Category Archives: Islam in the Americas

Mosque seeks (missing) Somali youth

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H/T Islam in Europe

CSIS fears missing youth may return to Canada as terrorists. From The National Post Online:

Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Thursday, November 26, 2009
SOMALIA

The Toronto mosque where a group of missing Somali-Canadians sometimes worshipped has urged anyone with information about them to come forward.

The Abu Huraira Centre posted the statement on its website as counterterrorism officials investigate whether the young men had been recruited into a Somali militant group.

“Many people have heard and have been inquiring about the young Somali men from the Toronto area, who appear to have travelled overseas in early November with little or no knowledge of their parents,” it reads. “At this time, we have very limited information and do not wish to speculate. However, we urge anyone who may have any relevant information to please come forward and contact us.”

As many as six ethnic Somalis have vanished from Toronto in recent weeks. The RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are involved because of a pattern of similar behaviour in the United States.

In Minneapolis, at least 20 Somali-Americans have gone missing only to turn up in Somalia as members of Al-Shabab, a Taliban-like armed group that says it is fighting a jihad against the Somali government. Continue Reading →

Radical Muslim books widely available, enjoy influence and popularity in Canada

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From The National Post

Radical muslim books too easily available: report

Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Members of the Toronto 18, seen here in a courtroom sketch, were found with radical Muslim books that encouraged terrorism. Kagan McLeod/National Post Members of the Toronto 18, seen here in a courtroom sketch, were found with radical Muslim books that encouraged terrorism.

TORONTO — When police rounded up 18 terror suspects around Toronto in 2006, they found cash, detonators and videos that showed some of them yelling “God is Great” as they trained in the snow with guns.

Police also found copies of manifestos with titles such as The Book of Jihad, The Virtues of Jihad, Fundamental Concepts Regarding Al-Jihad and 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad.

Such reading materials now enjoy “influence and popularity” in Canada, says a secret government study that identifies the ideologues whose writings it says are promoting “violent jihad” among Canadians.

The report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre names Sayed Qutb, Abdullah Azzam and Ibn Taymiyah as the “key ideologues whose works have contributed to Islamist radicalization in Canada.”

All three are dead. Qutb was a controversial Egyptian executed in 1966. Azzam was Osama bin Laden’s sidekick, killed in a 1989 car bombing, and Taymiyah was a 12th century scholar from what is now Turkey.

“In the context of this assessment, radicalization is defined as the process by which an individual progresses to an Islamist extremist viewpoint where violence is a justifiable means to achieve ideological objectives,” the study says.

“One of the key radicalizing elements in this process is exposure to Islamist extremist messaging which promotes violent jihad. A relatively small number of Islamist extremist authors are the source of this type of messaging, which includes literature, speeches and statements.”

These materials “can be obtained from newspapers and other publications, public audio and video broadcasts, and extremist forums on the Internet,” the report says. It does not mention, however, that they can also be purchased from online booksellers and borrowed from libraries.

The Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Winnipeg public libraries list Qutb’s works in their catalogues, and his most radical books are posted in their entirety on a website for young Canadian Muslims.

“Syed Qutb’s books and Ibn Taymiyah’s doctrines are widely available in Canada, but more accessible on the Internet,” said the Canadian Muslim writer and activist Tarek Fatah, an opponent of Islamist extremism.

The “Toronto 18” group circulated extremist literature in electronic form. Some of the materials were found on a laptop seized during the arrest of Saad Gaya, whose sentencing begins today in Brampton. He has pleaded guilty to participating in a plot to detonate truck bombs in downtown Toronto.

The classified intelligence report, released under the Access to Information Act, is one of dozens of studies that analyze why some Canadians participate in al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist activities.

Previous studies have focused on the role of extremist fathers like Ahmed Khadr, spiritual mentors, the Internet and foreign paramilitary training camps but part of the answer was apparently on the bookshelf.

A common thread among the targets of counter-terrorism investigators was that they were consumers of extremist literature that portrays the West as the enemy and advocates violence as a duty.

“Radicalizing literature in the possession of individuals of interest to Canadian authorities indicates the ongoing influence and popularity of the works of Islamist extremist ideologues,” the report says.

The police search of the Ottawa home of terrorist Momin Khawaja in 2004 turned up not only military rifles, wooden ammunition crates and electronic detonator components but also copies of Taymiyah’s The Religious and Moral Doctrine of Jihad and Azzam’s Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan.

