Ben Johnson
As more sober minds consider ways to keep the Middle East from falling into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, Barack Obama is “fighting terrorism” by reaching out to the leader of one of the Brotherhood’s American creations. In the process, a White House official revealed that radical Muslims frequently advise the White House office headed by the president’s top adviser and alter ego, Valerie Jarrett.Preemptive Groveling
Flush with instances of American Muslims supporting Islamic jihad, Rep. Peter King is set to launch his investigation into the radicalization of U.S. mosques, imams, and the faithful they serve later this week. Barack Obama, ever keen to reach out to the Muslim community, decided to get ahead of this by sending a deputy to plead with the extremists for cooperation. On Sunday, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough spoke to a Sterling, Virginia, mosque some believe is a model of moderate Islam: the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), led by imam Mohamed Magid. Indeed, McDonough began by thanking Magid by name.
Although the Sudanese-born imam presents himself as an ecumenical, anti-terrorism leader active in “interfaith” outreach, his current associations — and those of others at his mosque — present a different picture.
A Dangerous Mosque
This author exposed ADAMS’s radical connections nearly seven years ago. At the time, ADAMS’s chairman was Ahmad Totonji, an Iraqi-born citizen of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia who was named as a defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by more than 600 relatives of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. He served as Vice President of the Safa Group and the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), which officials have linked to al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Sami al-Arian. (Al-Arian served more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to aid terrorism, and he is currently under house arrest awaiting his contempt trial, which has been mysteriously stalled.) ADAMS’s legal counsel, Muhammed Ashraf, was the attorney for Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving 23 years in prison for laundering money for Muammar Qaddafi in a plot to kill a Saudi prince.
Magid was on the premises of ADAMS’s Herndon, Virginia, offices when federal agents stormed the facility in March 2002. The “Grove Street Addresses” provided the homes of more than 100 interlocking Muslim organizations that the government accused of providing material support for terrorism. After the raid, Magid assembled a “community building” meeting at ADAMS attended by a variety of extremists.
FBI Snitch, Reagan Euglogizer?
Somehow, this record got Magid invited to speak at Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004.
Since the federal raid, Magid has alleged that he works with the FBI to track down extremists. How telling Time magazine about one’s status as a federal snitch is supposed to further his mission is anyone’s guess. Yet Magid’s services appear to be less-than-robust. According to Time, “So far as Magid knows, no terrorist has tried to infiltrate the mosque.”
It is not only Magid’s mosque that cements his ties to extremists and terrorists — or the most influential advisers in the Obama administration.
An Unindicted Co-Conspirator
Magid is current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The U.S. government listed ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in its trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which abused its charitable status “to promote and move forward Hamas’s agenda of the destruction of the State of Israel and establishment of an Islamic state in its place.” (In 2008, HLF was convicted of 108 charges, proving it funneled $12.4 million to Hamas.)
According to federal prosecutors at the HLF trial, “The evidence introduced at trial, for example, established that ISNA and NAIT [North American Islamic Trust] were among those organizations created by the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood” (Emphasis added.) The Brotherhood’s most distinguished alumnus is al-Qaeda’s number two in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The MB currently appears poised to take a leadership role in the post-Mubarack Egyptian government, at the behest of the Obama administration (and some pseudoconservatives). Federal prosecutors say ISNA and NAIT “were intimately connected with the HLF and its assigned task of providing financial support to Hamas.”
Even these substantial ties around not ISNA’s only connections to Islamic radicalism. Its board of directors includes yet more. One director, Faizul Khan, personally knew the Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan for more than 10 years. The London Telegraph reports Khan said the jiahdist, who was known to have spouted extremist rhetoric long before the tragic shooting, “never seemed controversial.”
The president of ISNA Canada, Mohamed Bekkari, is embroiled in a financial scandal. In January, an audit published in Canadian media alleged the organization had mismanaged more than $600,000 in charitable donations to the poor. One of the five pillars of Islam requires faithful Muslims to pay Zakat, giving 2.5 percent of their income to the needy. The Toronto Star reports an audit revealed “of about $810,777 collected over four years, only $196,460 went to aid the poor.”
ISNA publishedthe book by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leader behind the Ground Zero Mosque, calling for a dawa (conversion) of America to begin on the rubble of the Twin Towers. When Americans recoiled, ISNA VP Azhar Azeez said their opposition came “out of ignorance. People who are opposing the mosque have never, ever interacted with Muslims in their lives.”
One of the featured speakers at the oh-so-moderate ISNA’s 46th annual convention was Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, who defended the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Such a record of extremism has earned ISNA access to the Obama administration’s inside track for radicals, extremists, and America-haters.
Valerie Jarrett Begs ISNA for Advice
Despite the organization’s role in a trial that exposed the America support system for terrorism, the Obama administration forged close ties with ISNA from its opening moments. Valerie Jarrett invited then-ISNA president Ingrid Mattson to give a Muslim prayer at the president’s inauguration. Jarrett keynoted ISNA’s 46th annual convention — the same one addressed by Cat Stevens — and tried to get them involved in the White House’s Serve.gov website.[1]
In his address Sunday, McDonough let slip that radicals such as those in the audience had an inside track to advise Jarrett. McDonough said, “Over the past two years, I — along with my White House colleagues — have benefited from the advice of many of your organizations through our Office of Public Engagement.” OPE is headed by Jarrett, In the spring of 2009, OPE officials, including Jarrett herself, would host a “cultural policy summit” that included the most extreme elements of the Left.[2] One of its attendees, Sally Kohn, confirmed that the Obama administration uses far-Left groups to spread covert propaganda.
Access to OPE, and thus Jarrett, is not token privilege. In July 2009, Obama told New York Times reporter Robert Draper, “I trust her completely…She is family.” He authorized Jarrett “to speak for me, particularly when we’re dealing with delicate issues.” When asked, he admitted he runs every decision by her. An Obama 2008 campaign official told the New York Times,“If you want him to do something, there are two people he’s not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama.”
Jarrett put it in a more creepy way: “We have kind of a mind meld.”
She has the president’s ear. We now know ISNA radicals have her ear.
ENDNOTES:
1. Out of fairness, the coddling of ISNA is not entirely new. Steve Emerson of The Investigative Project on Terrorism reported the Justice Department co-sponsored ISNA’s 2007 national convention with taxpayer dollars. At the time, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, tried to cut off funding for future ISNA events.
2. A characteristic example is the invitation of someone calling herself “Rha Goddess,” who boasts that she is the “former International Spokeswoman for the Universal Zulu Nation.” The current spokeswoman wasn’t available?
Family Security Matters Contributor Ben Johnson is a conservative editor, journalist, and commentator. The Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine (2003-2010), his exposés have been cited by CBS News, “The Rush Limbaugh Program,” Sean Hannity, and Michelle Malkin. He has appeared on The Michael Savage Show, the G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Alan Colmes Show, and is a regular guest on American Family Radio's Nothing But Truth with Crane Durham. His personal website is TheRightsWriter.com. You can contact him here.
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