George W. Bush and Muslim Brotherhood associate Talat Othman interceded on behalf of those targets, raided for financing Hamas, al-Qaeda and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
If Obama aids and abets these people, he and the Democratic Party will be thoroughly discredited if the U.S. is struck by another major major terror incident, as is being foreshadowed by Cheney et al.
Program Highlights Include: Review of the Muslim Brotherhood links to the headscarf incident; review of the Talat Othman/George Bush/Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002; review of the links between the Muslim Students Association and the Muslim Brotherhood; review of the links between the MSA branch implicated in the headscarf incident and Hizb ut-Tahrir; review of the operational links betwee Hizb ut-Tahrir and the NPD, the top German neo-Nazi party.
1. The program begins by underscoring a comment made by Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman:
“As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending. . . .”
“Bad Faith Economics” by Paul Krugman; New York Times; 1/26/2009; p. A21.
2. More ominous is the foreshadowing of a major terrorist incident by a Republican critic.
” . . . The most insidious line of attack involves laying the groundwork for blaming the new president in the event of a terrorist attack.
In a remarkably partisan op-ed piece in the Washington Post last Thursday, Marc A. Thiessen, who was a speechwriter for former president George W. Bush, declared flatly: ‘If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike our country again, Americans will hold Obama responsible — and the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation.’
This is dangerous, both substantively and politically, and it suggests that some of Bush’s loyalists will continue to politicize issues related to terrorism in their efforts to vindicate the former president’s legacy. . . .”
3. The above prediction was compounded and embellished by Dick Cheney.
“In an interview two weeks after leaving office, former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted a ‘high probability’ of a nuclear or biological attack in the next few years and said the Obama administration was approaching a ‘tough, mean, dirty, nasty business’ of keeping the country safe from terrorists too timidly.
Mr. Cheney singled out Mr. Obama’s decision to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and to ban coercive interrogation methods as changes in course that could make the country more vulnerable.
He also sought to justify the Bush terrorist surveillance program and the antiterrorism legislation called the USA Patriot Act. . . .”
4. The bulk of the program consists of analysis of a very important article indicating that GOP-connected Muslim Brotherhood elements are the so-called “moderates” reaching out to Obama.
“In the 1990s, the extremist Muslim Brotherhood government of Sudan, led by President Omar al-Bashir, was continuing a genocidal jihad against the Christian and animist populations inhabiting the south of the country that killed nearly two million people and forced another four million from their homes. In July 2008, Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes related to the regime’s subsequent genocide in Darfur.
As Bashir was waging his holocaust against the Christians during the 1990s, one of his closest advisors and top aides was Abubaker Ahmed al-Shingieti, who from 1993 to 1995 served as spokesman for Bashir’s government (as he was identified in a 1994 New York Times article). According to al-Shingieti’s own published résumé, he later served Bashir as director of public affairs for the presidency from 1995 to 1998, as the genocidal jihad against the Christians was at its height and Sudan was the hub of the international Islamic terror network. As reported by the New York Times, eight individuals charged in the New York landmarks bombing plot in 1993 were traveling on Sudanese passports.
As a result of those arrests, Sudan was added to the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism in August 1993. That was not long after al-Shingieti’s boss began sheltering Osama bin Laden, who lived in Khartoum from 1992 to 1996. With the close advisory role that bin Laden had with the Sudanese president and other high-ranking officials, it is highly likely that al-Shingieti would have had regular direct contact with bin Laden, as well as a host of other terrorist leaders who regularly visited Khartoum during al-Shingieti’s tenure.
This is particularly relevant as al-Shingieti will be heading the U.S. Muslim outreach to the Obama administration as the president of American Muslims for Constructive Engagement (AMCE), a collaborative effort by U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood front organizations to infiltrate our federal government. A recent open letter signed by al-Shingieti identifies him as AMCE’s president. The group states its vision as:
The United States Muslim community and the United States government working together constructively in enhancing national security and national interests of the United States of America.