A 2006 study by the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point concluded that Azzam was among the modern authors most cited by Islamist terrorists. Qutb ranked number one. Taymiyah was the most commonly cited pre-modern author.

A 2007 paper by Carleton University’s Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies singled out the same trio as the foundation of al-Qaeda ideology.

In his writing, Azzam appealed to Muslims around the world to join the fight in Afghanistan, claiming that an hour spent fighting for Islam was worth more than 70 hours of prayer.

“He brought modern warfare to the concept of ‘global jihad’ and passed on his acquired skills to his many protégés, including UBL [bin Laden],” the government report says.

Of the three authors, Qutb is arguably the most influential. Qutb studied in the United States but returned to Egypt after two years and wrote disparagingly about Americans, decrying their freedom, racism and “animal-like” mixing of races. He also began advocating for the global dominance of Muslims.

“He sought to transform Islam into a political movement in order to create a new society based on ancient Koranic principles,” reads the intelligence report. “Qutb is also known for articulating the concept of ‘global jihad.'”

In Milestones, he wrote that those who resist the worldwide spread of Islam must be fought until they are either killed or submit.

“Sayed Qutb defined jihad as a call to unremitting warfare against the forces of unbelief in order to ‘open the nations for Islam,” Angela Gendron of Carleton University wrote in “Al Qaeda: Propaganda and Media Strategy.”

A report by the RCMP National Security Criminal Investigations Section calls Qutb “the ideological father” of al-Qaeda. “Qutb validated extreme violence in the cause of faith, so ‘Islamic terrorism’ could more accurately be called ‘Qutbian terrorism,’ the RCMP report says.

National Post

sb***@**********st.com

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Speeches from Rifka Barry Rally

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A rally for Rifqa Bary held in Dorrian Commons Park in Columbus, Ohio, on November 16, 2009. Speakers included Pamela Geller, Simon Deng, Nonie Darwish, James Lafferty, Robert Spencer, and Jamal Jivanjee.

Some excellent speeches here by some people who the western world needs to pay a lot more attention to than they are. Simon Deng, Nonnie Darwish and others are amongst this illustrious group of speakers who deal with very important issues of apostasy in Islam and Islam and Western Civilization.

Personally I do not have an opinion on the Rifka Barry case, other than of course she has the absolute right to change her belief howsoever she likes and should be safe from the state, her family and community. There is much I do not understand however about the details. But I do know the people who have chosen to rally behind her and offer her massive support in many ways are far wiser and more experienced than I on these matters so I post this also for that reason. These speakers are excellent. The community represented here in this video is significant so in solidarity also I post this video, even if I have not been a strident voice on this particular individual and issue. One hopes that she turns 18 soon, and becomes a free agent within the US to live her life with the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans. If she is one.

Eeyore for Vlad.

Parents charged with child abuse, abandoned raped daughter USA

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In July, four boys were charged with assaulting girl; parents said they blamed daughter

CNN.COM

(CNN) — The parents of an 8-year-old Liberian girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted by four boys in July were arrested Friday on child abuse charges, according to Arizona police.

The father, 59, and mother, 47, were arrested Friday in Phoenix on seven counts of child abuse, said police spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill. Police were waiting for them at their home after the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office issued the warrants. Continue Reading →

Upcoming ‘Life of Muhammed’ flick filmed without Muhammed

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From Times Online

Life of Muhammad to be filmed, but don’t expect to see him on screen

However, the press conference held to unveil the project demonstrated the risks inherent in any attempt to package the “true story” of the Prophet’s life for a global audience today.

Alnoor Holdings, a media company that has created a $200million film production fund to invest in Hollywood and international projects, has hired the cleric Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi as their lead theological consultant for the film.

Sheikh al-Qaradawi is one of the Sunni Islam’s most high-profile theologians thanks to his popular slot hosting a television show on al-Jazeera. He is admired by many moderate Muslims and was recently described by the government’s senior counter-terrorism official as “one of the most articulate critics of al-Qaeda in the Islamic world”.

He is also a highly controversial figure who was refused entry to Britain last year because of his views. He has reportedly condoned the Holocaust, supported the stoning of homosexuals and praised suicide bombers in Iraq, not to mention telling an interviewer that he considered Shia Islam a heretical branch of the faith.

