I do believe this Cheema character is involved up to his ears. I also believe that Cheemas's statements he is an athiest is BS and a smoke screen.
Just thought I'd clarify a bit about the atheist statment. This was stated by a man by the name of Tariq Alzoubi... He also stated that Cheema "MIGHT" be Pakistani. That raised questions in my mind whether Tariq really knew Cheema well at all... I too think it's a smoke screen and Tariq apparently has some motives to keeping this quiet as well...
I found some interesting stuff out about
Tariq Alzoubi in a google search last night.
1.) He is a
semi-weekly columnist for the OU paper.
2.) He was the
"co-composer" of a student website at OU about the middle east situation (mostly gulf war) - a "joke?" on the page mentions
another "co-composer" of the pages at the site is listed as "Mohamed Jihad".
3.) He wrote an opinion piece re: Al-Jazeera that has been
re-published on the "Friends of Al-Jazeera" website.
4.) He also wrote a recent (9/13/05) Letter to the Editor of the Arab Times in which he
talks about the "West" "pushing us around".
All of these things raises questions in my mind over whether he indeed knew Cheema well enough to really speak to his religious feelings, or whether he is a self-appointed spokesperson and is attempting to create a smokescreen as Americanexpat pointed out. I personally believe he may be the author of the most recent editorial published by OU which contained heavy spin, accused journalists of being hack and lying, etc... See this FR Thread:
The FBI Needs to Start Talking (OU Spin Alert)
You can see links to all of these things in the
Comprehensive Summary at my blog. The section on Tariq is the second to last section on the page which is very long. Better to scroll all the way down and go up to see it.
Tariq was interviewed by several papers and has given his statements about this situation to the media. IMHO he is not someone they should be talking to seeing the apparent views he holds...