Posted tagged ‘Islamic radicalization’

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists?

July 18, 2016

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists? Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, July 18, 2016

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What is it about Virginia?

Already this year, six men from the “Cavalier State” have been arrested on terror-related charges – two of them in July alone. Another man has joined the Islamic State in Syria. Two of those charged were stopped from making a similar trip.

These most recent arrests, one on July 3, the other on July 8, were based on charges of planning to provide material support to ISIS. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who was arrested July 3, allegedly discussed planning an attack against U.S. military in the homeland inspired by fellow Virginian Nidal Hasan’s 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. According to court documents, Jalloh quit the Guard and later attempted to obtain funds and weapons for a domestic attack after being inspired by Anwar al Awlaki’s videos on YouTube.

Five days later, Virginia law enforcement arrested Haris Qamar, following an extended FBI sting operation. According to an FBI affidavit, Qamar made statements to an informant such as, “By-bye, DC, stupid a— kufar [infidels], kill ’em all,” and posted to his Twitter account a prayer for “strength to the mujahedeen to slaughter every single US military officer.”

Earlier arrests this year – two in June and one in January – involved men planning to join the jihad in Syria, rather than waging domestic battles. In one case, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, who had already joined the Islamic State, surrendered to Kurdish forces in Iraq in an apparent effort to escape the hell of life in the new caliphate. Now awaiting sentencing in the United States, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Why does this keep happening in Virginia? What makes its young Muslims more susceptible to the radical messages from Awlaki and ISIS social media?

Virginia has proved to be an active center for radical Islamist activity over the years and has bred more than its share of terrorists since 9/11. It was at the Hamas-linked Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, for instance, that terrorist icon Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American whom counter-terrorism officials say inspired hundreds of other Muslims to take arms in violent jihad, once served as imam. Among his disciples: Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of collaborating with al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; and several of the 9/11 hijackers.

And it was in Virginia that, in the still fragile and bewildered aftermath of 9/11, “Beltway snipers” John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed more than 12 people, including an FBI analyst, in October 2002.

While internet and social media remain powerful weapons in the terrorist recruitment arsenal, personal connections remain the most potent tool. Honor student Ali Shukri Amin, charged with soliciting donations for ISIS, is also suspected of helping another Virginian, Reza Niknejad, travel to Syria.

While none of the recent cases implicate specific mosques, the influence of Dar al Hijrah and some of its imams appears to have been widespread.

To some extent, this could be thanks to its current imam, Shaker Elsayed. In 2002, hetold a conference hosted by the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle for North America that deciding whether suicide bombers were martyrs was “an in house business” for Muslims.

In a dramatic speech available online since 2013, Elsayed rants against the West and calls for “the power of faith” and “the power of armament.” In the post-9/11 world, he observes, even world leaders have “bowed down” to the Western pressure. “We the Muslim masses should never bow down except to Allah!” he says, “and this will give us our dignity back.”

But other Virginia religious leaders have gone further. Ali al-Timimi, a cancer researcher, was the “spiritual leader” of a group of 11 men convicted of terrorism in 2003 and 2004, Al-Timimi is now serving a life sentence for recruiting Muslims to travel to Pakistan and train for holy war.

Shortly after 9/11, according to the New York Times’ coverage of his trial, al-Timimi invited a group of young Muslim men to dinner, where he told them they had a religious duty to fight with the Taliban against American forces. Prosecutors described that statement as “treason,” calling al-Timimi a “purveyor of hate and war.”

More than 10 years after his conviction, al-Timimi remains a figurehead among radical groups in Virginia and the Capitol district. The Peace and Justice Foundation, which defended al-Timimi and his followers, refers in online documents to a government conspiracy, while numerous web sites offer recordings of al-Timimi’s lectures. In addition, a Facebook page devoted to his appeal with more than 2,000 “likes,” has built a community in his support. (Followers even raised $12,000 for his mother’s medical care.)

The Saudi-sponsored Islamic Saudi Academy, which shut down abruptly last month,faced criticism for its textbooks that promote Wahhabism, an extreme version of Islam practiced by the Saudis. The textbooks contained passages “that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one’s enemies, and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was ‘justified,'” the Washington Post reported. Those passages were found in school textbooks two years after U.S. officials, shocked by the texts in use in 2006, ordered they be revised. Pre-revision books included statements like, “It is said: the apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews. The swine are the unbelievers of Jesus’ table, the Christians.”

The school’s 1999 valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 for supporting al-Qaida and planning to assassinate the president. (Notably, he also taught Islamic Studies at Dar Al Hijrah.)

As Seamus Hughes of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center or Cyber & Homeland Security told Fox News, “Northern Virginia has a disproportionate number of people that are drawn to this.”

Ramy Zamzam is a poster child for this observation. He was among five young men who disappeared from their northern Virginia neighborhood in late 2009, only to be arrested by Pakistani authorities who caught them trying to cross into Afghanistan to join jihadists there.

“We are not terrorists,” he said outside a hearing. “We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”

Muslim groups expressed their horror over the incident and promised a program aimed at de-radicalization.

It’s not clear that any such plan ever emerged. If it did, it’s clearly not working.

Newt Gingrich: Deport every Muslim who believes in Sharia

July 15, 2016

Newt Gingrich: Deport every Muslim who believes in Sharia, Fox News via YouTube, July 14, 2016

“Gangster Islam” in Europe

July 12, 2016

“Gangster Islam” in Europe, Gatestone Institute via YouTube, July 12, 2016

The blurb beneath the video states,

“Gangster Islam,” a crime wave packing prisons and overtaking Europe, is a problem the mainstream media will not report. Ordinary Europeans — for fear of being called “racist” or even being imprisoned for “hate speech” — are afraid even to talk about it.

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats

July 12, 2016

Stabbing Policemen, “Slut-Shaming” and New Death Threats -One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in France: June 2016, Gatestone InstituteYves Mamou, July 12, 2016

♦ Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels.

♦ Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS).

♦ After the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote in his blog that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

Islamization is gaining ground in the Muslim community of France. For a long time, this trend remained restricted to the cultural sphere and created strong controversies between Islamists and secular intellectuals (such as the ban on face-covering veils in schools and public places). But the debate stopped being a debate. Sometimes Islamic intolerance takes on the appearance of a civil war. The violence, which was mostly concentrated in the suburbs prior to the January 2015 terrorist attack on the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, is spreading now to the heart of French cities. Murders, assaults, death threats and “slut-shaming” happens almost every day here and there.

