Saturday, December 21, 2013

Qatari Muslim professor and human rights advocate identified as major financier of al-Qaeda

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I am frequently criticized for pointing out that there is no reliable way to distinguish between "moderate" and "extremist" Muslims, i.e., jihad terrorists and Islamic supremacists and Muslims who are peaceful and have no involvement in jihad or supremacist activity. This is routinely cited as evidence of my "bigotry," as if I am somehow impugning peaceful Muslims by pointing it out and implying that all Muslims are terrorists.

These are games the Left and Islamic supremacists play in order to demonize and discredit their opposition, of course, for actually what I mean is quite clear: that jihadists and jihad sympathizers are not generally put out of mosques and Islamic organizations, but move freely within even those who style themselves as "moderate": witness the many terror convictions of former officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which despite its Hamas ties is routinely presented in the mainstream media as a respectable civil rights organization.

This is more evidence of that fact: al-Naimi was universally assumed to be a "moderate" -- but he has been financing jihad for at least eleven years.
"Terrorists for Human Rights," by Eli Lake for the Daily Beast, December 20 (thanks to Maxwell):
The U.S. government this week said the head of a human-rights organization working on behalf of Islamist political prisoners was also a financier for al Qaeda. Most of the world knows Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi as a Qatari history professor and human-rights activist. The Swiss-based organization he founded, known as al-Karama from the Arab word for dignity, has worked closely with the United Nations and American human rights groups, most notably Human Rights Watch.
According to the U.S. government, however, al-Naimi is also a major financier of al Qaeda. On Wednesday, the Treasury Department issued a designation of al-Naimi that said he oversaw the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars to al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen over the last 11 years. In 2013, the designation says, al-Naimi ordered the transfer of nearly $600,000 to al Qaeda via the group’s representative in Syria. In the same notice, the Treasury Department also designated Abdulwahab Al-Humayqani, al-Karama’s representative in Yemen, as a financier and member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s Yemen affiliate. On Twitter, al-Naimi acknowledged that he and al-Humayqani, whom he calls by his first name, were designated for supporting terrorism. Al-Naimi has resigned as president of al-Karama’s board, but told the group’s senior leadership that he intends to challenge the Treasury Department’s designation.
If the Treasury Department’s allegations are correct, the story of al-Naimi, who until Thursday was the president of al-Karama’s board, illustrates how sometimes human-rights advocacy can also be used as political cover for jihadist networks. Al-Karama has advocated for the release of Hassan al-Diqqi, the leader of a banned political party in the United Arab Emirates. In 2010, the group claimed credit for forcing the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions to criticize the Emirates for his detention. In September, however, the Washington Post reported that al-Diqqi appeared in a video earlier this year at a training camp for jihadist rebels in Syria....

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