In this stunning investigation, the Ground Zero Mosque Imam’s links to Malaysia are traced. Are his plans based upon Malaysian Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood strategies of conquest?

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Aug. 21, 2010

All roads taken by Feisal Abdul Rauf seem to lead to the sharia state of Malaysia.

Rauf spent many weeks there in summer 2010. He first attended school there. Rauf stands second in command at Malaysia’s Perdana Global Peace Movement to antisemitic former Malaysian P.M. and Islamic law advocate Mahathir Mohamad,1 who in Nov. 2002, incited global anti-West financial war as a “jihad worth fighting for.” 2 Rauf’s father, Muslim Brother Mohammed Abdul Rauf, a colleague and close contemporary of MB founder Hassan al-Banna, established four Malaysian Islamic study centers, including the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, which Mahathir invited him back to Malaysia to open. Malaysia’s IIU now rivals Pakistan’s International Islamic University in Karachi. 3

It now seems that Malaysian Islamic ideology also played a big role in formulating the Muslim Brotherhood strategy to destroy the West from within and sabotage “its miserable house.”4

Those words, of course, paraphrase Article 4 of “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” penned by Mohamed Akram and secretly circulated to trusted Muslim Brothers on May 22, 1991.5

Also entitled “Understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America,” Article 4 needs no further comment. In its entirety, it succinctly and frighteningly explains,

“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 [own] hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.” 6

Recognizing the centrality of Article 17, however, takes on critical importance in light of national and increasingly international furor over Feisal Abdul Rauf ‘s plan to construct a towering 15-story mosque at Ground Zero. Entitled “Understanding the role and the nature of work of The Islamic Center’ in every city with what achieves the goal of the process of settlement,” Article 17 states,

“The center we seek is the one which constitutes the “axis” of our Movement, the “perimeter” of the circle of our work, our “balance center”, the “base” for our rise and our “Dar al-Arqam” to educate us, prepare us and supply our battalions in addition to being the “niche” of our prayers. (emphasis added)

Like Rauf, reports the Oxford Dictionary of Islam, Dar-al-Arqam is rooted in Malaysia. Actually, Feisal Abdul Rauf could easily have drawn from the prototype “grassroots Malaysian Islamic dawah [proselytization] movement” that Ashari Muhammad al-Tamimi founded in 1968, and evidently named for the first Islamic school of Muhammad, to

“revive Islamic religious belief and values for comprehensive practice in everyday life. Emphasizes self-assessment, self-correction, and formation of the Islamic personality. Uses the Sufi teacher-disciple bond to reinforce obedience to leadership. Sponsors lectures, concerts, and cultural shows, publishes books, magazines, and newspapers, and produces videos and cassette tapes showing the Islamic way of life. Expanded to an international arena in 1979 through missionary programs and diplomatic contacts. Has established self-contained Islamic villages throughout Malaysia to demonstrate the viability of the Islamic sociopolitical and economic system. Operates schools, clinics, businesses, agricultural complexes, and advertising and service agencies.” 7

Rauf expressed almost identical wishes in his 2000 book, Islam a Sacred Law: What Every Muslim should Know about Shariah. 8 In it, as in his later, 2004 book, Rauf pines for pure, orthodox Islam and the inspiration for both violent and non-violent jihad, as preached by a bevy of Islamic clerics throughout the ages — such as 14th century jurist Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) and his 18th century follower Muhammad b. Abdul al-Wahhab (d. 1793). Rauf seeks to “rejuvenate” their Islamic religious spirit, and that of some he falsely labels “modernists,” Jamal al-Dinal-Afghani (d. 1897), Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905), and Abduh’s biographer Rashid Rida (d. 1935). Far from modern, however, they all sought to impose sharia law more widely — despite its requirements for permanent jihad war, and discrimination and dehumanization of non-Muslims and women. So did classical Sufi master al-Ghazali (d. 1111) — another orthodox Muslim, an equally bellicose jurist concerning annual jihad campaigns, discriminating against non-Muslims and imposing Islamic law. 9

And yes, Rauf plans a mosque: His American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) registered with the Internal Revenue Service in 1997 as a “church” — only to avoid the annual 990 tax form required of all other U.S. tax-exempt non-profit organizations. But it is not a church as Westerners understand that word. It is a battalion.

Article 17 of the MB strategy for North America proves there is nothing innocent about an “Islamic cultural center,” whether labeled “mosque” or not. It clearly invokes the need for military and politically supremacist strategies.

This is in order for the Islamic center to turn – in action not in words – into a seed “for a small Islamic society” which is a reflection and a mirror to our central organizations. The center ought to turn into a “beehive” which produces sweet honey. Thus, the Islamic center would turn into a place for study, family, battalion, course, seminar, visit, sport, school, social club, women gathering, kindergarten for male and female youngsters, the office of the domestic political resolution, and the center for distributing our newspapers, magazines, books and our audio and visual tapes.

In brief we say: we would like for the Islamic center to become “The House of Dawa”‘ and “the general center” in deeds first before name. As much as we own and direct these centers at the continent level, we can say we are marching successfully towards the settlement of Dawa’ in this country.

Meaning that the “center’s” role should be the same as the “mosque’s” role during the time of God’s prophet, … when he marched to “settle” the Dawa’ in its first generation in Madina. from the mosque, he drew the Islamic life and provided to the world the most magnificent and fabulous civilization humanity knew.

This mandates that, eventually, the region, the branch and the Usra turn into “operations rooms” for planning, direction, monitoring and leadership for the Islamic center in order to be a role model to be followed. (emphasis added).10

Whatever he wishes to name his planned Islamic center at Ground Zero — Cordoba House or Park 51, Islamic cultural center or mosque — Muslim Brother Feisal Abdul Rauf clearly follows the 1991 Muslim Brotherhood strategic mandate for North American, which his father followed in 1965 — decades before it was even set to paper. Rauf senior secretly bought two thirds of a prime 3rd Avenue Manhattan block for a personal Islamic “trust” with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya. 11 Likewise, only when the E. 96th St. Islamic Cultural Center of New York opened in 1992 did Rauf le père reveal that $17 million in construction funding emanated from Malaysia and 45 other Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) nations. 12 By 2010, the enormous upper 3rd Ave. Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its founders envisioned apartment units restricted to Muslims alone. 13

The Muslim Brotherhood clearly spelled it out in Article 17. Building Islamic centers equals building military “battalions,” points from which to later stage the planned destruction of the West.

