Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns [Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups...]

Obama's Muslim-Outreach Adviser Resigns By GLENN R. SIMPSON and AMY CHOZICK August 6, 2008

The new Muslim-outreach coordinator to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. [advisor] Schiff Hardin Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to distract Obama's campaign.

Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, who was appointed as a volunteer national coordinator for Muslim American affairs by the Obama campaign on July 26, stepped down Monday after an Internet newsletter wrote about his brief stint on the fund's board, which also included a fundamentalist imam.

"Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator," spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.

A respected corporate lawyer at the firm of Schiff Hardin LLP, Mr. Asbahi tendered his resignation Monday after he and the Obama campaign received emailed inquiries about his background from The Wall Street Journal. He didn't respond to the email or a message left at his law office, but the campaign released a letter in which Mr. Asbahi said he didn't want to be a distraction.

The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, which is published by a Washington think tank and chronicles the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group based in Egypt. Other Web sites, some pro-Republican and others critical of fundamentalist Islam, have also reported on the background of Mr. Asbahi. He is a frequent speaker before several groups in the U.S. that scholars have associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Justice Department named Mr. Said as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial. He has also been identified as a leading member of the group in news reports going back to 1993.

MONEY FOR HAMAS, MONEY FROM HAMAS, THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY CONNECTION, WOULD THERE? JIHAD!

IN SPITE OF "RESIGNING" FROM OBAMA CAMPAIGN EARLIER IN YEAR, MAZEN ASBAHI ATTENDED THIS MEETING:

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008 : (SPRINGFIELD, VA : OBAMA CAMPAIGN MUSLIM OUTREACH MEETING -- SEE NIHAD AWAD, MAHDI BRAY, MAZEN ASBAHI, CAIR, HOLY LAND FOUNDATION) The Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach director participated in a meeting in mid September that was attended by several controversial Muslim activists, NBC News has learned. The Obama campaign now concedes that was a misjudgment, and that its top Muslim staffer would not have attended the meeting if she had known the full participant list beforehand.

“Would a campaign staffer have attended if they were aware of the complete list of attendees? No,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt in an email statement to NBC.

The Muslim outreach meeting On September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a small group of Muslim leaders and potential Obama supporters at a hotel in Springfield, Virginia, several meeting participants and the campaign said. Two other Obama-affiliated Democratic Party workers joined Husaini and also spoke to the crowd. Some Virginia and Washington, D.C.-based Muslim activists and interested citizens attended, and flyers were passed out from “Arab Americans for Obama” stating Sen. Obama’s goals for achieving peace in the Middle East, protecting the civil liberties of Arab Americans and ending the war in Iraq.... [snip]

Chicago-based lawyer Mazen Asbahi also attended the meeting. He is the Obama campaign’s former Muslim outreach coordinator, who abruptly resigned in August after the Wall Street Journal and websites that track fundamentalist Islam began questioning Asbahi’s involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups. When reached by NBC News, Asbahi would not comment about the September gathering or his brief stint eight years ago on an investment fund board which also included a fundamentalist imam.

When informed that Asbahi had attended the recent meeting, an Obama spokesman said: “Mazen Asbahi resigned from his role as the campaign’s Muslim American outreach coordinator and was replaced--he is not an employee of the campaign and does not speak on behalf of the campaign.”

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