Muslim perpetrators rationalize their violence by convincing themselves that they live in a racist society that rejects them and their religion. And the government legitimizes them when it asks Parliament to vote for a law that favors “diversity” on public television channels. What is interesting is that judiciary system seems in disarray and does not know how to treat these types of conflicts: two jihadists back from Syria are condemned to a suspended sentence of six months in prison and a Muslim who slapped a female waiter because she served alcohol during the Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison.

The absence of political guidelines spreads fear and aids the rise of the right-wing political party, the Front National.

June 1. Karim Benzema, a French soccer star of Algerian descent, declared, in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, that French national team’s coach, Didier Deschamps “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France” by not including him in the team. Benzema was not included in the national soccer team for the UEFA Euro 2016 championship because he is apparently involved in a sex-tape extortion scandal targeting his colleague, Mathieu Valbuena.

June 2. Patrick Kanner, Minister of Urban Affairs, Youth and Sport, said in Le Parisien that Karim Benzema plays an “unfair and dangerous” game when he implies that “ethnic reasons” might have played a role in the decision not to include him in the French soccer team.

June 2. It was reported that the Saudi preacher, Mohammed Ramzan Al-Hajiri, was banned from entering France until 2050. The daily, La Voix du Nord, reported that on May 15, the salafist Abou Bakr Essedik mosque of Roubaix had arranged for him to preach by phone. In April 2014, the same Saudi preacher had declared in public: “Losing your faith makes you no better than an animal” and “to kill a Muslim is a less serious crime than to make him an infidel.”

June 5. A 25-year-old Frenchman was arrested at the border between Ukraine and Poland. According to the TV channel M6, his truck was loaded with three portable rocket launchers, more than 100 kilograms of TNT, 100 detonators and half a dozen Kalashnikov assault rifles. He was unknown to security services and was planning terrorist attacks against synagogues and mosques in France.

June 6. One thousand migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia, who were living in tents in the 18th district of Paris (Les Jardins d’Eole), were evacuated peacefully by police. According to the media, it is the 23rd operation of this kind in Paris since 2015

June 6. Swastikas and the words “white power” were tagged on the walls of the synagogue of Verdun. A similar incident of vandalism took place two months prior, said Jean-Claude Lévy, leader of the Jewish community in Verdun.

June 6. Gérard Tardy, mayor of Lorette, a small city in the Loire region of France, posted two messages on the electronic information boards of the city:

  • “Ramadan must be lived in peace without noise”
  • “In the Republic, nobody covers his face.”

The far left and Muslims organizations said these messages were “outrageous” and “disrespectful” to Muslims.

June 7. A waitress at a bar in Nice was violently slapped by a Muslim because she was serving alcohol to customers on the first day of Ramadan. Both the owner of the bar and the victim filed a complaint at the police station. The attacker escaped.

June 8. In Grigny, an outer suburb of Paris, people filmed used their smartphones to film a riot between “youths” [the French media’s euphemism for young Muslims] and police, and aired it live on Periscope, an “app” for instant video. No one knows what caused the riot. A father living in Grigny said, “In my time, violence with cops had always a motive: arrest, a stolen car… But now, it is different. It looks like people fight with police for fun”.

June 8. At midnight, Aya Ramadan, a female activist of the Parti des Indigènes de la République, posted on Twitter her congratulations to the two Palestinian terrorists who shot people in a bar in Tel Aviv, killing three. She wrote; “Dignity and pride! Cheers to the two Palestinians who have led a resistance operation in Tel Aviv.”

Gilles Clavreul, the High Commissioner of the Fight against Racism and anti-Semitism, said he would sue Ramadan for acting as an “apologist for terrorism.” The maximum punishment for such an offense is two years in prison and €100,000 fine. The Parti des Indigènes de la République is a racialist organization developing a political ideology to take the power from the “whites” to give it to the “colored people” in France.

June 8. The Observatory of Secularism (Observatoire de la laïcité), an official body linked to the prime minister’s office, published its annual report. According to the report, anti-Semitic attacks remain at a high level (808 attacks) and anti-Muslim attacks have tripled (from 133 last year to 429 in 2015). The report failed to establish a proportion between the number of Jews in France (half a million) and the number of Muslims (between six to ten million). The report also does not relate that most anti-Jewish acts are committed by Muslims. The Observatory of Secularism found itself in the eye of a storm last year for its complacency towards Islamism.

June 9. Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio, Mayor of Saint-Gratien, declared war on shops with veiled saleswomen. She wrote on her Facebook page. “I have decided to boycott all shops who impose veiled cashiers and veiled saleswomen on me.” She says she is committed to support, by all means possible, women who refuse to wear veil.

June 9. Provocation? The Parti des Indigénes de la République issued a public invitation to all Muslims to begin the night of Ramadan in front of Saint Denis Basilica, a huge Catholic monument that played an important role in history of France. The Catholic kings of France were crowned and are buried in the Basilica.

June 9. Soldiers protecting a synagogue in Garges (a Paris suburb) were attacked with a barrage of stones launched by a group of twenty people. One soldier was wounded.

June 8. Twenty MPs co-signed and published an open letter in the news magazine Valeurs Actuelles, addressed to Minister of Education Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. They were protesting the decision of the Ministry of Education to promote teaching Arabic at schools to young children of five or six years old. “This decision is stupid. Priority must be given to teaching French, the language of the Republic”.

June 13. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of left-wing New Anticapitalist Party (NPA), wrote in his blog after the Islamist, anti-gay attack in Orlando, that he fears a possible “wave of hatred against Muslims”. For many Islamists in France, the Muslim is always the victim, even when he is the killer.

June 13. Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa, 26, stabbed to death police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider, in front of their son, at their home in the Paris suburb of Magnanville. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). When police stormed the house, they rescued the three-year-old boy. According to Le Figaro, the killer had been sentenced in 2013 to three years of prison for participating in recruiting jihadists and funneling them into Pakistan, but was released almost immediately.

