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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 [3]. After noting evidence of Rauf’s being second generation Muslim Brotherhood [4], 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 [5], 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 [6] between the GOP, the Bush administration, Karl Rove [7] and Grover Norquis [8]t and the very Muslim Brotherhood and Bank Al Taqwa milieu [9] 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 [10] “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 [11], 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 [12] linking the two clans.
Rauf has received funding from Prince Alwaleed [13]. 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 [3]. Far from being a moderate, Feisal Abdul Rauf gives evidence of being second generation Muslim Brotherhood [14]. 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.16On 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.” 17In 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. [3]
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 [15] between the GOP, the Bush administration, Karl Rove [16] and Grover Norquis [17]t and the very Muslim Brotherhood and Bank Al Taqwa milieu [18] of which Rauf is clearly part.
As we saw in FTR #721 [19], 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 [20], 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 [21], 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 [22]and Hughes [23] were part of the February 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar. He was part of a delegation [24] that met with her in March 2006 and held a joint press conference. A letter [25] 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. . . .
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 [11], 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 [12] 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. . . .
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. . . .