Obama’s ‘engagement’ with the Muslim Brotherhood in America
Obama’s “unfulfilled desire to make friends with Islamic extremists is still driving American foreign policy,” Jonathan S. Tobin reports in Commentary Magazine.
Tobin references the New York Times, which reported January 3 that the Obama administration has “embarked on a full-scale effort to ‘engage’ with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”
What the Lamestream Media is never going to report is that Barack Obama has been “engaged” with the Muslim Brotherhood for many years.
However, before we get to that connection, first the wisdom of the Times:
With the Muslim Brotherhood pulling within reach of an outright majority in Egypt’s new Parliament, the Obama administration has begun to reverse decades of mistrust and hostility as it seeks to forge closer ties with an organization once viewed as irreconcilably opposed to United States interests.
The shift is, on one level, an acknowledgment of the new political reality here, and indeed around the region, as Islamist groups come to power. Having won nearly half the seats contested in the first two rounds of the country’s legislative elections, the Brotherhood on Tuesday entered the third and final round with a chance to extend its lead to a clear majority as the vote moved into districts long considered strongholds.
The reversal also reflects the administration’s growing acceptance of the Brotherhood’s repeated assurances that its lawmakers want to build a modern democracy that will respect individual freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.
Long-time readers will recall Project Islamic H.O.P.E., which I first wrote about in August 2008. The controversy then was not only about the appearance but also the apparently ever-changing status of Barack Obama’s photo on the Islamic organization’s website banner.
First, Obama’s photo was scrubbed completely from the group of images featuring black leaders and friends. As recently as mid-June 2008, it was noted as having been replaced with a photo showing Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was still reported as missing that July 7th.
Then, as RBO regular Sure-Shot Oakley pointed out August 20th, within a few weeks the headliner photo on IslamicHope.org changed again to the one pictured above.
At the beginning of September 2008, it was reported that Obama’s picture had once again been removed from the headliner.
In January 2009, the headliner shot below showing Obama with Najee Ali, Director of Project Islamic HOPE (first captured in February 2008) was restored to the website.
The question arose as to how long had Obama’s photo been featured on Islamic HOPE’s headliner? One report from November 22, 2007, stated that it was there.
At one point, Project Islamic HOPE was at least temporarily inactive. The organization’s home page bore a statement “Regarding Najee Ali”:
Project Islamic H.O.P.E. would like to thank everyone for all of the many letters of support during this time. Project Islamic H.O.P.E.’s executive director was the lifeblood of the organization. Due to that fact, there will be no further activities or campaigns under the banner of Project Islamic H.O.P.E. until further notice.
The change in circumstances was the four-year sentence Ali received August 19, 2008:
- Activist Najee Ali, known as an outspoken critic of law enforcement, was sentenced to four years in state prison today after pleading no contest to trying to bribe a witness in his daughter’s criminal case.
There was also another obvious change on the website. By January 2009 (or perhaps even earlier) it no longer included an endorsement of Obama’s campaign. In August 2008 there was a direct link to Obama’s official website posted right there on Islamic HOPE’s front page. (Also noted August 20, 2008, by The Jawa Report):
- Project Islamic H.O.P.E. proudly supports the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama.
Additionally, Obama’s photo taken with Najee Ali (left), the one used for the headliner, was still included in Project Islamic HOPE’s Pictures Gallery.
What is totally unclear even now — all changes considered — is the unknown relationship Obama shared with Project Islamic HOPE other than the Islamic organization has/had an office in Chicago. Googling for Najee Ali + Obama turned up next to nothing, with the exception of this February 5, 2008, video of Najee Ali speaking on Super Tuesday from UCLA in which he promoted the Obama campaign.
