[gaspar]

In May 1992 Hasan al-Turabi, the Sudanese Islamist and Osama Bin Ladin's eminence gris, visited Florida to attend a roundtable of "American Scholars of Islam." His visit was sponsored by Middle East Committee of the University of South Florida, i.e. Sami al-Arian.

At the time Sudanese expatriates vociferously opposed allowing the Islamofascist Turabi a platform for his views. Their arguments were dashed when Turabi, a few weeks later, addressed U.S. Congressmen in Washington. Despite the arguments of the few that the government of the Sudan was committing genocide in Southern Sudan, and that Turabi was a dangerous individual, the Sudanese Islamist was seen by many in Washington's Middle East establishment (especially Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University) as the voice of reason in a changing world.

The same Sudanese -- Muslims and Christians -- argued that mosques in the Washington D.C. area were fast becoming the center of Islamist sedition, but the FBI (as was later determined) was terribly slow to react. Now, it is nice to know that after hundreds of complaints on Sami that the FBI finally thought him worthy of notice in 1993, and that action was taken a decade later.