Israel Matzav

Kerry consulting with umbrella group for Muslim terrorism on 'peace process'

According to the group's web site, US Secretary of State John Kerry and US National Security Adviser Susan Rice consulted regarding the 'peace process' last week with representatives of the Islamic Society of North America.

The group expressed their optimism in this process and hope that with further commitment from the Obama administration as the lead broker, as well as willingness from Palestinian and Israeli authorities, these talks will bear fruit.

Dr. Elsanousi expressed appreciation to Secretary Kerry's for his hard work on this issue and encouraged the officials to seek a mechanism to involve faith-based groups and other under-represented constituencies in this process to ensure grassroots support.

ISNA is a member of the National Inter-Religious Initiative for Peace in the Middle East and continues to work with its interfaith partners to support peace in the Middle East. Just last month ISNA President Imam Mohamed Magid and ISNA National Director for Interfaith & Community Alliances, Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, sent a letter along with 28 religious leaders to Secretary Kerry voicing “strong support for his determined initiative for Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

ISNA leaders also called on key members of Congress “to support Secretary Kerry’s continuing urgent efforts for peace.” Religious leaders have stood with ISNA in their support for resuming peace talks, noting that “while these talks have yet to yield a blueprint for peace, they have identified ideas for addressing key issues that must be resolved in a manner acceptable to both sides.”

ISNA is funded by 'our friends the Saudis' and was established by the Muslim Students of North America along with 'Palestinian' Islamic Jihad founder Sami al-Arian. It controls anywhere from 50-80% of the mosques in North America.

ISNA focuses heavily on providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. Many of these mosques were recently built with Saudi money and are required, by their Saudi benefactors, to strictly follow the dictates of Wahhabi imams -- an edict that affects the tone and content of the sermons given in the mosques, the selection of books and periodicals that may be read in mosque libraries or sold in mosque bookshops, and the policies governing the exclusion or suppression of dissenters from the congregations.

Through its affiliate, the North American Islamic Trust -- a Saudi government-backed organization created to fund Islamist enterprises in North America -- the Saudi-subsidized ISNA reportedly holds the mortgages on 50 to 80 percent of all mosques in the U.S. and Canada. Thus the organization can freely exercise ultimate authority over these houses of worship and their teachings.

Writes Kaukab Siddique, the editor of New Trend, an Islamic periodical of extremist views that is nonetheless opposed to Wahhabi domination of American Islam: "ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus also controls who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there."

Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as "one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States." Adds Schwartz: "Our view is that the number of mosques under Wahhabi control actually totals at least 600 out of the official total of 1,200, while, as noted, Shia community leaders endorse the figure of 80 percent Wahhabi control. But we also offer a number of 4-6,000 mosques overall, including small and diverse congregations of many kinds."

According to Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s testimony before a State Department Open Forum on January 7, 1999, extremists have taken over “more than 80 percent of the mosques in the United States ... This means that the ideology of extremism has been spread to 80 percent of the Muslim population, mostly the youth and the new generation.” Kabbani based his statement on his personal investigation of 114 American mosques. “Ninety of them,” he said, “were mostly exposed, and I say exposed, to extreme or radical ideology, based on their speeches, books and board members.” This is largely due to the efforts of ISNA.

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA “is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation”; “convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred” (for instance, al Qaeda supporter and PLO official Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi was invited to speak at an ISNA conference); has held fundraisers for terrorists (after Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense); has condemned the U.S. government’s post-9/11 seizure of Hamas’ and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s financial assets; and publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that “often champions militant Islamist doctrine.”

Adds Emerson: “I think ISNA has been an umbrella, also a promoter of groups that have been involved in terrorism. I am not going to accuse the ISNA of being directly involved in terrorism. I will say ISNA has sponsored extremists, racists, people who call for Jihad against the United States.”

Just the kind of people you'd want involved in a 'peace process'....

Labels: Hamas, Islamic Society of North America, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, our friends the Saudis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami al-Arian, Susan Rice

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:15 PM