I wrote in August 2008 that, on June 19, 2008, Yid with Lid asked why Obama’s picture was still on Islamic Hope’s website:
The Imam for the Project Islamic H.O.P.E., Wallace Deen Mohammed, aka Warith Deen Muhammad aka W.D. Muhammad was/is a member of the radical Islamist group Nation of Islam, he is also an ex-con. Wallace Deen Muhammad (b. Chicago 1933) is the son of Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI) until his death in 1975. In 1961, W.D. Muhammad refused military draft and was sentenced to three years in a Federal Prison. When W.D. Muhammad was installed as Supreme Minister of Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1975, he immediately began to reformulate his father’s beliefs and practices to bring NOI closer to American Sunni Islam.
Imam Warith D. Muhammad’s embrace of mainstream Islam was rewarded with political and economic benefits. In 1975, he met privately with Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat in Chicago, and 1976 he received a gift of $16 million from Sheikh Sultan Ben Mohammad al-Qasmini, head of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, to purchase a mosque and build a school.
Imam Wallace (Warith) Deen Mohammed, aka Warith Deen Muhammad aka W.D. Muhammed was linked to Jim Jones and his church in 1976.
What is Project Islamic H.O.P.E.?
Project Islamic H.O.P.E. (Islamic Hope) is based in Los Angeles, California, but has an office in Chicago.
In an August 2001 interview with IslamOnline.net, Najee Ali said:
The goal of Project Islamic H.O.P.E (Helping Oppressed People Everywhere) is to help establish Islam in America by participating in the process; whether it be through social or political activism. … We want to be viewed as an organization that fights for the civil rights of all people regardless of race or religion, by using the Holy Qur’an and the example of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as a guide.
Who’s Najee Ali?
Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, Najee Ali (Ronald Todd Eskew), a Muslim activist and “frequent critic of local police was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to trying to bribe a witness in a case involving his daughter.” (More here about Ali’s plea deal. He has since been released from jail.)
The Muslim Brotherhood Connection
Now, thanks to an astute RBOer, we learn that Project Islamic H.O.P.E. is a member organization of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, or AMT. (The AMT “About” page is no longer active.)
Other AMT member organizations are:
. American Muslim Alliance (AMA)
. Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)
. Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
. Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)
. Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA)
. Muslim American Society (MAS)
. Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)
. Muslim Students Association (MSA National)
. Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA)
. United Muslims of America (UMA)
All have been AMT members and involved in Muslim voter registration and voter education since at least 2004. (The AMT Political Action Committee has been “Administratively Terminated.”)
As you read the following, keep in mind the New York Times just reported that the Obama administration has “embarked on a full-scale effort to ‘engage’ with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”
World Net Daily reported in February 2011:
Staff investigators with the House and Senate intelligence committees say they are probing the domestic security threat posed by the radical Muslim Brotherhood and, specifically, whether Brotherhood operatives have penetrated the U.S. government.
The true nature, ambitions and global reach of the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood suddenly have become the focus of debate in Washington, following unrest in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.
The fact of the matter is that the FBI knows a lot about the security threat the Muslim Brotherhood poses to both Egypt and the U.S.
The WND article continues:
American Muslim activists deny the Muslim Brotherhood operates inside America. Even Muslims who have attached themselves to the Republican Party have pooh-poohed the internal threat.
“There’s no Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” former Bush administration official Suhail A. Khan insisted earlier this month at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Washington.
However, the U.S. Justice Department has identified no fewer than 61 Muslim Brotherhood figures and entities operating within the U.S.
Among those entities are the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, “the umbrella organization for most of the Muslim groups in the U.S. and Canada,” and the “Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, the largest Muslim-rights group in the country.”
Both are AMT members.
Again from WND:
Their names were entered into evidence as “co-conspirators” during a federal trial which ended in 2008 with the convictions of several Muslim Brotherhood leaders on terrorism charges. The “list of unindicted co-conspirators” implicated these otherwise mainstream Muslim groups in a criminal scheme to funnel millions of dollars to Palestinian terrorists under the guise of charity.
Several years ago, FBI agents got a “big break” when they “uncovered a stash of secret manifestos, charters and other documents revealing the depth of the conspiracy” in a search of Muslim Brotherhood leader, Ismail Elbarasse’s home in Annandale, Virginia, “following his arrest on suspicion he had cased the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and other bridges for possible terrorist attack,” WND reports.