NOTES
1 “Agenda,” Perdana Global Peace Organization, Nov. 25, 2009, http://www.perdana4peace.org/agenda.aspx?x=3 (viewed 7/10/2010, subsequently deleted, but previously archived in pdf); Jim Hoft, “Arrested Gaza flotilla ‘peace activists’ are al-Qaeda & Muslim Brotherhood members; have record of radicalism,” Big Government, June 2, 2010, http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/06/02/arrested-gaza-flotilla-peace-activists-are-al-qaeda-have-record-of-radicalism/ (viewed 6/10/2010).
2 Gamal Essam al-Din, “Financial jihad,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Nov. 21-27, 2002, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/613/ec2.htm (viewed 7/19/2010, as cited by Alyssa A. Lappen, “Financial Jihad,” Human Events, 9/22/2005, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=9235, first viewed 9/22/2005).
3 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/bernama-malaysian-national-news-agency/mi_8082/is_20041212/islamic-scholar-tan-sri-dr/ai_n51486662/ (viewed 5/4/2010); Jaclyn Ling-Chien Neo, “Anti-God, anti-Islam and anti-Quran’: Expanding the range of participants and parameters in discourse over women’s rights and Islam in Malaysia,” Pacific Basin Law Journal, Vol. 21:29, 2003, p. 69, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID753226_code491760.pdf?abstractid=753226&mirid=1 (viewed 5/7/2010).
4 Mohamed Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991,” http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/HLF/Akram_GeneralStrategicGoal.pdf (viewed 9/18/2007); “Attachment A,” In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division, USA vs. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, http://www.pipelinenews.org/images/2007-05-29-US%20v%20HLF-ListCoConspirators.pdf (first viewed 6/1/2007).
5 Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991,” ibid.; “Attachment A,” In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division, USA vs. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, ibid.
6 Akram, “Explanatory Memo on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991,” ibid., p. 21.
7 John L. Esposito, Oxford Dictionary of Islam, p. 62, http://books.google.com/books?id=6VeCWQfVNjkC&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=false; see also http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e489 (both viewed 8/20/2010).
8 Feisal Abdul Rauf, Islam a Sacred Law: what Every Muslim Should Know about Shariah, Qiblah Books, 2000.
9 Andrew G. Boston, “Behind the mosque: extremism at Ground Zero,” New York Post, Jul. 23, 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/behind_the_mosque_yXUJDCpszRLF9dG1heLU1H?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME= (viewed 7/23/2010).
10 Akram, “Explanatory Memo on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991,” ibid., p. 24.
11 George Goodman, “Ground broken for Islamic Center,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1984, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/realestate/ground-broken-for-islamic-center.html?&pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010); Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).; Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” ibid.
12 Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, ibid.
13 Goodman, ibid.; David Dunlap, “A new mosque for Manhattan for the 21st century,” New York Times, Apr. 26, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/arts/architecture-a-new-mosque-for-manhattan-for-the-21st-century.html?pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010).

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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by Alyssa A. Lappen
ACT for America | Aug. 17, 2010

Feisal Abdul Rauf, born in Kuwait in 1948, boasts of his issue from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship.” 1 He presents himself as a Muslim moderate. 2 Yet Feisal Rauf’s Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets.

Evidence of family, and direct Rauf Muslim Brotherhood connections

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.” 21

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.

Attended school in U.K. And Malaysia

Rauf attended grammar and high school in the U.K. and Malaysia, according to his biography. He probably arrived in America in 1965, at 17, when his father moved to New York City from Malaysia to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center on 96th Street (built in the mid-1980s). 28 Rauf obtained a bachelor’s of science in physics at New York’s Columbia University. 29 In 1971, the family moved to Washington D.C., where Rauf’s father headed the Islamic Center completed in 1957 on Massachusetts Ave. 30 (His father, buried in Suitland, Md.’s for-profit Washington National Cemetery, also founded four Malaysian Islamic studies programs — an Islamic college in Klang, the Islamic Studies department at Malay University, an Islamic Studies School at University of Malaya — and finally International Islamic University of Malaysia.) 31 Rauf’s key sharia index pals also frequent Malaysia.

Instructed by a master dissembler, Feisal Rauf had long planned to further develop his father’s U.S. Islamic expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway downtown. Area residents didn’t notice it until 2006, when the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) suddenly refused to license a new bar on the block and began yanking others’ liquor licenses too. 32

In Rauf’s 2004 book he stated, “American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law.” The U.S. Constitution is sharia-compliant, and U.S. “political structure is sharia-compliant,” since Muslim jurists over the centuries have “defined five areas of life” to be protected by Islamic law — life, mind, religion, property, and family, which the Constitution and U.S. laws protect. Rauf’s seeks to seduce Americans into accepting sharia on Islamic terms.

This too explains Rauf’s ties to Malaysia — a sharia state with a heavy MB presence that his father shaped. It has an official Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM) to promote “advancement of Islamic affairs,” formulate “policies for the ADVANCEMENT of Islamic affairs in the country and to safeguard the sanctity of the aqidah and the teachings of Islam.” (Emphasis in original.) 33

Described in one Asian report as an Egyptian citizen living in the U.S., as journalist Alyssa A. Lappen observed in May 2010, Rauf’s assertions like those of his father before him

“merely fulfill the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine of flexibility — adapting to each and every environment in which the brothers eventually hope to force Islamic law upon the masses. Rauf’s claims starkly represent taqiyya, the Islamic practice of deception, to further theocratic and essentially fascist Islamic advances. And the additional “leeway” Rauf seeks for intra-community religious-law enforcement is a thinly veiled attempt to impose sharia more widely in the U.S., in direct contravention of the U.S. Constitution. 34

Rauf’s early U.K. education and familiarization with American values and popular culture made him an acutely adept practitioner of taqiyya. 35 Indeed, sharia inhibits all kinds of freedoms, especially for women and non-Muslims. Islamic law protects only the lives, minds, religion, property and families of Muslims — not those of all peoples of all faiths, as Rauf pretends. 36

Furthering Islamic gains

To further North American Islamic gains, Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His Kashmir-born interior-designer wife, Daisy Khan, has run it since 2005. 37

Khan’s uncle Faroque A. Khan is a trustee at the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and ISNA’s Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA) subsidiary. 38 In July 2006, Faroque Khan gave the IMANA keynote in Beijing. He touted both Rauf’s books, which seek a clean, pure Wahabbi brand of sharia. Until at least 2006, Faroque Khan also chaired Westbury’s Islamic Center of Long Island, an affiliate of the MB Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). 39

Rauf then cultivated new influence spheres. In about 2002, Rauf began lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York Chautauqua Institution (CI), a 136-year-old non-profit. CI Religion director Joan Brown Campbell took Rauf under her wing. Under a convenient “Abrahamic” faiths rubric to cover Rauf’s radical Islamic agenda, Campbell named him prospective head for a CI Muslim house, planned by Rauf’s new tax-free 501(3)c organization, Muslim friends of Chautauqua. He also befriended former British nun Karen Armstrong, a devotee of Islam, 40 who in 2002 promoted the Muslim Brotherhood, as if the father of all Islamic terror groups was a progressive charity. She said,

