“ . . . In 2003 and 2004, President Bush asked Faizul Khan, who is affiliated with the Saudi-funded Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., and serves on the board of directors of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), to give the blessing. This year, the Justice Department officially labeled ISNA as a U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement aiming to establish a global Islamic empire, and also as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas fund-raising Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development trial still awaiting a verdict in Dallas. . . .”
Comment: Sadly, observations like this come almost exclusively from a handful of conservative blogs and commentators, some of whom are willing to set forth the Bush/GOP/Islamist connection. Faizul Khan was one of the primary spiritual mentors to Major Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter)! He (Khan) is also linked to the milieu of the institutions targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002! Khan’s (and Hasan’s) mosque is linked to the Amana Mutual Fund, whose founder–Yaqub Mirza–set up the institutions raided on 3/20/2002.
One of the directors of the Amana Mutual Fund is Talat Othman, a former director of Harken Energy, a close personal friend and political adviser to both Presidents Bush, the man who delivered a Muslim benediction at the 2000 Republican convention; a director or Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute and the man who interfered on behalf of the individuals and institutions targeted by the 2002 Green Quest raids!
Take a Look at Hasan’s Old Mosque
by Stephen Schwartz (New York Post; 11/7/2009)
” . . . We’ve also learned that, before his transfer to Ft. Hood last year, Hasan served as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, and regularly attended Friday prayer at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md.
The Silver Spring clerics have issued formal statements condemning the carnage at Ft. Hood. But Imam Faizul Khan, long the main prayer leader at the mosque and a friend of Hasan, said he never believed Hasan capable of such an act. . . . And Khan is a leading board member of the Islamic Society of North America — the main Wahhabi-lobby group in the United States, established by Saudi Arabia to impose extremism on American Muslims. ISNA has a long and disgraceful record of promoting radical Islam.
On the roster of the ISNA board (listed on its Web site), the Silver Spring center’s Imam Faizul Khan is the fourth member under its president.
But the mosque has worse associations. On its own Web site (mccmd.org), it promotes a Sharia-based financial product — the Amana Mutual Fund, put together by the Wahhabis at the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), in northern Virginia.
Federal antiterrorism agents raided IIIT in the Operation GreenQuest raids of 2002. That operation remains an ongoing inquiry; IIIT and the Amana fund are still under investigation. Convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian is still in US federal custody because of his refusal to give evidence about the Virginia Wahhabi ring caught in GreenQuest. . . .”
Excellent observation, Dave. The point being, as I see it, that “conservative” and “reactionary” are two distinct things. Currently, most Republican legislators and paid noisemakers from Fox, et al, know their task is to muddy the discussion, and gum up the processes and agendas — liberal, conservative, what have you — and of course to get re-elected by the very voters they are screwing over.
Meanwhile, ANY administration can dine with whomever they please, as long as the core constituency is served the largest helping. (Is it passé to call it the military-industrial complex?) It will be interesting to see if and how Brand Obama gets thrown to the dogs before ’12, but so far the bailouts and the growing war machine in Afghanistan have kept the masters happy.