1691 (1)Paris police officer Jean-Baptiste Salvaing (left) and his wife, police administrator Jessica Schneider (right), were stabbed to death in front of their son by Islamist terrorist Larossi Abballa (inset) on June 13. The murderer then live-streamed a video on Facebook, in which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

 

June 14. A 19-year-old female student was stabbed at a bus station in the city of Rennes. Passersby succeeded in capturing her attacker, a Muslim man who said he was obeying “voices” that ordered him to make a “sacrifice for Ramadan.” The young woman was taken to a hospital, and the attacker was taken to a psychiatric hospital.

June 14. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the government authorized all policemen to keep their gun on them when they are not on duty.

June 15. According to the Belgian daily La Dernière Heure, the Belgian antiterrorism service informed police departments that ISIS fighters left Syria at the beginning of June to be sent to France and Belgium to commit terrorist attacks.

June 15. Maude Vallet, 18 years old, was harassed, insulted and threatened by five women in a bus because she was wearing shorts on her way back from the beach. She wrote her story on Facebook: “Hi, I am a bitch”. She denounced traditions and the clergy, but refused to mention that these “slut-shaming” attackers were Muslim women. She said the ethnicity to which they belonged was not relevant.

June 15. Ali S, 32, a Tunisian who slapped a female waiter in a bar in Nice because she was serving alcohol during Ramadan was sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay 1000 euros to the waitress. Because he was residing illegally in France, he will be deported and prohibited from returning to France for three years.

June 16. A street encampment of around 400 Sudanese and Afghan migrants, mostly men, was evacuated by the police in the 18th district of Paris. It is the 24th evacuation since June 15, 2015.

June 16. In reaction to the June 13 murder of two police officers by an Islamist terrorist, the right-wing politicians began campaigning to send 13,000 people registered as an “S” (people who live in France and suspected of being affiliated with a terrorist organization) to special “camps”.

June 16. A 22-year-old convert to Islam was arrested in Carcassonne with a knife and a machete. He confessed to the police that he wanted to kill American and English tourists before stabbing a policeman or a soldier. He is being held in custody in Toulouse. The man is registered as an “S”.

June 18. Abou Kamel Chahid threatened on Facebook to commit terrorist attacks in France. “We are four brothers, each has a mission. I swear by Allah, France is going leave the coalition. They won’t have choice. These kouffars [infidels] will never feel well in this country. Be careful, brothers and sisters, things are going to accelerate”.

June 18. For a year, the public multimedia library of Lannion (Britany) has been suffered a rash of vandalizations of its books, comics and DVDs — all relating to the Jews, such as books about the Holocaust and comics by Johan Sfar, the author of “La chat du rabbin” (“The Rabbi’s Cat”), a bestselling comic book.

June 19: An inmate of the Beziers prison in the south of France was sentenced to an additional six months in prison because he said he wanted to commit a terrorist attack against the nudist beach of the Cap d’Agde. The man, Alain G, a convert to Islam, was reported by other inmates.

June 19: 4000 French Muslims responded to a call launched by a group of Mosques in the area of Magnanville, a Paris suburb, to participate in a silent march in tribute to two police officers stabbed to death at their home. It is the first time that French Muslims showed some collective solidarity with non-Muslims against Islamic terrorism. Pressure from the media had been huge to make the demonstration into a show. There was, however, some criticism: MP Guénhaël Huet tweeted “sincerity or duplicity?”. Many other critics observed the absence of women among the marchers, which was analyzed as a sign of the deepening of Islamist ideology among the French Muslims. When the marchers arrived in front of the police station to lay down flowers, no policemen came out to thank them or shake hands.

June 20. After three days of controversy on social media, it appeared that the policeman who refused to shake hands with President François Hollande at a memorial ceremony for the two police officers murdered by the Islamist, Larossi Abballa, was not a member of right-wing Front National party. According to Le Monde, the policeman just wanted to protest against the shrinking budget of the police.

June 21. The NGO “Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture” (“Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture”) released a poll about the perception of torture by the French. The results were astounding:

  • 36% said it is acceptable to use torture “in exceptional circumstances.” The number was 25% in 2000 [Poll Amnesty/CSA. 2000].
  • 54% of those polled found it “justifiable” to use electric shocks to torture a terrorist suspected of planting a bomb.
  • 45% said they considered torture an efficient tool against terrorism.
  • 18% said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves. 40% of Front National supporters said they thought they could torture a terrorist themselves.

June 21. More than 1000 women (mostly Muslims) signed a petition demanding separate hours for women at the public swimming pool of Mantes la Jolie, a Paris suburb. The petition included a request for only female employees to be present during women’s hours. Officials, in the name of secularism, refused the request.

June 21. The daily, Libération, published a report on the Turkish government’s strategy to gain control of Islamic institutions in France.

June 21. A Muslim security guard operating in the “fan zone” of the UEFA Euro soccer tournament in Nice was seen praying while on duty. Police were called to expel him; bystanders were afraid he was a terrorist.

June 22. The investment company Mayhoola, affiliated with the royal family of Qatar, the al-Thanis, spent half-a-billion euros for a controlling interest in the French fashion company Balmain. The same day, the news magazine Marianne published a full survey about the real estate properties of the royal Qatari family in France: 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion USD) in villas, buildings, malls, etc.

June 22. A Muslim from La Chapelle-Basse-Mer (western France) was given a four month suspended prison sentence, a €300 fine, and ordered to pay €1000 in damages each to the two people he threatened to kill, as well as €300 for court costs. In December 2015, he drove his car into a schoolyard and threatened to kill the cook and deputy cook of the school, because his eight-year-old son had eaten pork at the school cafeteria. The boy was hungry and apparently did not want to wait for a substitute meal for vegetarians and Muslims.

June 23: At 3am, in the heart of Barbes, the Muslim quarter of Paris, two men on a motor-scooter opened fire on a group of young men walking in the street. No one was wounded. The police found two 9mm bullet casings on the scene.

June 24: In Toulon, a hundred women demonstrated in the street, all of them wearing shorts. They said they wanted to support Maude Vallet who had been attacked in a bus by five women; the attackers had said that by wearing shorts, she did not respect herself. Like Maude Vallet, the demonstrators refused to mention that all the attackers had been Muslims. Instead, the demonstrators repeated the traditional litany that “it has nothing to do with Islam”.

June 24: In Portes-lès-Valence, an Islamist under surveillance by security services was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of his three-year-old stepdaughter. He had beaten the child to death. The mother was also charged for failing to report the abuse.