According to the Gulf Times newspaper he told journalists in Doha that the film was a response to “the crusader-styled distortion of Islam [that] continues to influence [the] world population today.”

“I will say we Muslims have not exerted sufficient efforts to correct the fake tales as Christians have used [in] the media. The life of the Prophet Muhammad is richly documented from the cattle he raised to the weapons he used to his private life.”

The Qatari Tribune, which was also present, said that he described the world in milder language as a small village where people must know each other better and learn about other religions.

“We think that our religion is universal. Unfortunately, many people do not know about Islam and have misconceptions about it.”

Mr Osborne, who said that he was “keen to inspire and enlighten the world by bringing the story of one of history’s greatest figures on screen”, admitted that when he was first approached by Al Noor in August 2008 he was not ready to join them.

“I did not have enough knowledge about Islam, but now I have read two books and watched two movies about the religion.”

However much additional research Mr Osborne and his team undertake between now and the scheduled start of shooting for the as-yet-untitled picture in 2011, they are expecting that there will be groups who take offence at their take on the Prophet’s life.

There has been one substantial attempt at tackling the same subject matter before. The Message, a 1977 film about the Prophet starring Anthony Quinn, sparked riots in the US in which two people died, even though it respected the tradition of not representing the Prophet himself. The film is currently being remade as The Messenger of Peace.

More recently, satirical cartoons of the Prophet published in Denmark in 2006 provoked violent protests in many parts of the Muslim world and last year the planned UK publication of a novel about the Prophet Muhammad’s child bride was postponed over fears it might incite violence.

Islamist preacher inspired Hasan, other terrorists

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From The Telegraph U.K.

Fort Hood shooting: radical Islamic preacher also inspired July 7 bombers

The Islamic preacher who gave email advice to Major Nidal Hasan, the gunman in the Fort Hood massacre, also inspired the July 7 bombers and a number of other British terrorists.

By Philip Sherwell and Duncan Gardham
Published: 6:30AM GMT 23 Nov 2009

Imam Anwar al-Awlaki

Imam Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen October 2008,

An Islamic preacher who gave email advice to Major Nidal Hasan, the gunman in the Fort Hood massacre that left 13 dead, also inspired the July 7 London bombers and a number of other British terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki were found in the Iqra bookshop in Leeds, where the July 7 bombers held meetings. His lectures were also found among the material seized from a jihadist recruiter, Aabid Hussain Khan, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who groomed Britain’s youngest terrorist, schoolboy Hammaad Munshi, then 15.

Al-Awlaki , 38, a US citizen, fled from the country to live in Britain after it was disclosed that three of the September 11 hijackers had worshipped at two different mosques where he preached.

He moved to Yemen in 2004, where he was arrested and then went underground, but he has been invited to give video lectures, most recently at East London Mosque in January, and his videos are still on sale in Britain.

Major Hasan, an army psychiatrist, worshipped at a mosque in Virginia where al-Awlak was imam at the same time as two Sept 11 hijackers.

Hasan, 39, has been charged with 13 murders. He shouted “allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and shot dead unarmed soldiers awaiting vaccinations before or after deployment. He is lying in a military hospital bed, paralysed from the waist down, after civilian police officers shot him to end the rampage.

It has since emerged that US intelligence monitored email correspondence during the past two years between the officer and the imam.

Hasan asked advice on jihad and whether it was permissible to kill innocent people in a suicide attack.

Al-Awlaki’s most influential lecture, Constants on the Path to Jihad, is based on a 2005 book by Yousef al-Ayyiri, the founder of
al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

According to Evan Kohlmann, a US terrorism consultant, the sermon was “a ‘virtual bible’ for lone-wolf Muslim extremists”.

Earlier this year, al-Awlaki also published 44 Ways to Support Jihad, a practical point-by-point guide to pursuing or supporting holy war.

“Constants spells out al-Qaeda’s home-grown terror strategy,” said Mr Kohlmann.

“Al-Awlaki didn’t just translate it, he applied its teachings for a Western audience. So when Ayyiri stated ‘jihad is everywhere’, al-Awlaki explained that meant jihad was in Europe too. This is a very clever individual who understands the power of the Internet to radicalise people. Had al-Awlaki not translated Constants, then most of the Western Muslims who were inspired by it would never have even heard of it.”

