Up
to now the Obama Administration has faced three big scandals—the IRS,
the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. And now here is scandal Number
4:
For
the last four years the Obama Administration has conducted a major
“outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the
Middle East. Patrick Poole has been investigating this project and in a
comprehensive article now presents the full scoop
and scope of what’s been going on. His
article, "Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim
Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Policy" in the new, Summer,
issue of MERIA Journal is a gamechanger
You
may think that you know about this subject but it goes far beyond what
you have heard about.
The majority of groups and individuals promoted by the Obama
Administration have been radical Islamists, particularly Muslim
Brotherhood cadre, and more than occasionally people involved in
terrorist activity.
Moderate
Muslims have been neglected and isolated by this project which has
helped the radicals, Islamists, and pro-terrorists gain hegemony in the
Muslim community in America.
Again,
you may think that you know this story but it is far more extensive
than has ever before been revealed. Often, the White House and FBI have
granted access and worked with those who were simultaneously being
investigated on serious charges of terrorism.
The
whole “outreach” program has been a farce and it would be charitable to
describe it as incompetent on the part of the Obama
Administration. Patrick Poole pulls all of the material together for
the first time and shows serious flaws that have endangered Americans in
scores of cases.
Radicals
have been given credentials as moderates, been provided with
information that should have remained secret, been allowed to advise and
influence U.S. policy. The kind of government mishandling of terrorist
threats that characterize the Fort Hood case and the Boston bombing has
been business as usual.
Here is a portion of Patrick Poole’s article:
"When
President Obama hosted his annual Iftar dinner in August 2010 to
commemorate the Muslim celebration of Ramadan, the list of invitees
published by the White House was curiously missing the names of several
attendees – all of whom were top leaders of organizations known to be
purveyors of jihadist ideology and implicated by federal prosecutors in
financing terrorism.[
“But
it wasn’t like they had crashed the party. In fact, one of the
individuals missing on the official White House list, Mohamed Majid,
president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), was pictured
in a news service photograph sitting at the front table just a few feet
from the president as he spoke When Majid was hailed by Time Magazine in
November 2005 as a “moderate Muslim cleric” that was helping the FBI
fight terrorists, he quickly published an open letter to his
congregation on the mosque’s website assuring his congregants that he
was doing no such thing stating that his relationship with the FBI was a
one-way street only to communicate Muslim community concerns – not to
report on individuals suspected of terrorist activity.
“It
was just a few years ago the Attorney General of the United States was
canceling Muslim outreach events for the sole reason that Majid would be
present at the meeting, because the Department of Justice had just
named ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism
financing trial in American history.
“But
Majid’s connection to terrorism goes back even
farther than that, since the offices of the mosque he leads, the All
Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, were raided by U.S. Customs
authorities in March 2002 in a wide-sweeping terror finance
investigation. In an affidavit requesting a search warrant for the
raids, Customs Agent David Kane testified that Majid’s mosque was being
used to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars for the targeted terror
finance network that shared offices with ADAMS. An appendix to the
Customs Service affidavit also names eleven ADAMS Center officials as
targets of their terror finance investigation.And yet Majid and
the ADAMS Center are still considered legitimate outreach partners by
the FBI.
“This
was just the most recent episode in the disastrous attempts at outreach
to the Muslim community since the 9/11 attacks. And with the release in
2011 of President Obama’s strategic plan to combat “violent extremism”
to expand outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present
administration seems intent on compounding the disaster wrought by
previous administrations."
The
results of this investigation should be a serious embarrassment for the
Obama Administration and should be distributed as widely
as possible. It involves the expenditure of millions of dollars of
taxpayer money and the promotion of the forces most dangerous to
American interests and to the American people in the world today.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftur20#.UZs4pLUwdqU
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