The lead organization in AMCE, the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), which al-Shingieti serves as regional director, is the current focus of a federal grand jury probe into terrorist financing. At least two other AMCE groups, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), were named by federal prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators in the recent Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial, which resulted in convictions on all 108 counts. And the Muslim American Society (MAS) was identified in federal court briefs by the Department of Justice as ‘the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.’. . .”
5. In addition to al-Shingieti, the AMCE features Jamal al-Barzinji and Yaqub Mirza, two of the key figures in the SAAR network and the milieu targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.
” . . . And documents received this past August by the Investigative Project through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that AMCE steering committee member Jamal al-Barzinji and AMCE advisory council member Yacub Mirza were listed in FBI memos as ‘members and leaders of the Ikhwan’, which is the Arabic term for the Muslim Brotherhood. Department of Homeland Security senior agent David Kane has testified in a federal court affidavit that ‘Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], but also with Hamas.’
A December 2002 Wall Street Journal article relates some additional information about the terrorist connections of AMCE advisory council member Yacub Mirza:
According to court records and Justice Department documents, Mr. Mirza and several associates are suspected of funding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which targets Israeli civilians with suicide bombers. U.S. officials privately say Mr. Mirza and his associates also have connections to al-Qaeda and to other entities officially listed by the U.S. as sponsors of terrorism.
Another FBI memo obtained by the Investigative Project states that al-Shingieti’s organization, IIIT, was one of the “Ikhwan organizations” that “are involved in organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States government.” This political influence campaign was considered the first phase in a plan “to institute the Islamic revolution in the United States,” according to the FBI document.
It is appropriate to revisit these extensive contacts between AMCE member organizations and officials and the international Muslim Brotherhood network, and even activity by AMCE leaders in support of Islamic terrorist organizations, because another Muslim Brotherhood strategic document entered into evidence by federal prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation trial revealed that the activity of these organizations in the U.S. is part of a “grand jihad” to destroy the West from within:
The process of settlement is a “civilization-jihadist process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
These connections and the Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal of waging a “grand jihad” inside the U.S. raise particular concerns considering statements reported by the Wall Street Journal made by al-Shingieti’s current boss, Jamal al-Barzinji, at a fall 2001 Organization of Islamic Conference meeting in Qatar, bragging how he and his associates had successfully infiltrated Washington:
At this time, the president and his administration are continually seeking the counsel and input of American Muslim leaders. At no other time has the Muslim community in America been more effective in relation to the processes of American government.
When considering the concerted and extensive effort by the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate the U.S. government, we can gain insight into how Abubaker al-Shingieti has transitioned from being a top official in the genocidal Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood regime, to a top official in the U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood network, to leading the U.S. Muslim community’s outreach to the Obama administration as the head of American Muslims for Constructive Engagement. . . .”
6. Some background on Barzinji, Mirza and the raids of 3/20/2002–the meeting was one of intercession on behalf of the individuals and institutions targeted by the raids. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill–the focal point of the intercession–was dismissed roughly at the end of 2002.
“Among the Muslim leaders attending [the meeting with O’Neill] was Talat Othman, a longtime associate and supporter of President Bush’s family, who gave a benediction at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in August 2000. . .But he also serves [with Barzinji] on the board of Amana Mutual funds Trust, an investment firm founded by M. Yacqub Mirza, the Northern Virginia businessman who set up most of the entities targeted by the Treasury and whose tax records were sought in the raid.
(”O’Neill Met Muslim Activists Tied to Charities” by Glenn R. Simpson [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Journal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)
7. This milieu is part of the Norquist/Rove/Islamist nexus in the GOP.
“The case also highlights conflicts between the Bush administration’s domestic political goals and its war on terror. GOP officials began courting the U.S. Muslim community intensely in the late 1990’s, seeking to add that ethnic bloc to the party’s political base.”
(Idem.)
8. The Amana organization headed by Mirza has numerous areas of overlap with organizations described as being implicated in terrorism and the milieu of Al Queda.