Al-Awlaki ‘s lectures were also found on a CD belonging to Mohammed Atif Siddique, 22, from Glasgow, an aspiring suicide bomber, who was found guilty of possessing bomb-making instructions.

Canada to rule on polygamy

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From The Ottawa Citizen

“When there is evidence of damage to women and hurt to children, we don’t have to tolerate it any more than we would tolerate suttee (a woman burning to death on her husband’s funeral pyre) or infant sacrifice.” Dr. Susan Stickevers, assistant clinical professor, State University, New York.

I can only hope that Canada gets it right in the 2010 ruling and rejects the argument that polygamy holds any benefit and should find a safe place as a legitimate religious/cultural right.

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Polygamy on trial

By Daphne Bramham, Citizen SpecialNovember 22, 2009 5:06 AM

British Columbia Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman has taken it on himself to be the one who rules on the ground-breaking constitutional case involving polygamy when it goes to trial sometime next year.

Bauman, who was appointed in September, will decide whether banning polygamy is a justifiable limitation on religious freedom. Regardless of what he decides, it’s almost certain that this case will be appealed first to the B.C. Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court of Canada.

Lawyers for both the B.C. and Canadian governments will argue that polygamy should not be allowed because of its inherent harm to women and children.

So, before the case even gets to trial, Bauman will have to decide whether to appoint someone to argue that the practise of polygamy is protected by the guarantee of religious freedom.

Until six years ago, the B.C. government held the view that the polygamy law was unconstitutional. As a result, for more than a decade it refused to lay charges against fundamentalist Mormon leaders in Bountiful.

In law, harm doesn’t have to be imminent. In two disparate cases — Malmo-Levine, where the criminal offence of marijuana possession was upheld, and a child pornography case involving Vancouverite John Robin Sharpe — the Supreme Court of Canada said it was enough that both generally cause harm. Still, government lawyers need to show harm. They might start by looking at the medical research.

Dr. Susan Stickevers, an assistant clinical professor and residency program director at State University of New York with a longstanding interest in ensuring that polygamy remains criminalized, is certain the evidence is there. Based on her reading of more than 50 peer-reviewed studies, she doesn’t buy the argument that polygamy is a justifiable religious or cultural practice.

“When there is evidence of damage to women and hurt to children, we don’t have to tolerate it any more than we would tolerate suttee (a woman burning to death on her husband’s funeral pyre) or infant sacrifice,” she said in a telephone interview.

Stickevers’s interest in polygamy was first piqued in the mid-1980s when several of her students were “Sullivanians,” followers of psychiatrist Henry Stack Sullivan, who forced them to sleep with one another on a rotational basis. But it was only 12 years ago that she began to study the research when a patient’s health suddenly declined after her Muslim husband took a second wife. Since then, Stickevers has had a number of Muslim plural wives as patients. Their experiences mirror the research conclusions: Polygamy is bad for most women, particularly the first or senior wives.

The focus of the peer-reviewed studies varies widely — among people who immigrated to the American Midwest in the 1970s, fundamentalist Mormons, Bedouin Arabs, Nigerian Christians, African animists, Muslims in the United Arab Emirates.

Of those studies, 90 per cent conclude that women suffer some harm. The harm ranges from low self-esteem to mild depression to significant psychiatric problems.

Of the studies of children in polygamous families, 70 per cent found they are more likely to have poorer academic performance, greater behavioural problems and more difficulty adjusting in social situations compared to children of monogamous families.

The studies suggest it’s because the families are poorer, less educated and more prone to marital conflict and family violence.

There is also general agreement that polygamy is a risk factor for both incest and abuse.

All of the studies examine what is more properly called polygyny since, worldwide, polygamy is almost exclusively men with multiple wives and not women with multiple husbands.

The largest study of children in polygynous families was done in 2008 by Alean Al-Krenawi of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, who has done more research on the subject than anyone else. He and his colleague Vered Slonim-Nevo surveyed 352 Bedouin Arab children in Grades 7 to 9. Of those, 174 were from monogamous and 178 from polygamous families.

Children from polygamous families had higher levels of chronic and persistent pain with no identifiable physical origin, obsession compulsion, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation (a milder form of paranoia) and psychosis.