June 25: Can a female lawyer testify in court while wearing a veil? This controversy engulfed the bar association of Seine Saint Denis, a suburb of Paris. On June 24, at a students’ moot court competition, a young woman appeared with a tuque, a traditional hat which no lawyers in France wear anymore. But, in a visible way, under the tuque, she was wearing a Muslim veil. The controversial question of whether this is now a hot topic. Many observers think that the tuque will be reintroduced in France by Islamist lawyers in the next few months.

June 26: Bernard Cazeneuve posthumously admitted Hervé Cornara to the Order of Légion d’Honneur. A year ago, Cornara, a businessman, was murdered and beheaded by his Muslim employee, Yassine Salhi, who claimed to act on behalf of the Islamic State. Salhi placed Cornara’s severed head on display, alongside twin ISIS flags, at the gas factory near Lyon where they worked.

June 27: The press reported that two days earlier, 300 hundred migrants from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan engaged in a mass brawl in the 18th district of Paris. The brawl apparently erupted because a woman was sexually harassed by a man from a different ethnic group. The police used tear gas grenades to stop the violence.

June 27: In Ales (southern France), Abdellah, a Moroccan, apparently had no money to pay for his meal at the Sushi bar where he had eaten, so he ran out of the restaurant with his girlfriend. When the police caught him, he began to shout:

“You pork-eaters! You sausage-eaters… We are going to kick France’s ass. Long live the Kouachis [brothers who murdered the Charlie Hebdo journalists in January 2015]! I swear to God, I have a Kalashnikov…”

Abdellah was sentenced to two years in prison for “defending terrorism,” and was ordered to pay the Sushi bar bill.

June 28: Azzeddine Taïbi, a communist, was elected mayor of Stains, a suburban city known for its Salafist population. On the same day, the Administrative Court of Montreuil rejected an appeal by the Seine-Saint-Denis Prefecture demanding the removal of a banner in support of Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israel prison for

“orchestrating three shooting attacks that killed 5 people: one attack in Jerusalem… in which Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus was murdered… and one shooting and stabbing attack at the Sea Food Market restaurant in Tel Aviv (March 5, 2002). When arrested by Israel in 2002, Barghouti headed the Tanzim (Fatah terror faction).”

Barghouti’s supporters try to paint him as the “Palestinian Mandela.” So, today, the portrait of Barghouti is back covering “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” on the pediment of the Seine-Saint-Denis Hall.

June 29: The prosecutor’s office in Paris opened in inquiry into death threats posted on social networks against the magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Some twenty “very threatening” messages, including the death threats, were posted on Charlie Hebdo’s Facebook page for three or four days in mid-June, Le Parisien reported. Police are investigating.

June 30: The French government introduced amendments to the “Equality and Citizenship” bill, to fight against “prejudice” and make “diversity” (ethnic minorities) more visible on public television.

According to the latest “barometer of diversity,” only 14% of people perceived as “non-white” (in the terminology) are present on the air. Erika Bareigts, secretary of state in charge of “real equality,” said that “diversity is the reality of French society, and we must show it. This soothes the debate, and everybody needs it.” She added: “The media do not show non-whites in positive or starring roles. That must change.”

June 30: Two jihadists, back from Syria, where they joined the Islamic State, were sentenced to six-month suspended prison terms. The jihadists are 16 and 17 years old. They stayed only six months in Syria and said they left ISIS because of the “rotten ambiance” in their battalion, which was composed of French volunteers.

Forensic Psychiatrist: Fascinating Insights Into Orlando Shooting

July 11, 2016

Forensic Psychiatrist: Fascinating Insights Into Orlando Shooting, Clarion ProjectRyan Mauro, July 11, 2016

Omar-Mateen-Noor-Salman-HPNoor Salman and Omar Mateen (Photo: Video screenshot)

Dr. Michael Welner, a forensic psychiatrist renowned for his work both in cutting-edge legal cases and research on criminal evil, explained to Clarion Project that important questions about the wife of Omar Mateen, who attacked a gay club in Florida, remain unanswered.

He also explained how political correctness and the difficulties in discussing Islamism are undermining our ability to combat the ideology.

You can read our previous interview with Dr. Welner here. Below is the latest interview between Clarion Project’s National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro and Dr. Welner :

1. Clarion Project: What’s the significance of Omar Mateen’s wife’s role in Mateen’s actions based on what we currently know?   

Dr. Welner:  Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, was aware of his objectives to carry out a mass casualty attack, and she could have easily engaged his or her own support system to stop him from doing so.

Mrs. Salman accompanied Mateen during a visit to Disneyworld that caught the attention of Disney security in April. Salman knew Mateen was purchasing offensive weaponry. And not just any gun, but an assault weapon (MCX Sig Sauer) far more expensive than needed for a mass killing – even as Mateen was quite underemployed.

Ms. Salman did not stand in the way of her husband’s activities that would “martyr” himself, knowing that her child would be fatherless and she would be without financial support. Or is there more?

The San Bernadino killers, who long planned the mass killing yet bore a child together, was the watershed of ISIS in America. ISIS has redefined Islamic feminism by embedding women in vital support roles in terror (martyrdom), recruitment and facilitation.

That Mateen was willing to leave a child behind and Salman accepting of same is an idea unthinkable to Americans and to terrorism in America. But it is a mindset indoctrinated in Palestinian life.

Salman, born of Palestinian parents and raised with traditional Islamic restrictions, was first wed in an arranged marriage with a man from the West Bank. She divorced her first husband. Yet she stayed with Mateen, who long claimed aspirations to be a martyr.

Salman did more than stay with Mateen, she admittedly participated with him in preparations for his eventual attack, including driving him to Pulse to case the nightclub. She thus actively supported her husband’s efforts, even she had family living nearby where she could separate herself. She agreed, with Mateen, to sign over the deed to their house two months before the attack on the Pulse nightclub.

Facilitators, collaborators, and handlers are the unseen support of Islamist suicide terror – especially in the Palestinian theater. How did Mateen get the resources for an MCX Sig Sauer? How did he pay for the upscale accommodations of his overseas travel? How does his wife anticipate supporting herself financially in the face of the attack – and having divested herself of her home?

Did he expect to survive, as had the San Bernadino attackers? And what then would have happened? How is it that we do not even know the identity of her first husband’s family? How is it that there is no public discussion about Mateen’s mosque or the influences who inspired him?

