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The American Islamic Leaders' "Fatwa" is Bogus
Steven Emerson
The Investigative Project on Terrorism
Email: [email protected]
This morning a group of American Islamic leaders held a press conference to announce a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and extremism. An organization called the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) issued the fatwa, and the Council on American - Islamic Relations (CAIR) organized the press conference, stating that several major U.S. Muslim groups endorsed the fatwa.
In fact, the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate. In fact, officials of both organizations have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organizations. One of them is an unindicted co-conspirator in a current terrorist case; another previous member was a financier to Al-Qaeda.
I spoke with Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl who told me that the fatwa was vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements like Yousef Al Qaradawi, Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahari, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. Pearl told me that these groups are trying to perpetrate a deception on the American public.
Officials of both groups have been linked to various terrorist organizations:
The Chairman of the Fiqh Council, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the alleged North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose trial began in June 2005 in Tampa, Florida. Mr. Alwani has been named in court documents as an official of several entities in northern Virginia suspected of being connected to terrorist financing. Documents released in the Al Arian trial show that Alwani funded the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa.
Another past trustee of the Fiqh Council, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for illegal financial dealings with Libya and immigration fraud, has admitted to his part in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince, and has vocally announced his support for the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Additionally Alamoudi was just named by Treasury as having been a financier for Al Qaeda.
In 1998, Fiqh Council member Sheikh Muhammad al-Hanooti, gave a speech calling for jihad against the United States and the United Kingdom, saying that Allah will curse the Americans and British and Allah, the curse of Allah will become true on the infidel Jews and on the tyrannical Americans. Additionally, Hanooti is strongly linked to Hamas, having served on the board of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). A 2002 INS memo extensively documented IAPs support for HAMAS and noted that the facts strongly suggest that IAP is part of HAMAS propaganda apparatus.
On October 28, 2000, Muzammil Siddiqui, the President of FCNA, at a rally in Lafayette Park in Washington D.C., said, America has to learn -- if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come!"
In the past 4 years, several CAIR officials have been convicted of or charged with various terrorism-related offenses.
CAIR has championed and defended officials of Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzook, Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian, Palestinian Islamic Jihad fundraiser Fawaz Damra, and the radical Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghoneim.
CAIR has repeatedly attacked the prosecutions of Islamic terrorists arrested and/or convicted since 9-11 and has attacked the governments freezing of Islamic terrorist fronts as part of a war against Islam by the United States.
CAIR has led protests against the deportation of radical Islamic clerics who have called for Jihad or who have been fundraisers for Hamas.
CAIR has asserted that the indictment of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian on conspiracy to murder more than 100 people was politically motivated and instigated by the attack dogs of the pro-Israeli lobby."
CAIR has been named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit filed by the family of former FBI official John ONeill, who was killed on 9-11.
One of the signatories to todays fatwa is Fawaz Damra who was convicted of immigration fraud related to his ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and denaturalized. He is currently awaiting a deportation hearing.
Another signatory, the Muslim American Society, is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and whose publications have repeatedly supported suicide bombings.
For a comprehensive background paper on the links to Islamic terrorist and extremist groups, please click here.
Posted by Steven Emerson at 06:07 PM
friday, july 29, 2005
About That Fatwa
The head of the Fiqh Council and main spokesman in their highly publicized fatwa against terrorism is Muzammil H. Siddiqi.
Suicide bombing is forbidden in Islam, said Muzammil H. Siddiqi, head of the Fiqh Council. This is not the solution, it is not the right way of doing things. Occupation is wrong, of course, but at the same time this is not the way.
Kenneth Timmerman reports what Siddiqi was saying a few years ago, when no one was paying attention except the American ummah:
Among the guests in this afternoons panel discussion is Muzammil Siddiqi, who until November 2001 was president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a leading Wahhabi front organization in the United States. Wahhabism is a radical form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and advocated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his terrorist leaders.
Siddiqi has accompanied visiting Saudi officials from the Muslim World League on fund-raising tours across America, and is listed on its Website as the organizations official representative in the United States. Offices of the Muslim World League in Herndon, Va., were raided by a federal antiterrorism task force in March 2002 because of suspected ties to al-Qaeda.
During an anti-Israel rally outside the White House on Oct. 28, 2000, Siddiqi openly threatened the United States with violence if it continued its support of Israel. America has to learn ... if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? ... If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come. By injustice, he meant U.S. support for Israel.
Siddiqi also has called for a wider application of sharia law in the United States, and in a 1995 speech praised suicide bombers. Those who die on the part of justice are alive, and their place is with the Lord, and they receive the highest position, because this is the highest honor, he was quoted as saying by the Kansas City Star on Jan. 28, 1995.
UPDATE at 7/29/05 2:44:47 pm:
More on Siddiqi, in an LGF post from May 2004: Media Ignore Siddiqis Radicalism. (Theyre still ignoring it.)