They also had significantly more problems in peer relationships, significantly poorer relationships with their fathers and lower school achievement than did those from monogamous families.

Their study concludes with an indictment of polygamy. They warned of a “bleak future for children from polygynous families … The many difficulties these children suffer may lead to a sense of hopelessness and cause them to seek other activities (e.g. pleasure-seeking). Furthermore, in adolescence and adulthood, these difficulties may put them at risk for delinquency, drug abuse and unemployment.”

Al-Krenawi’s research suggests the average polygamous family has five more children than the average monogamous one.

Unsurprisingly, children spend less time with their polygamous fathers. Children of the less-loved wife or wives suffer most and, usually, they are the children of the first wives whose marriages were arranged and not the subsequent wives whose marriages are often love matches.

Oddly missing from all of the studies, however, is the most obvious harm of all: The simple arithmetic of polygyny denies many men the possibility of ever marrying and having children.

Daphne Bramham writes for the Vancouver Sun.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Kalifornistan?

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I have no idea what to make of this. I’m told it’s good. But it looks like it could go either way. Hell Ill watch it anyway. The people who made it are associated with some truly outstanding films such as the path to 911 etc.

For more information please visit www.kalifornistan.com

Sears Tower Terror Plot Leader Gets 13-Year Sentence

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Batiste, who is heard calling the U.S. government “of the devil” and discussing how he wanted to build “an Islamic army for Islamic jihad.”

Narseal Batiste Fox News…MIAMI —  The ringleader of a group described by prosecutors as plotting terror attacks on Chicago’s Sears Tower and FBI offices in hopes of sparking an anti-government insurrection was sentenced Friday to 13 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge.

Narseal Batiste, 35, dabbed at his eyes with a tissue when U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard wondered in court how he was transformed from a hardworking family man struggling to build an inner-city construction business to the unquestioned leader of a quasi-religious, paramilitary group seeking support from Al Qaeda for terrorism.

“You’ve done great harm to yourself, your family, the young men who were your followers, and you’ve violated the trust of your country,” Lenard said.

Batiste, who faced a maximum of 70 years in prison, was convicted in May of conspiracy to provide material support to Al Qaeda, plotting to blow up buildings and conspiracy to wage war against the U.S. Four other men described as Batiste’s soldiers were also convicted and sentenced to between six and 10 years behind bars.

The sentencing marked the culmination of a case that began with an FBI raid in June 2006 on the group’s warehouse, known as the “Embassy” in an impoverished Miami neighborhood.

Top U.S. officials acknowledged at the time that the Sears Tower and FBI plots never got past the discussion stage and the group never acquired the means to carry out such audacious attacks.

The case was viewed as a prime example of the post-9/11 law enforcement strategy of stopping terror plots in the earliest possible stages, before proverbial fuse is lit. Continue Reading →

Major Hassan and his pen pals.

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Here are a couple of videos from an article on Tundra Tabloids. I rearanged them a bit but go over and have a look he has some other great stuff there as well. The man can photoshop what can I say.

In any case it appears that Hassan gave a lot of zakat, or charity money for Islamic terrorist groups, and had for years before he decided to go out in a blaze of murder. Quite the choice of pen pals. It must be getting hard for leftist defenders of Islam to claim he was acting against the peaceful intentions of the faith and was really just some nut.

Here is the video from ABC News on his pen pals. Click over for more info if you like.

Now after watching this, it may be worth noting that he could have spared himself a lot of time and trouble if he just watched a few Robert Spencer lectures. Hell most of us in the anti-jihad could have answered his questions with chapter and verse. Spencer would be who I would go to first though:

Families concerned about missing Somali-Canadians

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SOMALIA TORONTO — Several Somali-Canadian families are asking what happened to their sons after a group of young men apparently disappeared from Toronto two weeks ago.

They left town without notice, and have not contacted home since. “They didn’t even tell their parents,” said Omar Kireh, administrator of the Abu Huraira Centre, the Toronto mosque where the men occasionally worshipped.

A circle of friends in their twenties leaving town together might not ordinarily be cause for concern, but following recent events in the American Somali community, their disappearance has set off alarm bells.

More than 20 Somali-Americans who similarly vanished from Minneapolis have turned up in Somalia as members of Al-Shabab, an Islamist youth militia aligned with al-Qaeda and often likened to the Taliban.