2. Clarion Project: When Mateen had outbursts of extremism at work, such as declarations of support for terrorist groups, he blamed it on anti-Muslim discrimination by his colleagues, basically saying that Islamophobia causes Islamic terrorism. Is this just a standard deflection tactic or is there more involved with Islamists’ incessant use of the Islamophobia card?   

Dr. Welner: The American dialogue about the Islamist supremacist movement and, in fact, all of Islam is not based in fact. This is because public impressions and the nature of the dialogue we have are carefully controlled by at least three sources of influence:

1) Unregulated and below-the-radar financial influence on American lawmakers by countries ruled by sharia law,

2) intellectuals and other American media and thought-leader proxies funded by dogmatic Saudi Arabia and Qatari deep pockets. These funding resources, whose assets tie back to their respective governments, export the spread of sharia as a neoconservative would aim to export democracy. Funding now heavily influences university education, think tanks and media and promotes impression management by respected academia deliberately dissimulates and whitewashes Islamist terrorism and its broader goals, and

3) CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, who have been ceded standing by the press to speak for Muslims in America despite a legacy of apologia and of actively teaching the Muslim community to impede law enforcement’s investigations of terror inquiries.

Islamic supremacist advocates and, more importantly, the organizations empowered to speak for Islam are very sensitive to American public opinion and the buttons to push among social activists.

At a time that enhanced interrogations and waterboarding came under scrutiny in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, for example, al-Qaeda was teaching its conscripts to assert that they were tortured when they went into custody.

They could rely upon an academia-media complex that grasped at any opportunity to attack a Republican president through the safe space of declared “social justice.” Al-Qaeda exploited these willing opinion soldiers to fuel public sentiment against Guantanamo Bay and to delegitimize the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

The Islamic supremacists have also cynically co-opted national sensitivities on other fronts. Recognizing the mainstream news media’s identification with black grievances against the police, the Islamists have successfully fused the idea of blacks targeted for their skin color to advance the notion that Muslims are victimized as a direct result of discussion of the centrality of Islam to Islamic supremacist terror incidents.

President Obama, has been the highest authority to subscribe to this false canard. The President has famously disassociated Islamic supremacist terrorism from Islam, often with servile platitudes that embellish Islam’s history in America or submissive deference to “The Prophet.”

The administration has promoted a CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) program that emphasizes the purported risks of “right wing terrorist” groups in America. While the facts demonstrate otherwise, an imposed groupthink has rooted out teaching and training from among law enforcement that engages the Islamist threat with any appreciation for its urgency and current relevance.

References to Islamic terror have been literally erased, right down to “Allah” being airbrushed from transcripts of the Mateen 911 calls.

Political correctness extinguishes any criticism of Islam or its intolerance to alternative lifestyles. This includes speech laws in many otherwise free countries that equate criticism of Islam with hate speech, laws which are enforced particularly as they relate to Islam.

With freedom controlled, even where expression is normally free, the public submits. The psychological intimidation by legal repercussion extends what is accomplished by terror or, if not, by threat of terror.

The consequences have filtered all the way through American life, as they have in Europe. A migrant gang sex assault in Idaho of a small child is suppressed by the local authorities. Nidal Hassan’s advocacy of martyrdom is not sufficient to remove him from active military duty, and when he later embarks on a mass shooting of the troops to whom he was to apply a Hippocratic Oath, the military – which answers to the Commander-in-Chief – insists that it is a work accident.

Unquestionably dangerous prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay, only to return to attack and kill American servicemen and Ankara airport-goers alike.

Surveillance programs that would monitor mosques in which attendees are particularly poisoned to support terrorism shut down, despite court support of their legality and police respect for their effectiveness.

Americans who cared about their country reported concerns about Mateen to entrusted law enforcement agencies, only to have investigations shut down. All of these systemic errors feed back to the active thought control and stifling of free thinking about efforts of the Islamic supremacist movement to gain submission of non-believers.

The first of those affected are Muslims themselves, because open-mindedness is crushed by sharia advocacy as opposed to pluralism advocacy among Muslims.

The only solution is a nonviolent but defiant revolt of free speech that demands that leaders and the news and information media stop lying to our free society about terrorism and its origins.

Only from that point can collaboration then begin between the general public and Muslims who are invested in a pluralistic America to undertake a constructive anti-terror policy that wins the war that we are now losing.

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(We are currently) not losing by terror, but by the success of our Machiavellian enemy (who has been able to) buy the influence of those who do not appreciate that non-violent war is more destructive than terrorism and who exploit our inherent empathic nature as Americans as the first step on the road to submission.

French Prisons: Universities of Jihad

July 7, 2016

French Prisons: Universities of Jihad, Clarion Project, Leslie Shaw, July 7, 2016

PrisonMuslimHP_0_0Photo: Video screenshot)

Sociologist and author Farhad Khosrokhavar has estimated that Muslims make up between 50 and 80 percent of prison inmates in France. Given that Muslims account for between seven and eight percent of the French population, this means that they are either more prone to crime than the indigenous French population, or that they are victims of discrimination by French law enforcement.

Given that many offenders are not behind bars but out on parole, wearing electronic bracelets, under house arrest or were not jailed on conviction but benefited from the leniency of the criminal courts, the real figure for the share of Islam in French crime is probably much higher than Khosrokhhavar’s estimate.

One of the disadvantages of this high proportion of Muslim inmates is that French prisons have become universities of jihad and incubators of terrorism.

French prison authorities were aware of the problem of radicalization way before the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people (including three schoolchildren) in Toulouse in 2012 and Mehdi Nemmouche, who killed four people at the Jewish museum in Brussels in 2014, had been radicalized in prison.

The Kouachi brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack had also rallied to the cause of radical Islam while doing jail time. But when prison governors notified the authorities of the rise in Islamic radicalism, they were not only ignored but accused of Islamophobia.

Official figures indicate that 18,000 Muslim inmates observe Ramadan. There are currently only 182 Muslim prison chaplains, a situation which contributes to the influence of self-styled imams from the Muslim prison constituency.

In that constituency, 1,400 have been identified as radical Islamists of which 300 are linked to terrorism. The extent to which Islamist extremists indulge in and spread their ideology is astonishing.

