Conn. mosque leader says FBI raided home
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Terror%20Financing
WOLCOTT, Conn. -- A Connecticut Islamic leader said Thursday that FBI agents raided his home as part of an investigation into a Sudanese charity that federal officials have accused of supporting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.
Majeed Sharif, president of United Muslim Mosque in Waterbury, would not discuss what investigators took from his Wolcott home on Wednesday. But he told The Associated Press that he did volunteer work for the Islamic African Relief Agency, a charity the Bush administration said Wednesday was financing terrorism.
Sharif, 57, referred all other questions to his attorney, who said Sharif has done nothing wrong.
"He is an absolutely amazing humanitarian and person," attorney Rosa C. Rebimbas said Thursday. She would not discuss the search.
The FBI confirmed it executed a search warrant in Wolcott but would not identify the address. Federal agents searched the Islamic African Relief Agency's office in Columbia, Mo., on Wednesday.
Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said the searches were part of an ongoing investigation.
"There is no danger or immediate threat to the local community," Sierra said.
The Treasury Department alleged the charity, headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, and five of its officials "provided direct financial support" for bin Laden. It also said that the group "engaged in a joint program with an institute controlled by (bin Laden) that was involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters."
The government alleged that the overseas branches of the group provided "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to bin Laden in 1999.
The Treasury Department's action means U.S. banks must block any assets found in this country belonging to the Islamic African Relief Agency and the five officials. People in the United States are not allowed to provide money to them.
Sharif was not named by the Treasury Department. No charges have been filed and documents related to the search are sealed.
The Islamic African Relief Agency's Web site describes its efforts to provide food for Sudanese refugees and to renovate orphanages in Baghdad, Iraq.
As they always have, local Muslim leaders condemn beheadings
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=7428 : September 23, 04
This week's beheadings of civilian American captives in Iraq have been condemned by Muslim leaders in Waterbury who also said Wednesday it's time Americans learned that Islam has always abhorred such atrocities.
"This is something that is against our Islamic teachings," said Muhammad Kammar, who took over in July as the first full-time imam at the United Muslim Mosque in Waterbury. "The Quran tells us that he who spares a life has spared the whole of humanity and he who destroys a life has destroyed the whole of humanity. It's very sad that people do these things in the name of Islam."
Majeed Sharif, president of the mosque, called the killings barbaric. "They are all way out of Islamic laws. It has nothing to do with Islam at all. ... Somehow the media never get the information that Muslims condemn this," he said.
"Muslims don't do that. The Quran doesn't say chop somebody's head off," said Azmi Isaku, president of the Albanian-American Cultural and Islamic Center on Columbia Boulevard, another city mosque.
Kammar said the Quran, Islam's holy book, prohibits killing noncombatants in a war. He said the Iraqi militants who are guilty of the beheadings are acting on their own. "They cannot blame it on Islam," he said. "They cannot say that Islam told them to do this."
The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations sees a growing tide of hate crimes against Muslims, citing Friday's attempted firebombing of a mosque in El Paso, Texas.
Isaku said the militants' violence against American and other foreign civilians in Iraq is having consequences for Muslims in this region. "Sure it makes things tougher for us," he said.
Kammar conceded that some Muslims feel uneasy about how they're now viewed by non-Muslim Americans as a result of the killings but added that "it's wrong to blame it on a whole community, just like anybody else who does something. If a Christian does something somewhere it 's unfair to blame all Christians."
Kammar said he hasn't encountered hostility, nor has his 10-year-old daughter, who attends a Waterbury public school, even though she wears a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by Muslim females.
It's "very, very wrong to think Muslims hate this country," added Kammar, who plans to talk about Islam in the U.S. during upcoming sermons. He said he will remind his congregation that "Islam has been here for a long time. You must not look at yourselves as strangers in this country."
Sharif said national Muslim organizations are constantly making statements to disassociate their religion from the militants, pointing to the council's statements, which are on the Web at www.cair-net.org.