“[it] set up a wonderful welfare program before it was suppressed. … factories where Muslims could work, had time for prayers, had vacation time, insurance, [learned] labor laws, [provided] clinics, they taught people how to treat sewage, drainage, and it was always the religions response to try to help modernity to give to the ordinary people the benefits of modernity in an Islamic setting that made sense to them and made things more balanced.” 41

In 2003, Rauf allied with Denver’s Aspen Institute (AI) leaders, including its former executive director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennett. In 2004, when Rauf established ASMA’s radical Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, he and Bennett also co-founded Cordoba Initiative in Aspen, purportedly to “improve” Muslim-West relations. 42 Rauf gets funding from many liberal organizations, including Gloria Steinem’s Ms. Foundation. The Carnegie Corp. under Iranian Muslim immigrant Vartan Gregorian, in 2008 gave $300,000 to ASMA and $800,000 to AI for “Islamic understanding.” 43

Defying purported intentions

Even in English, however Rauf has often contradicted his conciliatory pretense. “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians,” Rauf told the Sydney Morning Herald in March 2004. He added that terrorism will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims.

“[I]t was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.” 44

But the West’s strictly defensive World War II role invoked no religion. And Rauf ignores continuous 7th through 16th century Islamic attacks on non-Muslim peoples throughout the Mid East, Africa, Europe, central Asia and India. And Daisy Khan glossed Rauf’s insults in a Dec. 2009 Fox interview. 45

While he frequently insults the West and the U.S., however, true to Muslim Brotherhood form, Rauf also happily expands his Islamic outreach at U.S. government and taxpayers’ expense. Since ASMA registered itself with the IRS as a “church,” it thus acquired doubly beneficial tax-exempt status, in that churches need not file annual 990 tax forms ordinarily required for non-profit groups.

Worse, both Rauf and his wife since at least January 2009 have worked for the U.S. State Department, which has also funded at least one radical ASMA Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow meeting. 46 In August 2010, news broke that the State Department had hired them both as envoys to the Islamic world. Rauf was then already in Malaysia, and planned to remain abroad until completing a State Department-funded Middle East tour — with stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar. 47 Despite White House and State Department denials, moreover, London’s Arsharq Alawsat reported in Arabic that Rauf might use the U.S.-funded travel to raise money for his Ground Zero mosque. 48

Indeed, Saudi Arabia founded the OIC in 1969 to promote the “struggle for Islam,” and served as its chief sponsor since. The OIC charter includes all Muslim Brotherhood principles, foremost to spread sharia worldwide. Headquarters remain in Jedda, pending “liberation of Jerusalem.” In 1973, the OIC established the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “according to the Islamic sharia principles” — and thus launched the petrodollar-based Islamic financing market to stealthily spread Islam and sharia worldwide. 49 “[A]n Islamic organization must serve God…and ultimately sustain…the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” 50 Obviously, with sharia principles in mind, 46 OIC member states secretly funded the 1984 construction Rauf’s father orchestrated of New York’s Islamic Center.

Like his father, Rauf may also get major Saudi funding: In February 2001, the IDB established the U.S. dollar denominated Awqaf Properties Investment Fund (APIF) to “develop and invest in accordance with … Islamic sharia [principles], in Awqaf real estate properties … in [IDB] member countries … and Islamic communities in non-member countries.” (emphasis added) Financing applications go — where else? — to Saudi Arabia, which has worked tirelessly for decades to advance Islamic communities in non-Muslim nations — predominantly the U.S. 51

The MB seeks to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law (sharia), and impose Islam and sharia law worldwide. Most North American MB organizations, including Rauf’s, avoid widely publicizing their aim. But the HT at a July 2009 suburban Chicago Khalifah conference openly promised to replace capitalism with Islam and sharia. 52 Rauf’s December 2007 appearance with HT in Kuala Lumpur is not surprising, given his early, and often-stated desire for a wholesale shift to sharia law, by any means.

Cordoba’s real meaning

For those knowledgeable in Islamic history, the name of Rauf’s Cordoba Institute telegraphs his deceptiveness. Cordoba (also the name for Chautauqua’s proposed new Muslim house) ruled the Islamic Caliphate for most of Spain from Tariq ibn Zayid’s 711 invasion through 1248. Cordoba controlled some Spanish regions until their full liberation in 1492. Neither the Umayyads (who ruled monolithically until about 1031), nor the vicious Almoravids (who swept over the Atlas mountains into Spain in 1080), ruled non-Muslims so kindly. Islamic harshness varied, but remained ever-present. Rauf blatantly whitewashes the brutal Islamic history in Spain. While others also purvey this historical falsehood, Muslim rule in Spain never remotely approached the mythic beneficence Rauf pretends. 53

Muslims have traditionally destroyed the worship houses of virtually every other faith. Islam plundered tens of thousands (if not 100,000s) of Christian churches and monasteries, synagogues and holy Jewish holy archaeological sites, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh and other temples and retreats. To advance jihad, Islam then claimed them all as “mosques,” forever Muslim. That’s what Rauf really wants at Ground Zero, to proclaim Islamic victory.