One of the Americans died while conducting a suicide bombing and another is also confirmed dead. Their families blame extremists for radicalizing the young men, and RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said last month a similar pattern may be occurring in Canada’s large Somali community.

But almost two weeks after the Toronto men went missing, the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are still puzzling over their fate. Investigators have been showing photos of five men to members of Toronto’s Somali community.

Ahmed Gure, who runs the Ottawa-based Somali news website Hiiraan Online, said he had spoken to relatives of the parents. He said they fear the men have gone to Somalia to fight. Continue Reading →

Iranian front group sent funds to Canada: U.S.

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From The National Post

Charity sending money to Canada is an Iranian government front: U.S.

McGill, Carleton among recipients

Stewart Bell, National Post Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009

A woman walks past an anti-U.S. mural in Tehran Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images A woman walks past an anti-U.S. mural in Tehran

TORONTO — An organization the United States alleges is a front for the Iranian government has been bankrolling programs in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, charity records show.

The Alavi Foundation sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Canada before U.S. justice department officials went to court last Thursday to seize the group’s assets.

While the New York-based charity says its mission is to promote Islamic culture and the Persian language, U.S. prosecutors say it is secretly controlled by Tehran and have arrested its president.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court alleges the foundation was closely tied to an Iranian government bank involved in building Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

“For two decades, the Alavi Foundation’s affairs have been directed by various Iranian officials, including Iranian ambassadors to the United Nations, in violation of a series of American laws,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Charity records show the foundation was active in Canada as well. The top Canadian recipient of Alavi funds was the Toronto Farsi School, which has received almost $130,000 from the foundation since 2005.

A spokesman for the school said he may have to shut down without the Alavi funding. “This is very important for us,” said the man, who did not want his name published. “We are trying to keep the language alive.”

McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies also received $120,000 from Alavi over the past three years. Professor Christopher Manfredi, the Dean of Arts, said the money paid for a Persian language program and supported several students. But he said the foundation was not involved in the operation of the program or the selection of students.

Carleton University received a single donation of $10,000. The College of Humanities approached the foundation to sponsor a 2007 conference in celebration of Molana Jala ad-Din Mohammad Molavi Rumi, a 13th-century Persian theologian. “There is no ongoing relationship between Carleton and the foundation,” said Steve Blais, the university’s media relations officer.

The Alavi Foundation disbursed millions to North American mosques and Farsi-language programs but it was also suspected of links to the Iranian regime. The FBI has been investigating its relationship to Bank Melli, which allegedly provides banking services to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the militia that trains, equips and finances such terrorist groups as the Taliban, Hezbollah and Hamas. The bank is also accused by the U.S. Treasury of facilitating the purchase of components for Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.

The president of the Alavi Foundation, Farshid Jahedi, was arrested last December for obstructing justice after he allegedly destroyed documents he was required to produce to a grand jury looking into the foundation’s links to Bank Melli.

National Post

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Has CAIR Violated the Iranian Assets Control Regulations?

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by Frank Gaffney

On November 12 2009, the federal government moved to seize four mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by the Alavi Foundation, a group allegedly under the direct control of the Iranian government. The following day, the Washington Times exposed the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) for allegedly lobbying on behalf of the Iranian government in violation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act and the Foreign Agents Registration Act. We believe that a third U.S.-based group may be guilty of illegal ties to Iran under the Iranian Assets Control Regulations: the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

On November 18, 2006 and November 23, 2008, CAIR held their gala annual fundraisers at the Marriott hotel in Arlington, Virginia. We’ve posted previously that the Interests Section of Iran attended both events. Because the U.S. and Iran do not have diplomatic relations, the Interests Section of Iran, sponsored by the Embassy of Pakistan, functions as the defacto embassy representing Iran’s government.

At the 2008 event, we recorded video of Master of Ceremonies and then CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Ahmed Bedier giving personal thanks to “the Interests Section of Iran” for their support:

Here’s more evidence that the “Interests Section of Iran” supported the CAIR fundraiser: the “Thanks to” pages of the 2006 and 2008 printed programs list the “Interests Section of Iran.”

Please click the link above to get the rest of this story. There is a lot more there at Big Government on this and this is a story of importance. Please do check and feel free to send this link or the original one out to any and all contacts you have.

Thank you.

Eeyore.