“Two nonprofits affiliated with Mr. Mirza and named in the search warrant, the SAAR Foundation Inc. and the Heritage Education Trust Inc., held large blocks of shares in Amana’s mutual funds in 1997, according to SEC records. The SEC documents and other records detailing connections between Mr. Othman and the Islamic Institute [on the board of which Mr. Othman serves] and the raided groups were compiled by the National Security News Service, a Washington based nonprofit research group.”
(Idem.)
9. Further details have emerged about the links between Al Taqwa and the GOP/Bush administration.
“Mr. Othman also is on the board of Mr. Saffuri’s [and Norquist’s] Islamic Institute, the GOP-leaning group that received $20,000.00 from the Safa Trust, one of the raid’s targets. The president of the Safa Trust, Jamal Barzinji, is a former business associate of Switzerland based investor Youssef Nada, whose assets were frozen last fall after the Treasury designated him a person suspected of giving aid to terrorists.”
(Idem.)
10. Talat Othman is part of the slumlord milieu with which Obama was associated in Chicago. Othman is also very close to George Bush.
“Mr. Othman has ties to the Bush family going back to the 1980’s, when he served with George W. Bush on the board of a Texas petroleum firm, Harken Oil & Gas Inc. Mr. Othman has visited the White House during the administrations of both President Bush and his father George H.W. Bush.”
(Idem.)
11. Closing with review from FTR #656. During the presidential campaign, Obama was obstructed by an incident in which Muslim women wearing the traditional headscarves were asked to leave the stage. As it developed, the women both belonged to the Muslim Students Association, a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. One of the women in question, Shimaa Abdelfadeel, worked on behalf of Sami al-Arian, the North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group. Note that al-Arian (whom Mr. Emory refers to as “Sammy the Aryan”) was an ardent supporter of George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign. It was the investigation into Sammy the Aryan that led to the Operation Green Quest raids of March 20, 2002. Those raids exposed the link between the GOP and Bush administration elements involved with the slumlord milieu of which Obama is a part. As noted above, both Barzinji and Mirza were focal points of the Green Quest investigation.
“LSA Senior Shimaa Abdelfadeel is mailing something other than fruitcakes this holiday season.
Abdelfadeel, political chair of the University’s Muslim Students’ Association, has collected about 20 letters of support to send to Sami Al-Arian, an outspoken pro-Palestinian activist and former engineering professor at the University of South Florida.
Federal authorities jailed Al-Arian in 2003 on charges that he supported a cell of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group linked to the deaths of Israelis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Currently, Al-Arian is in a Florida jail. . . .”
“Students Support Embattled Prof” by Kelly Fraser; The Michigan Daily; 12/12/2005.
12. Even more important for our analysis of the headscarf incident is the fact that the MSA branch at U. of Michigan/Dearborn was largely controlled by violent, fascistic Muslims, who attacked and brutalized MSA members who opposed their agenda. Note that the following incident took place in 2004. Hebba Aref was in charge of Dawah in 2002–2003. Note what was considered the norm at the MSA’s branch at U. of M. at Dearborn.
“Farhan Latif always knew it was only a matter of time before the slow-burning anger would erupt. His conservative Muslim enemies had made their intentions clear to him. They had sent threatening e‑mails and left menacing messages on his cell phone. In their eyes, Farhan’s ideas were criminal. The Western world might call him a moderate Muslim, but his foes thought he was an apostate, luring young Muslims away from the faith.
The day Farhan feared came in September 2004. As he was about to enter his modern apartment in Dearborn, about one mile from his university, three young men jumped him and pushed him to the ground. They beat and kicked him without saying a word. Farhan recognied one of his attackers–the guy did not bother to hide his face under a mask. ‘Why are you doing this?’ Farhan cried, trying to shield his face from their blows.
The attackers did not reply. Within minutes, they got back into their car and tried to run Farhan over before they sped away. He managed to avoid the oncoming wheels by rolling away just in time.
As he rested in the hospital, nursing a swollen head, several cracked ribs and a broken arm, Farhan was depressed more than shocked over the beating. it was one thing to endure the daily blows from the non-Muslims who criticized Islam. But now he was in a battle with his fellow believers. ‘I fight against everything people say against my religion every day, on television, on the radio, everywhere,’ Farhan remarked, reflecting on the incident later. ‘I was not so much scared when this happened but sad that fellow Muslims would do this.’