Calls to prayer are made from prison windows. Inmates who are considered “bad” Muslims — those who watch television, do not rise at dawn to pray or do not wear a jellaba after sunset — are expelled from their cells by their radical co-religionists.

Female Muslim visitors who wear Western-style clothing are insulted and some have resorted to changing into Islamic robes in the parking lot before visits. In 2014, 1,012 cellphones found in prisons were seized, of which 50 percent contained Facebook accounts, some with links to Syria and Yemen.

The most common argument used to entice new recruits is to tell them that they will be absolved of their sins and gain entry to paradise if they commit to waging violent jihad upon release.

In January 2015 Prime Minister Manuel Valls unveiled an $800 million project to combat the spread of radical Islam including the creation of dedicated prison units (U2P or Units for the Prevention of Proselytism) where Islamists would be separated from other prisoners. The project was rolled out in five5 prisons at a cost of $17 million.

One prison governor expressed scepticism at the scheme, saying it would not prevent the recruitment of prisoners to the cause of jihad.

“If we want to separate the radical inmates from the rest of the prison population, we would need to build a French Guantanamo. Is that what we want?” he asked.

A member of the national security intelligence service shares this view. “Our prisons are cauldrons of radicalization. Terrorist inmates are heroes and this facilitates proselytism and recruitment.”

The real question to consider is what restrictions on freedom are acceptable in the interest of national security.

A report published on July 6, 2016 by the inspector general of prisons evaluates the result of this project and the judgement is far from favorable.

Between February and May 2016, three inspectors visited four prisons and interviewed 64 U2P inmates and their handlers. The report concludes that the experimental model is unrealistic given the overpopulation in prisons and presents more disadvantages than advantages.

Moreover, the structures put in place are inappropriate given the scale of the problem and the spectacular increase in people (over 1,000) currently indicted for terrorism. The initial objective of combating proselytism has been supplanted by that of gathering radicalized inmates in single units.

The report echoes the concerns of counter-terrorism magistrates that putting radical Islamists together will facilitate bonding, networking and the intimidation of vulnerable inmates. While radicals in the U2Ps are held in private cells, they are still not completely sealed off from the rest of the inmates and continue to spread their ideology.

The isolation of jihadists in U2Ps is accompanied by deradicalization programs, which consist of lessons in citizenship, lectures and debates on political violence and structured seminars on disengagement from violence for groups of six to eight over a three-month period on a voluntary basis.

Commenting on the report, Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, director of the French Association for Victims of Terrorism, stated that the only way to eliminate prison radicalization is to “make inmates reflect in order to prepare for their release.”

Given the high rate of repeat offending and the crossover from juvenile delinquency to violent crime and ultimately to jihad, such a statement belongs more in the realm of wishful thinking than reality.

Radicalization is also taking place at an alarming rate in prisons in the U.S. Watch a clip from the Clarion film, The Third Jihad: 

Islamist Extremism in America: The Islamic Jurisprudence Center

July 3, 2016

Islamist Extremism in America: The Islamic Jurisprudence Center, Clarion Project, Jonathan Ruano de la Haza, July 3, 2016

Sulaiman-Anwar-640-320Sheikh Suleiman Anwar of the Islamic Jurisprudence Center. (Photo: © Screenshot from video)

In June 2015, Sheikh Suleiman Anwar founded the Islamic Jurisprudence Center (IJC) in Clarksburg, Maryland. The center’s mission was “to promote and advance the understanding of and compliance with Islamic law (Sharia) in all aspects of life.”

This mission statement might seem tame, except that Anwar’s webpage reveals a worldview that is remarkably extreme compared to that of most Muslim organizations in the West. Anwar wants total Sharia according to the Saudi model, where the hands of thieves are cut off. He rejects secular liberal democracies and pluralism within Islam.

Here we explore Anwar’s Islamist worldview and show what happened when it is implemented in Muslim countries.

Why is Suleiman Anwar important?

Anwar deserves greater scrutiny for a number of reasons. He is the microcosm of the globalization of Islamist concepts.

In 2004 and 2006 respectively, Anwar completed two master’s degrees in Islamic jurisprudence at the International Islamic University (IIU) in Islamabad, Pakistan, and the University of Sana’a in Yemen. Funded by Saudi money, IIU is an Islamist university teaching a rigid Saudi version of Islam and rejecting all other interpretations of Islam.

The atmosphere on IIU’s campus is Orwellian. IIU alumni Amna Shafqat recalls burqa clad women distributing pamphlets to IIU students, which call for the release of terrorist Afia Siddiqui and the murder of blasphemers and blaspheming cartoonists (like theCharlie Hedbo cartoonists).

Worse still, IIU is a key recruiting ground for the Jamaat-e-Islami, Tazeemi Islami, and other Islamist parties, which sometimes serve as gateways to terrorist organizations.

This was the environment in which Anwar pursued his master’s degree and his webpage and Facebook page contain Islamist ideas which mirror the beliefs swirling around IIU’s campus.

Anwar also used his position as Imam in order to promote Islamism. After completing his studies in Yemen, Anwar returned to the United States and served as Imam for the Islamic Society of Annapolis (May 2009-April 2010) and then the Tazkia Center and Masjid Umar (January 2011-October 2014). He accepted invitations to deliverJumu’a Khutbas (sermons) and lectures at fourteen Islamic organizations in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. and Toronto, Canada.

Thanks to YouTube, there is a record of what Anwar said at one of these events. In September 2010, he openly endorsed the Khilafah or Islamic Caliphate along with an extreme form of Sharia: “We are not living under the Khilafah. There is a big fitna [i.e. social unrest] going on, if you haven’t noticed. – and much of the fitna is happening because we don’t have Khilafah. And then there are many people who don’t want Khilafah, because they want to continue being criminals so that their hands don’t get cut off.”

The Fatwas

In early 2016, Anwar started issuing fatwas or Islamic rulings as executive director of the IJC. Two of these fatwas merit our attention. On March 20, 2016, Anwar issued an Islamic ruling denouncing purportedly “pseudo-Islamic organizations” and “pseudo-Imams” as disbelievers for telling Muslims that “it is permissible to live by a partial Sharia (instead of its totality).”

Anwar’s support for total Sharia governance is troubling, since even implementing partial Sharia governance has negative consequences for people’s lives.

For instance, Mauritania, Nigeria, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Malaysia maintain the apostasy law on their books.