After translating the Arabic-written papers into English, investigators realized they had seized the archives of the U.S. branch of the militant International Muslim Brotherhood.
The trove of papers exposes the jihadist inner workings of the U.S. Brotherhood, and outlines its broader conspiracy of infiltrating and destroying the American government “from within.”
One secret document found during the raid of Elbarasse’s home lays bare the Brotherhood’s ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover, replacing the U.S. Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.
A 1991 strategy paper by U.S. Muslim Brotherhood agent, Mohammed Akram Adlouni, “describes the group’s long-term goal of ‘sabotaging’ the U.S. system. It’s a blueprint for a stealth ‘grand jihad’,’ WND reports.
The document lists “29 organizations working in the U.S. to further the Brotherhood’s goals.”
In addition to ISNA and CAIR, listed organizations include the Muslim Students Association, or MSA, “which actively recruits on college campuses across the country,” and the Islamic Circle of North America, or ICNA, which merged with the Muslim American Society, or MAS, “another Brotherhood front organization based in the Washington suburbs.”
These organizations are all AMT members.
And then we have a direct connection between presidential candidate Obama and AMT member, the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), which my co-author, Aaron Klein, and I wrote about in our recent book, Red Army.
Universal Institute Charter School, owned by Universal Community Homes in Philadelphia, a not-for-profit community development company, was a recipient of stimulus education funds.
We write:
Damaging information is inadvertently divulged in the Department of Education data. Universal was formed in 1993 under the direction of Kenneth Gamble, described as “one of Philadelphia’s greatest talents, world-renowned lyricist, composer, producer.” Gamble serves as Universal’s chairman.
During the 2008 presidential campaign Barack Obama set his field office, the Pennsylvania Campaign for Change, at 1501 Christian Street. Gamble even cut the ribbon. Signage on the building identifies it as home to Universal Educational Management, part of Gamble’s Universal Companies.
What Universal’s grant application does not explain is that Gamble is the property owner of Philadelphia’s first mosque, the United Muslim Masjid, a predominantly African-American mosque which opened in October 1994. Gamble—Luqman Abdul Haqq—is also the face behind the United Muslim Movement (UMM), incorporated in Philadelphia in June 1994. UMM’s goal is to create a “central mosque in the city along with an organization that would be able to ‘respond to the social, economical, political, educational, and religious needs’” facing the UMM communities.
No longer listed on the UMM website is a list of member organizations that have been accused in court documents of terror ties—ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), ISNA (Islamic Society of North America),— which is tightly connected with the Muslim Brotherhood,—and the American Muslim Council (AMC).
Gamble is also a member of the Board of Directors (Majlis ash-Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), another Muslim Brotherhood-related group headed by Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Gamble is reported to have been involved with MANA’s leadership since April 2001, when the group was initially established as a national organization at the UMM mosque. The formation of MANA, which focuses its efforts on African-American converts to Islam, was inspired by Jamil Al-Amin, the onetime Black Panther “justice minister,” H. Rap Brown. MANA’s enthusiasm for Al-Amin is said to remain “untainted in the wake of his conviction for the 2000 murder of a sheriff’s deputy.” …
In April 2008, it was reported that the Philadelphia office of CAIR (the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations) was convening a workshop at Gamble’s mosque. It was remarked, “That certainly helps understand Gamble’s political-religious orientation.”
Even more telling is a message Gamble posts on Universal’s MANA web page: “We are not just here for Universal, we are down here for Islam.”
Even more telling is Barack Obama’s association with member organizations of the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections.
Also, speaking of politics making for strange bedfellows, AMT and the Green Party and the Libertarian Party have joined in “condemning” Obama’s “signing into law of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that authorizes the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without charge or trial.”
Go figure.
January 5, 2012
(ht/ to Brenda Elliot for her hundreds of hours of research and due diligence to get the facts and the story out there. Exposing the man in the White House operating his own agenda dangerous to AMERICA and to the BEST INTERESTS of AMERICANS !