NOTES:
1 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).
2 Feisal Abdul Rauf biography, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html (viewed 4/28/2010).
3 Profile of Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf.
4 George Goodman, “Ground broken for Islamic Center,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1984,
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/28/realestate/ground-broken-for-islamic-center.html?&pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010); Islamic Cultural Center of New York, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York
(viewed 5/9/2010); Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” ibid.
5 Goodman, ibid.; David Dunlap, “A new mosque for Manhattan for the 21st century,” New York Times, Apr. 26, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/26/arts/architecture-a-new-mosque-for-manhattan-for-the-21stcentury.
html?pagewanted=print (viewed 5/10/2010).
6 Daniel J. Wakin, “New head of mosque wants proof,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/02/nyregion/a-nation-challenged-the-imam-new-head-of-mosque-wants-proof.html (viewed 5/19/2010).
7 “Agenda,” Perdana Global Peace Organization, Nov. 25, 2009, http://www.perdana4peace.org/agenda.aspx?x=3
(viewed 7/10/2010); Jim Hoft, “Arrested Gaza flotilla ‘peace activists’ are al-Qaeda & Muslim Brotherhood members; have
record of radicalism,” Big Government, June 2, 2010, http://biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/06/02/arrested-gaza-flotillapeace-
activists-are-al-qaeda-have-record-of-radicalism/ (viewed 6/10/2010).
8 Gamal Essam al-Din, “Financial jihad,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Nov. 21-27, 2002, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/613/ec2.htm (viewed 7/19/2010, as cited by Alyssa A. Lappen, “Financial Jihad,” Human Events, 9/22/2005, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=9235, (first viewed 9/22/2005).
9 Lappen, “The Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Muslim Brotherhood Roots, Radical Dreams,” Pajamas Media, May 14, 2010, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-ground-zero-mosque-developer-muslim-brotherhood-roots-radicaldreams/?
singlepage=true (viewed 5/14/2010).
10 Lappen, “The Ground Zero Mosque Developer: Muslim Brotherhood Roots, Radical Dreams,” Pajamas Media, ibid.
11 Lappen, “Ground Zero mosque developer,” Pajamas Media, ibid.
12 http://hizbut-tahrir.or.id/2007/12/27/imam-masjid-al-farah-new-york-city-konstitusi-as-sesuai-syari%E2%80%99ah/
13 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement, fiscal year ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010), as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, May 10, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp (viewed 5/10/2010).
14 ASMA Financial statement for year ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 8, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf , ibid, as cited by Gadi Adelman, “Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,” Family Security Matters, ibid, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp.
15 Feisal Abdul Rauf, “Obama’s challenge to the Muslim world,” Washington Post, Jun. 5, 2009, http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/feisal_abdul_rauf/2009/06/obamas_challenge_to_the_muslim_world
.html (viewed 4/26/2010).
16 Lappen, “Ground Zero Mosque Developer,” Pajamas Media, ibid.; Spencer Ackerman, “Religious protection,” The New Republic, Dec. 12, 2005, http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/religious-protection (both viewed 5/14/2010); Feisal Abdul Rauf, What’s Right with Islam: a New Vision for Muslims and the West, (New York: HarperOne, 2004) p. 86.
17 Walid Shoebat, “Ground Zero Imam: ‘I Don’t Believe in Religious Dialogue’,” Pajamas Media, May 27, 2010, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ground-zero-imam-i-dont-believe-in-religious-dialogue/?singlepage=true (viewed 5/27/2010); see also “Separation of Church and State,” Hadielislam.com, Dec. 9, 2007, as translated by Google, http://www.hadielislam.com/arabic/index.php?pg=articles/article&id=12025 (viewed 6/10/2010).
18 Shoebat, ibid; see also “The Separation of Church and State,” Hadielislam.com, Dec. 9, 2007, ibid.
19 Lappen, “Ground Zero mosque imam’s radical connections,” Family Security Matters, Jul 16, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6766/pub_detail.asp (viewed 7/16/2010).
20 Robert Spencer, “Hamas-linked CAIR leader charges Islamic supremacist Ground Zero mega mosque opponents with ‘Islamophobia’,” Jihad Watch, Jul. 14, 2010, http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/07/hamas-linked-cair-board-member-chargesislamic-
supremacist-ground-zero-mega-mosque-opponents-with-is.html (viewed 7/14/2010).
21 Lappen, “Peace, tolerance and freedom? No way,” Family Security Matters, Jul. 16, 2010, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6726/pub_detail.asp (viewed 7/16/2010).
22 Andrew G. Bostom, “Behind the Mosque,” New York Post, Jul 29, 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/behind_the_mosque_yXUJDCpszRLF9dG1heLU1H?CMP=OTCrss&
FEEDNAME= (viewed 7/29/2010).
23 Andrew McCarthy, “Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center rubble,” National Review Online, Jul. 24, 2010, http://article.nationalreview.com/438616/raufs-dawa-from-the-world-trade-center-rubble/andrew-c-mccarthy (viewed 7/24/2010).
24 “CountertERRORism Policy: MACLC’s critique of the NYPD’s report on Homegrown radicalism,” Nov. 20, 2008, http://maclcnypdcritique.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/maclc-report/ (viewed 7/10/2010); “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, Copenhagen-Denmark ’06, conference report,” ibid.; “Meet the MLT,” http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e126830/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e1268350/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e12683100/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e12683150/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e12683200/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e12683250/
http://www.muslimleadersoftomorrow.org/about/search_mlts/83fd6847bcddfcb922a27f6542e12683300/ (all, 5/12/2010).
25 “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, Copenhagen-Denmark ’06, conference report,” ASMA, Jul. 2006, http://www.asmasociety.org/mlt2006/FullReport.pdf; Mona Eltahawy, “Backstory: what it means to be Muslim,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 16, 2006, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0816/p20s01-lire.html; “Yasir Qhadi explains Ilmfest,” Mujahideenryder.net, Sept. 8, 2009, http://www.mujahideenryder.net/2009/09/08/sh-yasir-qadhi-explains-ilmfest/ (all viewed 5/10/2010).
26 Lappen, “Ground Zero mosque imam’s radical connections,” ibid.; Chuck Bennett & Jana Winter, “City principal is ‘revolting’,” New York Post, Aug. 6, 2007,
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/regional/item_UerzwvF7fcSQY8YOP1ln4K;jsessionid=C3994B0112D76311258585CA2D