Months before the attack, in the spring of 2004, Farhan was elected president of the Muslim Students’ Association at the Univesity of Michigan’s Dearborn campus. In a short time, he revolutionized the association, making it more attractive to a majority of Muslim students on campus–many of whom had refused to join when the conservatives were in charge. [Italics are mine–DE].
Farhan and the new leaders decided there would no longer be radical imams unleashing hate speech at Friday prayers. All lecturers would be required to follow certain rules. They lifted the ban that prevented women without headscarves from joining the association. [Italics are mine–DE].
All Muslims would be welcome, no matter their political ideas or their sect–minority Shiites, often scorned for their separate ways and different approach to the faith, were just as acceptable as the Sunni student majority. . . . None of this sat well with members of Dearborn’s Muslims’ Students’ association who were either radical Salafis or affiliated with the Hizb ut Tahrir al-Islami–the Party of Islamic Liberation.
The movement (Hizb ut Tahrir al-Islami)–a clandestine, radical Sunni Islamic group that is banned in several countries around the world–advocates the replacement of individual Muslim governments with single caliphate governed under a strict reading of the sharia. The students who are members of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami share a common creed that calls for strict adherence to the Koran and the rejection of applying human reason and logic when interpreting the Islamic holy texts.
Before Farhan had arrived on the campus, radical students had turned the Muslim Students’ Association into a virtual training camp for conservative ideologues. Under the influence and guidance of an Imam at a Dearborn mosque, the students believed their fellow Muslims were straying dangerously from the faith. In their eyes, being a dedicated Muslim meant that men should work to pressure the U.S. government to change its policies in the Islamic world, Muslim women should wear headscarves and Muslims should have little to do with Jews and Christians. [Italics are mine–DE.] . . .”
“The Future of the Faith” by Geneive Abdo; The Globalist; 6/13/2008.
13. As seen above, the MSA chapter to which Hebba Aref belonged was strongly associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir.
14. Hizb ut-Tahrir works with the German NDP, the top German neo-Nazi party. Achmed Huber of the al-Taqwa milieu also works with the NPD.
“Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was founded by a Palestinian in 1953, came to the attention of the German government in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Several of the hijackers and other figures in that plot belonged to radical Islamic groups in Hamburg. It is not clear if members of Hizb ut-Tahrir are linked to Al Qaeda, but its Web site calls on its members to fight against the United States because of what it calls America’s ‘crusade’ against Muslims. Last October, the group staged a demonstration at the Technical University of Berlin at which anti-American speeches were made. In what would seem to be an odd coalition, the group maintains at least some ties with a right-wing German fringe group, the National Democratic Party, some of whose members attended the Berlin rally. The common ground between the two groups would seem to be a hatred of Jews.”
(“German Police Raid an Islamic Militant Group” by Richard Bernstein; The New York Times; 4/11/2003; p. 1.)
[...] as for example, Tony Rezko. You can know more about of this by visiting these shows here, here, here and [...]
Back during the 2008 US presidential campaign, John McCain faced a particularly awkward campaign moment when he took away the microphone from a supporter at a rally that had just asserted that “Obama was an Arab” with the statement, “No ma’am, [Obama’s] a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” What was also a moment that’s come to increasingly resonates with today’s political dynamics, so let’s take a short walk down unfortunate-memory lane:
Yes, before was had the Tea Party, there was “Birtherism”:
So that was then, when John McCain , and this is now:
Donald Trump, who cemented his role as king of the ‘Birthers’ in 2011, was recently criticized over his response to an audience question by a man that first asserted that President Obama is a secret non-American Muslim, that Muslims are the problem facing America, that there are secret Muslim “training camps” that Obama, the secret Muslim, isn’t dealing with, and then asked “When can we get rid of ‘em?”. Trump, nodding along in agreement throughout the question/assertion, responded with “We’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”
And following an outcry over what was seen as an implicit agreement by Trump with questioner, the Trump campaign responded “The media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging war against Christians in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake.”