This law says that Muslims will face the death penalty for leaving Islam.

Although rarely used, the apostasy law’s existence has fostered a climate of fear that forces ex-Muslims to live in the closet. It also gives extremists an implicit license to murder ex-Muslims and even secular Muslims on the grounds that they are apostates of Islam. I personally know Pakistani and Nigerian ex-Muslims who are forced by this law to conceal their innermost thoughts and feelings while in public. One of them temporarily fled his community, because he came out as an atheist. He was only welcomed back to his community after agreeing to revert to Islam.

On June 13, Anwar wrote another fatwa on the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). These organizations subscribe to Islamic beliefs that range from moderate to conservative and are politically linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Anwar, however, thought that they were not Islamic enough.

His fatwa declared that “anyone who supports CAIR, ISNA, MAS, or ICNA, or any organization affiliated with them in any way, is a kafir (disbeliever) and a traitor to Allah and His Messenger.”

He added that this fatwa was meant to prevent Muslims “from dying upon kufr (disbelief), and consequently entering hellfire.” In effect, Anwar was supporting an unelected theocracy that outlawed pluralism within Islam and quashed secular democratic sentiments. Anwar despised the “Interfaith system,” since it “promotes equality of the religions.” He also accused these Muslim organizations of betraying Islam for promoting “the secular, divisive, corrupt, and immoral democratic system of government and encouraging Muslims everywhere to believe in and implement such beliefs.”

The scary thing is that the ideas contained in Anwar’s June 13 fatwa have actually been implemented in some Muslim countries.

A principle problem in the current war in Syria and Iraq is extremists dehumanizing people from other Islamic sects for not conforming to their vision of Islam. According to this extremist perspective, these other Islamic sects are a source of fitna (i.e. social unrest) and the logical way to achieve peace is by exterminating them. Likewise, anti-secular and anti-democratic sentiments have also had harmful consequences for many Muslim-majority communities.

The secular democratic system plays a key role in representing and managing the differences of religions and cultures in a peaceful way. The rejection of this system has resulted, for instance, in the use ofPakistan’s blasphemy law in order to persecute Shia, Ahmadi, Christian, and Hindu religious minorities.

The United States’ free speech laws allow a person like Anwar to promote extremism. Yet Anwar’s fatwas should not be the final word on Islam or on how political, economic, and cultural orders should be organized. Resident Americans of different backgrounds belong to an open society where ideas are studied and judged on their merits.

When Anwar issues his fatwas and calls upon Muslims to reject religious pluralism, secularism, and democracy, and embrace a political order like Saudi Arabia’s, liberal-minded people cannot afford to stand by and do nothing.

The preservation of an open society, which protects civil liberties and embraces cultural and religious diversity within reason, depends upon good people exposing and discrediting absolutist ideas which go against the principles of a free nation.

CAIR-Fuqra Official Announces Intention to Run for Governor

June 29, 2016

CAIR-Fuqra Official Announces Intention to Run for Governor, Clarion ProjectRyan Mauro, June 29, 2016

Tahirah-Amatul-Wadud-HPTahirah Amatul-Wadud (Photo: Facebook)

Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, an official with both the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Massachusetts chapter and the Muslims of the Americas (a rebranding of the Jamaat ul-Fuqra terrorist group), has announced her intention to run for governor.

She currently lives in Massachusetts, where Republican Governor Charlie Baker will be running for re-election in 2018. It is unclear if Wadud meant that that she’d run in the next cycle.

Amatul-Wadud is currently the general counsel for the Muslims of the Americas, whose spiritual leader is a radical cleric named SheikhMubarak Ali Gillani in Pakistan. The organization was previously known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, when it carried out terrorist attacks in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The group is best known for its “Islamberg” headquarters in New York where guerilla training of women has occurred, as seen in this undated footage obtained by the Clarion Project from a law enforcement source. It claims to have 22 “Islamic villages” in 12 states. The Clarion Project identified one such “village” in Texas in 2014. We recently published the heartbreaking testimony of a woman who grew up in these villages in the 1980s.

A 2007 FBI report  obtained by the Clarion Project states “the documented propensity for violence by this organization supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government.”

It says “members of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and military/terrorist training from Gillani.” It warns that MOA “possess an infrastructure capable of planning and mounting terrorist campaigns overseas and within the U.S.” MOA has a history of terrorist and criminal activity.

Amatul-Wadud previously posted an article on her Facebook page by Gillani that touts 9/11 conspiracy theories and claims that ISIS is a front for British intelligence. It also claims that the U.S. was brought into World War Two by a Jewish conspiracy.

“There was no need for America to go to war against Hitler. Hitler was not the enemy of America or the American people. There was a mutual animosity between Hitler and the Jews. So, the American people paid a very heavy price for fighting someone else’s war,” Gillani wrote.

When Amatul-Wadud made her announcement, she immediately tweeted to Syeda Zainab Gillani, who praised her for the decision. Gillani’s twitter displays a photo of Sheikh Gillani and Hussain Adams, chief executive officer of MOA and son of convicted Fuqra terrorist, Barry Adams.

Amatul-Wadud is also a board member for the Massachusetts branch of CAIR, which the Justice Department has labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing trial. CAIR is also identified by the Justice Department as an entity of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. The United Arab Emirates designated CAIR as a terrorist organization when it cracked down on Islamist extremism and banned the Muslim Brotherhood.

A 2007 court filing by federal prosecutors in another terrorism case reads:

“From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists … the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”

Amatul-Wadud’s status as a joint CAIR/Fuqra official reflects growing ties between the two organizations.

Shockingly, Amatul-Wadud was invited to a White House event celebrating activists for religious pluralism in December. She is also on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women, which interestingly doesn’t mention her connection to MOA/Fuqra (but does mention her status as a CAIR official).

The CAIR-MA website also doesn’t mention the connection, only saying that she is “general counsel for a New York Muslim congregation.” When I confronted a CAIR official on Newsmax TV about this link and Fuqra’s history (which includes showing pictures of the weapons found during a raid on a Fuqra camp in Colorado in 1992), his rebuttal was that terrorist networks haven’t existed in America since the 9/11 attacks.

Whenever Amatul-Wadud does run for governor, MOA/Fuqra, CAIR and their allies will try to drown out voices mentioning this information with shouts of “Islamophobia,” as those with Islamist extremist backgrounds always do. But, with this volume of incriminating information, no megaphone will be loud enough to stop the facts from being heard.