EE1713; Stephen Schwartz, “CAIR vs. the NYPD,” Weekly Standard, Apr. 11, 2008, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/968cekhc.asp?pg=1 (viewed 6/10/2010).
27 Rasha Elass, “Shariah index will rate countries’ Islamic law,” National, Jul. 21, 2009, http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090721/NATIONAL/707209836&SearchID=73390571805898 (viewed 5/11/2010).
28 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.; Islamic Cultural Center of New York,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Cultural_Center_of_New_York (viewed 5/9/2010).
29 Rauf bio, http://asmasociety.org/about/b_rauf.html, ibid.; Profile of Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf, ibid.
30 Islamic Center of Washington, Wikipedia, ibid.
31 Salmy Hashim, “Islamic scholar Tan Sri Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf Dies,” Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency, Dec. 12, 2004, http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/bernama-malaysian-national-newsagency/
mi_8082/is_20041212/islamic-scholar-tan-sri-dr/ai_n51486662/ (viewed 5/4/2010); Jaclyn Ling-Chien Neo, “Anti-God, anti-Islam and anti-Quran’: Expanding the range of participants and parameters in discourse over women’s rights and Islam in Malaysia,” Pacific Basin Law Journal, Vol. 21:29, 2003, p. 69, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID753226_code491760.pdf?abstractid=753226&mirid=1 (viewed 5/7/2010).
32 Glassman, “West Broadway bars facing license ban.” Tribeca Trib, Mar. 31, 2006, ibid.
33 Department of Islamic Development Malaysia, Portal, http://www.islam.gov.my/english/jakim.html (viewed 5/27/2010).
34 “Taqiyah,” Dictionary of Islam, http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Hughes/t.htm, as cited by Lappen, ibid.
35 Ikhwan website, http://www.ummah.net/ikhwan/ (viewed 6/4/2008); The Muslim Brotherhood charter calls on members to sidestep attention through their long-established “flexibility” strategy — muruna in Arabic. To spread Islam, a basic requirement of shari’a or Islamic law, MB adherents also routinely practice concealment, known alternatively as either taqiyya or kitman. See also Warner MacKenzie, “Understanding Taqiyya: Islamic principle of lying for the sake of Allah,” Apr. 30, 2007, http://www.islam-watch.org/Warner/Taqiyya-Islamic-Principle-Lying-for-Allah.htm (viewed 5/16/2010).
36 al-Mawardi, The Laws of Islamic Governance; Reliance of the Traveller
37 “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf,” chairman, Cordoba Institute, http://www.cordobainitiative.org/?q=content/staff-bios (viewed 5/11/2010).; Daisy Khan biography, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/b_dkhan.html (viewed 5/12/2010).
38 Stephen Suleiman Schwartz, “A mosque grows near Brooklyn,” Weekly Standard, 7.26.2010, http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/articles/mosque-grows-near-brooklyn (viewed 7/16/2010);
39 Faroque Ahmed Khan, “Approaching modern technology challenges through the traditions of Ibn Sina,” Annual Convection of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, Beijing, China, Jul. 25-28, 2006, http://www.fimaweb.net/main/medicalethics/ibnsina.doc (viewed 7/19/2010).
40 Chautauqua Institute website pages, (viewed 5/14/2010).
41 Quotation in Chautauqua institution panel, summer 2002.
42 American Society for Muslim Advancement Financial statement for period ended Jun. 30, 2009, p. 9, http://www.asmasociety.org/about/asma_audit_2009.pdf (viewed 5/10/2010).
43 “Carnegie Corp. contributes to deeper understanding of Islam, Muslim societies; $10 Million initial investment part of comprehensive strategy to enrich public dialogue,” Ascribe Newswire, Apr. 7, 2008, http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgibin/
behold.pl?ascribeid=20080407.082243&time=09%2025%20PDT&year=2008&public=0 (viewed 7/12/2010).
44 Frank Walker, “We must act to end jihad: imam,” Sydney Sun-Herald, Mar. 21, 2004, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/21/1079789939987.html (viewed 4/5/2004).
45 Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity, ibid; Andrew G. Bostom, Legacy of Jihad, ibid.
46 “Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Founder, Cordoba Initiative; Daisy Kahn, Executive Director, American Society for Muslim Advancement; Sayyed Mirza, Project Manager, Reframing Perceptions of Islam and Muslims, East West Center;
and Omar Amanat, Entrepreneur,” U.S. State Dept. press release, Jan, 20, 2009, http://2002-2009-fpc.state.gov/67976.htm47 Claudia Rosett, “Further travels of Imam Feisal,” Forbes, Aug. 6, 2010, http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/06/imamfeisal-
ground-zero -mosque-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html (viewed 8/6/2010).
48 Jeff Earl and Brendan Scott, “Feds funding Ground Zero imam’s Mideast trip,” New York Post, Aug. 10, 2010, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/feds_funding_zero_imam_mideast_trip_OTq9dmoHpxbaKvJbB4VLGM (viewed 8/10/2010); Howard LaFranchi, “Is Ground Zero mosque imam best choice for diplomatic mission to Mideast,” Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 11, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2010/0811/Is-ground-zeromosque-
imam-best-choice-for-diplomatic-mission-to-Mideast (viewed 8/11/2010).
49 “Principles of Operation, Islamic Development Bank,” http://www.isdb.org/irj/go/km/docs/documents/IDBDevelopments/Internet/English/IDB/CM/Projects/OperationsPrinciples.
html (viewed 5/27/2010). Was stated with slight difference, at “Islamic Development Bank,” Organization of the Islamic Conference, http://www.oicun.org/articles/22/1/Islamic-Development-Bank/1.htm (accessed 8 Oct. 2007), as cited in Lappen and Rachel Ehrenfeld, Chapter 28, “Shari’a financing and the coming Ummah,” Jeffrey H. Norwitz, ed., Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency (Newport: Naval War College, 2008), pp. 389-404; see also https://www.alyssaalappen.org/wp-content/uploads/sharia-financing-and-the-coming-ummahby-
ehrenfeld-and-lappen.pdf and http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=31374 and
http://www.rightsidenews.com/homeland-security-archives/jihad-economics-and-islamic-banking.html (last viewed 5/20/2010).
50 Nasser M. Suleiman, “Corporate governance in Islamic banks,” http://www.al-bab.com/arab/econ/nsbanks.htm (last viewed 6/20/2009).
51 “Awqaf Properties Investment Fund (APIF),” IDB, http://www.isdb.org/irj/go/km/docs/documents/IDBDevelopments/Internet/English/IDB/CM/About%20IDB/Specialized%2
0Funds/AWQAF%20Properties%20Investment%20Fund/APIF.html; “Application procedure for projects financing under APIF,” IDB, http://www.isdb.org/irj/go/km/docs/documents/IDBDevelopments/Internet/English/IDB/CM/About%20IDB/Specialized%2
0Funds/AWQAF%20Properties%20Investment%20Fund/Projects%20Financing/How%20to (both viewed 5/27/2010).
52 “Hizb Ut-Tahrir: Shariah Takes Precedence over U.S. Constitution,” IPT News, July 20, 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/1100/hizb-ut-tahrir-shariah-takes-precedence-over-us, (viewed May 13, 2010).
53 Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain, University of California, 2006, 2nd ed., 206 pp.