So it’s looking like the inevitable “why aren’t we waging more sectarian conflict?”-phase of the 2016 GOP primary is in full swing. And, pathetically, it’s also looking like John McCain’s response to the assertion that Obama is “an Arab” with “no, no, he’s a decent man” (implying that Arabs in inherently indecent) can be looked back on as “the relatively good ‘ol days”:
So will catering to ‘Birtherism’ get one last hurrah before the end of the Obama presidency? It’s certainly looking like it. And will that actually harm Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions? Well, it may not help with his presidential ambitions, but before that happens he has to actually get the nomination and when it comes to getting the nomination, ‘Birther’ dog-whistles and talk of secret Muslim paramilitary training camps probably won’t hurt, and might actually help:
Yes, with 2/3 Trump supporters already pretty sure that Obama was born outside the US, and 1/3 Republican voters in general supporting that sentiment, we probably shouldn’t be surprised that not only is the Trump campaign catering to these sentiments but they’re apparently sitting on new evidence that “when the timing is perfectly strategic”:
So the “Summer of Trump” just might end up being the “Fall of Birtherism”. That should be fun.
But as the article below points out, what that audience member brought up in his question/rant was far more than just questions of Obama’s religion and place of birth. He was basically eluding to the same world-view held by Robert Doggart, the man recently charged with planning an armed assault on the predominantly Muslim community of Islamberg, New York over fears that the community itself was basically a militant Islamist “training camp”. And if you’re someone that holds that worldview, you just might be supportive of some sort of ethnic cleansing:
“This is to say that, while Trump and his supporter are being covered as just a wacky clown candidate refusing to confront a wingnut supporter, in fact this episode is a direct outgrowth of anti-Muslim incitement and bigotry that has been promoted for months on right-wing outlets such as Fox News.”
Part of what makes the “all Muslims are inherently violent Jihadists” meme that’s regularly pushed by folks on Fox News and the right-wing media so disturbing and unhelpful is that if you wanted to devise a plan to actually empower and garner sympathy for the genuinely militant and radical Islamist movements and leaders within the American Muslim community, you almost couldn’t come up with a more effective campaign than the “all Muslims are secret Jihadists, just like Obama” memes that are not just championed by Trump but much of the American right-wing at this point. Sure, there’s no shortage of theological justifications for violence or authoritarianism that one can find if they go looking for it in Islam or Christianity or any other major religions, but, of course, it’s also the case that people have been living under various theologies or ideologies throughout history that can lend themselves to the justification of all sorts of horrible behaviors and it would be silly to assume that all of the people living in those societies embraced the worst interpretations of their communal beliefs. And yet that’s basically the meme embraced by Trump and the larger right-wing media infrastructure: that nearly all Muslims embrace the worst aspects of contemporary Islam.
And part of what makes this campaign against all American Muslims so horrible in the global context is that the deeply far-right theocratic strains of fundamentalist Islam promoted by groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist governments of the Gulf states, or the lunatic Mullahs of Iran really do hold enormous power in Muslim communities around the world and the American Muslim community is probably one of the best positioned to counter that influence by promoting, by both example and education, non-fundamentalist versions of Islam that represent a meaningful break with the Muslim Brotherhood-style lunacy. And one of the best ways to disempower the moderate American Muslim community is to see a bunch of right-wing Americans, many of whom adhere to various forms of Christian fundamentalist thought, embrace the “all Muslims are violent and we need to ‘get rid of them’ ” meme. Radical fundamentalists love calling themselves “moderates”, which is exactly why grouping all Muslim in with the radicals is so harmful. That’s what the fundamentalists want.
But here we are, with the leading GOP candidate, who just happens to be king of the ‘Birthers’, catering to “let’s get rid of the Muslims” crowd and responds to the criticism by saying, “the media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging war against Christians in this country. Their religious liberty is at stake.” It’s more than a little ominous. Ominous and oh so ironic.