Hamas-Linked CAIR Lawyers-Up Orlando Terrorist’s Family, Mosque Suspects

June 23, 2016

Hamas-Linked CAIR Lawyers-Up Orlando Terrorist’s Family, Mosque Suspects, Counter Jihad Report, Paul Sperry, June 23, 2016

[B]ecause the Obama administration has scuttled the ongoing prosecution of CAIR, the group is now free to intervene in terrorism cases and effectively dictate the terms of the FBI’s terrorism investigations.

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If you are a member of the media or even an investigator with the FBI seeking to question members of the Orlando terrorist’s family or mosque, you will now have to go through a federally listed terrorist front group — the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Calls to Omar Mateen’s father and other relatives are now redirected to a phone number for a CAIR attorney, and another CAIR lawyer is sitting in on FBI interviews with suspects at Mateen’s radical mosque in Fort Pierce, Fla. — even though the FBI has suspended formal ties to CAIR over the group’s association with terrorist groups.

CAIR lawyered up a suspect who was interviewed by two FBI agents at the mosque for about 30 minutes on Friday. The CAIR lawyer, Omar Saleh, also happens to be a longstanding member of that same mosque — the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce — as well as a friend of the Mateen family. Mateen’s sisters, who work at the mosque and own property on the same street, follow local CAIR coordinators on social media.

The small Islamic center has now graduated two deadly terrorists in the past two years, including a worshiper who became the first American suicide bomber in Syria. Local law enforcement authorities call it “a breeding ground” for terrorists.

Saleh, who isn’t charging mosque suspects for his legal help, is now in charge of fielding questions from investigators interested in questioning other suspects in the June 12 terrorist attack. In fact, CAIR is now offering free legal aid to the entire Muslim community in which Mateen lived.

What’s more, CAIR’s legal counsel and communications director for its Florida chapter is acting as the official spokesman for the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce. The CAIR official, Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, has minimized Mateen’s involvement in the mosque, claiming he was a fringe member who was quiet and kept to himself.

“He was very unusual,” Ruiz told the local press. “After Friday noon prayers, the older people stay and socialize. He did so very few times.”

CAIR’s Saleh agreed: “He was just a person who came in and out. Most people didn’t know him at all … There’s no way anyone would know” he sought to carry out violent jihad against fellow Americans.

But that doesn’t square with accounts from co-workers and classmates who describe Mateen as an opinionated loudmouth with violently anti-American and homophobic views. And Mateen was hardly on the fringes of the mosque community. As CounterJihad.com first reported, mosque records show his father helped lead the Islamic center as a top officer and board member.

Ruiz, who’s also worked for a Florida-based Islamist group that demonizes homosexuals, additionally claimed Mateen’s attendance at the mosque was “sporadic,” even though others said he regularly prayed there three to four times a week for the past 13 years. In fact, he was seen praying at the Islamic center the night before the attack one gay nightclub in Orlando.

Running interference in terrorism investigations is a familiar pattern for CAIR, which remains on a federal terrorist co-conspirators blacklist.

Last year, CAIR intervened on behalf of the family and mosque of the San Bernardino terrorists, even holding a press conference for family members to help spin their story before investigators had a chance to talk to them. Within hours of the attack, CAIR swooped in and lawyered up key witnesses and suspected co-conspirators in the plot, including relatives and friends of the shooters along with leaders of their mosque.

CAIR officials defended the parents of the lead shooter even as they were placed on a federal terrorist watchlist.

“Those family members would have been key (persons of interest) for those FBI agents and other law enforcement agencies to interview after the immediate fact, to try to find out what the motives were and why this attack took place,” former FBI agent Chad Jenkins said at the time. “Instead, they’re doing public appearances with that organization.”

CAIR officials characterized the San Bernardino terrorist attack as “workplace violence,” adding “This is not a Muslim problem.”

After it became clear that the attack was Islamic jihad, the CAIR official who organized the press conference — Hussam Ayloush of Los Angeles — claimed America was “partly responsible” because of its support of “oppressive regimes around the world that push people over on the edge.”

In a lesser known case, CAIR actually coached a Muslim leader of a Maryland mosque on how to mislead FBI agents interviewing him about suspicious activity related to terrorism at the mosque. The 2004 case was detailed in the book, “Muslim Mafia,” citing internal CAIR records marked “DO NOT RELEASE OUTSIDE CAIR.” As a result of CAIR’s obstruction, the witness withheld critical information from the agents, who were attached to the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office.

Though CAIR publicly claims to cooperate with law enforcement, it privately advises the Muslim community to clam up when FBI agents ask questions — and to even slam the door in their face. In 2011, a California chapter of CAIR distributed a poster to area Muslims advising them to “Build a Wall of Resistance; Don’t Talk to the FBI.” An accompanying graphic showed homeowners slamming the door on federal agents, who were depicted as evil spies.

The FBI says it will no longer conduct outreach with CAIR until “we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS,” a U.S.-designated terrorist group. In 2007, the Justice Department implicated CAIR and one of its co-founders in a Hamas fund-raising case. The courts have denied CAIR’s repeated motions for removal from the federal unindicted co-conspirators list.

When CAIR demanded the U.S. Justice Department remove it from the list, a federal judge wrote in an unsealed ruling: “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR … with Hamas.”  The case was sent to an appellate court which ruled unanimously to keep CAIR on the co-conspirator list because of the overwhelming evidence against it.

Washington-based CAIR is not “an appropriate liaison partner” for the FBI because of evidence linking the organization and its leaders to Hamas, an FBI assistant director said in a letter to the U.S. Senate.

“In light of that evidence, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and the FBI,” Richard C. Powers, an assistant director in the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs, explained in the letter.

Yet because the Obama administration has scuttled the ongoing prosecution of CAIR, the group is now free to intervene in terrorism cases and effectively dictate the terms of the FBI’s terrorism investigations.

Dr. Jasser discusses the need to properly identify the problem within Islam 06.18.2016

June 20, 2016

Dr. Jasser discusses the need to properly identify the problem within Islam 06.18.2016 via YouTube, June 20, 2016

(Please see also, Dr. Jasser takes part in a Hannity special report Jihad In America 06.17.2016. DM)