According to three important contemporary reports Fletcher summarizes, — one “crucial administrative document from the Islamic side,” some small “archaeological evidence” and the “Chronicle of 754,” an anonymous Christian narrative in Latin — after 711 Arab raids laid waste to “several provinces,” Tariq ibn Zayid’s army followed with fully equipped legions, who in 712 murdered Roderic of Spain.

North Africa’s governor then executed all Toledo’s prominent nobles (causing the Bishop to flee), devastated the countryside and perpetrated further destruction and mass murder in Zargoza and the Ebro valley. Upon returning to the Umayyad seat of power in Damascus, he transported innumerable enslaved Visigoth lords, and all their gold and jewels.

By 715, the next governor, Abd al-Aziz, conquered provinces throughout Iberia. Documents and archaeological excavations corroborate the arrival of Toledo’s Bishop in Rome and signs of 8th century devastation beside coins dated 711 to 713. In his April 713 treaty, Abd al-Aziz promised Theodemir lordship over, and free Christian practice throughout, seven southeastern towns. For this Abd al-Aziz extorted from Theodemir stiff annual head taxes of one silver dinar per person, all the region’s wheat, barley, unfermented grape juice, vinegar, honey and oil, and an inviolable promise not to help enemies of Spain’s Islamic conquerors.

From 718 through 720, As-Samh handed all Visigoth monarchy holdings to Arab Muslim governors, and gave all the less fertile land to the North African Berber Muslims. His generosity brought 150,000 to 200,000 Arab and Berber soldiers to Spain to usurp its wealth.

After the 750 Abbasids defeat of the Umayyads, in 762, the Islamic caliphate moved from Damascus to Baghdad. In 756 the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman escaped the Abbasid Caliph al-Saffah (“shedder of blood”) and established a rival Umayyad empire that ruled Spain until 1031. But the Umayyads continued to wreck havoc on Spain. Emir al Haken (796-822) kept a palace cavalry of 2,000 and a standing army of 60,000. In 805 alone, he crucified 72 people. In 818, he leveled Cordoba’s southern suburb. The military governors of the Umayyads’ three Spanish regions were constantly at war. In 884, for example, Burgos was destroyed “to its foundations.”

Even the reputedly enlightened Abd al-Rahman III (912-961) brutalized the population. At the Cordoba palace alone, he owned 3,750 slaves on his death in 961. On July 26 in 920, a Pyrenean monk at San Juan de la Pena recorded a slaughter in Valdejunquera, southwest of Pamplona. In 920, a three month campaign culminated on July 25 with a siege of the Muez castle. All “combatants” were “put to the sword,” including over 500 “counts and knights.” While returning to Cordoba, general al-Nasir totally destroyed many other villages too. The poet Ibn Abd Rabbihi later wrote the invaders left Osma “like a blackened piece of charcoal.”

In 976 Almanzor or Al-Mansur (“the victorious”) took power. In 977 he campaigned with his general against Leon.

Some 56 campaigns followed in Almanzor’s rule alone. In 985, he sacked Barcelona and the San Cugat del Valles monastery. In 987, he plundered Coimbra (now in Portugal). In 995, he imprisoned the count of Castile, and destroyed Carrion and Astorga. In 997 he attacked Santiago de Compostela. In 999 he destroyed Pamplona and in 1002 flattened Roija and San Millan de la Cogolla monastery. Almonzor raided Catalonia in 1003; Castile in 1004; Leon in 1005; and Aragon in 1006. Almanzor himself described all war on Christians as Jihad. Christian subjects said he was “seized by the Devil.”

In the 11th century, Morocco’s Almoravids crossed the Atlas mountains, conquered its plain and then conquered Spain — which they ruled from 1080 until Fernando liberated most of the peninsula in 1248. “[N]othing can stand in their way,” wrote the Muslim historian Ibn Kahldun of Almoravid religious and military fervor, “for their outlook is the same and the object they desire is common to all and is one for which they are prepared to die.” Thus in 1148 alone, the Almohads massacred 100,000 Jews in Fez, 120,000 Jews in Marrakesh and wrecked devastation and death throughout Spain, from Seville to Tortosa.

In 1148, Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides fled Cordoba’s Almohad persecution with his family disguised as Muslims. He found asylum in Fatimid Egypt. Arabs and Muslims had “persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us,” he later wrote. “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they.” Maimonides’ 1172 Epistle to the [persecuted] Jews of Yemen that forced conversions they reported from Yemen, the Berbers had similarly forced upon Jews across the Maghreb and Spain. He described Mohammed as “the Madman,” despairing that the sole objective of his “invented … well known religion,” was “procuring rule and submission….”

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
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Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

Added Clues Suggest MB ties to the Would-be Ground Zero Mosque Chief

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Jul. 16, 2010

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan pretend they’re “moderate Muslims.” Yet another crack has appeared in their crumbling facade, however. The New York City office of their American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), at 475 Riverside Drive, has for many years sat in the very building, on the very floor, immediately adjacent to the suite housing the New York City chapter office of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the U.S. representative of Hamas.

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice declared CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-funding case. In October 2008, the FBI’s Oklahoma office canceled plans to appear at a Muslim “outreach” event due to CAIR’s participation. In Jan. 2009, FBI offices nationwide were reported to have also severed ties with CAIR. In a Feb. 2009 letter to U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC), the FBI confirmed the reports.

Meanwhile on Nov. 24, 2008, HLF and five of its officers were convicted of materially supporting the designated foreign terrorist group, Hamas. Federal prosecutors successfully opposed a petition by CAIR, the Islamic Association of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) to expunge their names from the list of alleged HLF coconspirators. A federal judge denied their motion in 2009. Thus CAIR, ISNA and NAIT remain unindicted terror-funding coconspirators.

By itself, sitting on the same floor, in the next suite to CAIR might not establish ASMA’s tight connections to CAIR or the Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), built on Muslim Brotherhood principles. But sharing office buildings, floors and suites is common amongst Islamic terror-funding and supporting organizations. In the most famous example, in the May 2002 federal raid on the Herndon,Va. Safa companies and SAAR Foundation offices at 555 Grove Street, U.S. Treasury Department Operation Green Quest found over a dozen interlinked terror-funding Muslim charities and companies, all subsequently shuttered. They carted off truckloads of evidence. [1]

Rauf, more importantly embraces high-placed members of CAIR NY, whom he includes in the ASMA Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow (MLT) subsidiary. Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative website also openly promotes Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR efforts and radical ideology. In January, Cordoba posted a news clip from the Muslim Brotherhood website Islam Online, protesting British boxing rules prohibiting players with beards. Cordoba likewise features a duplicitous CAIR press release, seeking funds to “rebuild churches in Malaysia” that were “firebombed by extremists.” It’s highly unlikely, however, that an organization charged with terror financing will actually send money raised to Malay Christians whose churches its radical Muslim Brotherhood pals have destroyed.

Then there are Rauf’s MLT appointees. Brooklyn-based Faiza N. Ali, for example, a self-described “community organizer” and “social justice activist,” serves as Community Affairs Director for CAIR NY, which Rauf and MLT let her deceptively describe as “America’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy group.” Ali also helps lead several other Muslim Brotherhood groups, including the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), an offshoot of the MB’s Muslim Consultative Network. Ali’s MLT profile boasts as well that she wrote MACLC’s “Countert-ERROR-ism” (sic) critique of the New York City Police Department’s well-researched and reported 2008 white paper, “Radicalization in the West: the Homegrown Threat.” With a Pace University bachelor’s degree in political science, Ali also led CAIR-NY’s “campaign” to support her dissimulating piece of nonsense.

Rauf hosts other hotshot MB leaders in his MLT subsidiary too, including Dhaba “Debbie” Almontasser, who like Ali worked with the NY chapter of CAIR, Hamas’ U.S. arm, to counter-attack the New York City Police Department. She organized an online discussion group to obtain “input” for CAIR’s “Community Statement.”

Other U.S.-based MLT radicals include Jihad F. Saleh, a top congressional aid to U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), helping fulfill the legislative goals established by CAIR founder and former chairman Omar Ahmad, who wanted increased Muslim “influence with Congress,” by using Muslims on Capitol Hill “to pressure Congress and the decision makers in America” to shift U.S. foreign policy. (P. David Gaubitz and Paul Sperry, The Muslim Mafia, p. 183) Saleh is not just a Congressional staff point man, though. He has been working closely with national CAIR official and convert Corey Saylor to increase the Muslim Congressional presence through the CAIR-backed Congressional Muslim Staffers Association.

Another, genuine al-Qaeda supporter Yasir Qadhi, serves as academic affairs dean at North America’s “largest and fastest growing college-level Islamic educational” organization, Al Maghrib Institute. Al Qadhi gives frequent radical lectures on the internet, appearing on pages and blogs such as Halal Tube and Mujahadeen Rider, which both frequently mark videos “private,” presumably since Westerners and non-Muslims would take great offense. Al Qadhi doesn’t even need CAIR as his radical middle man.

Several U.S. MLT appointees list no surnames or qualifications whatever. Yet another red flag.

New Yorkers and Americans who consider Rauf a not-so-secret radical are not alone. The devout Bengali Muslim dissident Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury agrees that efforts to build a giant mosque opposite Ground Zero are an abomination. Its construction will only delight jihadists, whom he wants to disappoint. His Weekly Blitz newspaper has published many objections to Rauf’s plan, not least of all since New Yorkers are overwhelmingly opposed, considering it as insensitive, say, as “the German government opening … a Nazi appreciation museum right outside the Auschwitz death camp.”

Choudhury has faced such fights before. Bangladesh authorities imprisoned him many times for his pro-American and pro-Israel sentiments and he still faces trial. Lately, a senior Bangladeshi intelligence official has called him repeatedly threatening “consequences if we continued to publish such [“extremely provocative anti-Islamic”] articles.” His newspaper’s required government registration could be revoked. The official merely seeks to appease “Saudis and other anti-American elements,” however, and perhaps even to renew “previous secret affiliations with jihadist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir.”

Choudhury will not rest, however. No one else should either.

UPDATE, 7/28/2011

SALAH UDDIN SHOAIB CHOUDHURY EXPOSED AS TOTAL FRAUD

Choudhury evidently perpetrated multiple subterfuges in the decade since 9/11. Since at least 2010, for example, the North Korean government compensated him grandly to publish dozens of “propaganda pieces in his Weekly Blitz newspaper, for dictator Kim Jung il’s House of Horrors,” according to Brenda West’s superb investigative piece today at Family Security Matters.(The above piece also initially ran at FSM, where I am a Contributing Editor.)

Previously, Choudhury had created from whole cloth several fictitious guises, under whose cover he had for years likewise supported North Korea, until dogged Bengali bloggers exposed those frauds.

Regarding Rauf, Choudhury’s observations happen to be truthful and accurate. However, that hardly dignifies this source, who has so often and so effectively duped many Western leaders and journalists, I am sorry to say, including myself. In fact, he has done great harm here too, which may after all have been his intent. For Choudhury’s position in this case provides a glaring example of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

Kindly read Brenda West’s impeccable report on Choudhury. I was unaware of his malevolence when writing the above piece, but a deluge of seemingly irrefutable evidence has now been presented.

Therefore, I herewith withdraw any previous statements of support I gave on Chourdhury’s behalf while he purported to be an oppressed journalist and encourage my colleagues and political leaders to do the same. Further, I commit not to cite Choudhury again.

_________________________________

[1] Douglas Farah and John Mintz, “U.S. S. Trails Va. Muslim Money, Ties; Clues Raise Questions About Terror Funding,” Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2002, http://ftrsupplemental.blogspot.com/2002/10/us-trails-va-muslim-money-ties.html (viewed 7/15/2010); Erick Stakelback, “Islamic radicals on campus,” Front Page Magazine, Apr. 23, 2003, http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18601; Department of Justice documents on U.S. raids on Herndon, Va., Safa and SAAR offices, orig. at DOJ, “106-page US Customs Service affidavit,” http://cryptome.org/safaaffid102003.pdf, “3-page Attachment C Safa Group businesses & corporations,” http://cryptome.org/safaattachc102003.pdf, “9-page ATTACHMENT D Safa Group officers & directors & related bus. & organizations,” http://cryptome.org/safaattachd102003.pdf, “9-page Attachment E glossary of terms, individuals, & organizations relevant to this affidavit,” http://cryptome.org/safaattache102003.pdf and http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/SafaAffidavit_AttachmentE.pdf; (all viewed 5/20/2010).

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Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

Expose Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s history, his statements in Arabic, and his organization’s appallingly incomplete tax filings.

Pajamas Media | May 28, 2010

by Alyssa A. Lappen

On May 25, Manhattan Community Board 1 gave their nod of approval to construction of a highly contested, 15-story mega-mosque at the former Park Place Burlington Coat Factory—600 feet from Ground Zero.

But this is hardly a final word on the matter.

New York City community boards function as mere advisory bodies, with no authority to make legally binding decisions for or against any proposed New York City structure. And while a motion to postpone the vote was defeated, the approval hardly represented resounding community support: only one board member voted no, but ten members abstained.

Nevertheless, the matter concerns far more than New York City planning, zoning, or community board politics. Following jihad doctrine, 19 Muslims attacked the U.S., as a nation, on 9/11. They attacked all nations whose citizens were among the nearly 3,000 murdered. Not surprisingly, the Muslim Gulf states are carefully watching the debate.

Obviously, this matter is no less Earth-shattering to Americans than the erstwhile plans of President Obama to conduct Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial in a New York City federal civilian court. The nation spoke in a unified voice against that plan, and stopped it cold. The nation, with a unified voice, can stop construction of any mosque near Ground Zero as well.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in planning for this 15-story mosque, casts a gauntlet to America—the center of the war against radical Islam.

In 2004, this man assumed trusteeship of land at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue near New York’s Islamic Cultural Center (ICC). Rauf is also an ICC permanent trustee. Until Sept. 28, 2001, the ICC employed Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, an Al-Azhar University envoy to the U.S. One week later, from the “safety” of Egypt, Gemeaha said “only the Jews” could have perpetrated September 11. If Americans knew, “they would have done to Jews what Hitler did.” Allah says Jews “disseminate corruption in the land” and spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs,” he added.

Gemeaha’s successor at ICC was no better: Omar Saleem Abu-Namous saw no “conclusive evidence” proving Muslims responsible.

These pronouncements represent institutional discriminatory precepts embedded within Sharia law. Rauf’s associates, who operated under his trusteeship at the 96th Street mosque, uttered them, and not surprisingly, they mirrored Rauf’s own hateful post-9/11 comments.

In March, Rauf stated in Arabic: “I don’t believe in interfaith dialogue.”

On May 26, Rauf gave an interview to Sa’da Abdul Maksoud on the well-trafficked Hadiyul-Islam website:

“Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

Rauf’s statements in Arabic directly contradicted his statements to English speakers—i.e., that the U.S. Constitution is Sharia-compliant:

“New laws were permitted after the death of Muhammad, so long of course that these laws do not contradict the Quran or the Deeds of Muhammad—so they create institutions that assure no conflicts with Sharia.

Consider the relevance of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood membership of Rauf’s father alongside Rauf’s own deceptive behavior and speech. In 1965, Muhammed Abdul Rauf (1917-2004) bought two-thirds of the bloc at 96th Street and 3rd Avenue with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. Rauf withheld information on the Islamic donors until 1984. Only after wrangling for permits for 20 years did Rauf begin construction—at that point, funding sources no longer mattered as construction became a fait accompli. Similarly, upon the 1992 dedication of the 96th Street mosque, founders revealed its $17 million in financing from 46 Islamic nations, all members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Another fait accompli, including plans for an apartment building restricted to Muslims alone. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added two more buildings.

Saudi Arabia founded the OIC in 1969 to promote the “struggle for Islam,” and has been its chief sponsor since. The OIC’s charter includes all Muslim Brotherhood precepts, the foremost being to spread Sharia worldwide. With headquarters in Jedda “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC in 1973 established the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) “according to Islamic Sharia principles,” and through it, launched the petrodollar-based Islamic financing market as another way to stealthily spread Islam and Sharia worldwide.

“[A]n Islamic organization must serve God—and ultimately sustain—the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in “Corporate Governance in Islamic Banking.” Certainly the 46 OIC members had those Sharia principles in mind when they funded construction of New York’s Islamic Center.

Secrecy surrounding the land purchase and construction financing of the 96th Street mega-mosque emulate the teachings of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, a colleague of Rauf’s father, who taught Al Azhar University—Islam’s closest equivalent to the Vatican. Rauf fled Egypt’s 1948 crackdown on the MB. His eldest son Feisal was born in Kuwait that year.

MB doctrines require “flexibility“—adapting to each environment on local terms, especially in North America—to force Islamic law on the masses globally. Hiding financing sources are perfect examples of taqiyya, a theologically encouraged practice of deception to advance theocratic, fascist Islamic doctrines.

Like his father, Rauf is probably a stealth Muslim Brother, as are most MB members.

The Muslim Brotherhood founded virtually all Islamic terror organizations operating worldwide today, including al-Qaeda and Hamas. Thus, only propaganda and recruitment chiefs like Alabama-born Omar Hammami—and shills hoping to convince useful idiots the Brothers are genuinely peaceful—advertise their affiliation.

Rauf established ASMA’s Cordoba Initiative in Colorado in 2004, but registered the non-profit in New York only in April 2009. His financial statements look mysterious, too. A Cordoba Initiative project, since at least 2006, has partnered with the Gallup Organization and “a team of Sunni and Shi’a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring ‘Islamicity’ of a state,” available both publicly and to pundits “and state officials in both the Muslim and Western worlds.”

If the U.S. is Sharia-compliant, and Rauf supports Western democracy and mosque-state separation, why has his New York-based institution initiated this project, funded by Malaysia and many other Muslim nations in the OIC?

Malaysia is not a secular democracy. Its federal government maintains a Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM) charged with promoting “the development and advancement of Islamic affairs,” including formulation of “policies for the ADVANCEMENT of Islamic affairs in the country and to safeguard the sanctity of the aqidah and the teachings of Islam.” (Emphasis in original.)

Rauf may well get Saudi funding too: In February 2001, the IDB established its U.S. dollar-denominated Awqaf Properties Investment Fund (APIF) to “develop and invest in accordance with ‘Islamic Sharia [principles], in Awqaf real estate properties’ in [IDB] member countries—and Islamic communities in non-member countries.” Financing applications go—where else?—to OIC founder and chief IDB backer Saudi Arabia, which has worked tirelessly for decades to advance Islamic communities in the most influential non-Muslim nation, the U.S.

OIC countries financed the 96th Street mosque. Why would Rauf not approach them again, particularly since an IDB financing mechanism for projects like his is already in place?

At Tuesday’s meeting, a 9/11 survivor, along with relatives, parents, and dear friends of victims, all spoke eloquently against the mosque. Bereaved mother Cynthia Kane honored her son, firefighter George Kane, and his hundreds of brave colleagues who died fighting to save lives. Another victim’s father poignantly noted that bodily remains of 997 people are still missing. “Where the hell do you think they are? They are on that [holy] ground—and building a mosque over them is truly insensitive.” 9/11 Families leader Debra Burlingame professed happiness that the controversy might encourage Americans to finally ask: “What is Sharia?”

The best route to stopping construction may be through the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service. According to a Certified Public Accountant and Act for America member, available American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA) tax filings raise several red flags.

Very little ASMA information is available on the non-profit organization from Guidestar, a commercial service that provides 990 filings from thousands of tax-exempt charitable organizations, many much smaller than ASMA. However, the CPA reports that many documents required for public examination are missing from Guidestar’s ASMA files. Federal law requires ASMA to provide tax returns for public inspection, but evidently it has not done so, the CPA says.

Director since 2005, Daisy Khan—Rauf’s interior designing, Kashmir-born wife—apparently never filed a required informational return or regular annual reports: “shocking for a charity with over $1 million in grants just last year.”

Several other issues indicate ASMA’s financial statements are not “in accordance with accounting standards for nonprofit organizations.” An organization established in 1998 should have two-year comparisons, not the one-year comparison provided in the fiscal 2009 statement. Failing that, ASMA must provide comparative statements in its notes or a letter to stakeholders—which it also does not do.

Likewise, ASMA claims to be a 501(c)3 organization. They do present a letter of determination (albeit, misstated as being granted in “1988”). But ASMA financial statements do not specify under which code ASMA’s tax-exempt status falls.

ASMA also fails to list required future lease payments, although its auditor reportedly specializes in non-profit groups and purports to follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). “I’m shocked by all these” oversights, said the CPA, who has merely begun to list GAAP requirements on which ASMA flunks.

Maybe there’s just too much information Rauf and ASMA don’t want the public to know. Perhaps the IRS should institute a new taqiyya-busters division. Meanwhile, the public can shower the IRS with complaints on these evidently numerous tax-code violations.

(Click here to watch Walid Shoebat expose the Ground Zero mosque on PJTV.)

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