Article today on Al-Timimi and IANA -
“Behind the Indoctrination and Training of American Jihadis,” The Jamestown Foundation, August 6, 2007
http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=267
On July 26, [2007] a former Washington, DC cab driver and resident of Gwynn Oak, Maryland was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for providing material support to a terrorist group. Ohio-born Mahmud Faruq Brent, 32, admitted to attending training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, Army of the Pure) ..
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As disturbing as these cases are individually, collectively they demonstrate an even more troubling trend of radicalized American Muslims—bound by Salafi ideology—receiving training overseas and returning to the United States for potential future operations.
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In addition to his academic pursuits, al-Timimi was an Islamic teacher in the northern Virginia area. Yet, he was also involved with the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), a group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan that receives funding from Saudis to promote Salafi Islam in the United States, especially in the prison system (http://www.iananet.org). Naturally, al-Timimi’s scholarly ties, more than anything, reveal his ideological proclivities. Establishing a center for Islamic education, al-Timimi contacted the well-known Egyptian-born Salafi Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Khaliq and translated his works into English. Abd al-Khaliq openly promoted the Salafi Islam prominent in the Gulf, and privately encouraged more militant Salafism among his followers, telling them that “American troops were legitimate targets of the jihad.”
Comment:
Both Al-Timimi and al-Khaliq are known for their work on women in islam.
But more pertinent to analysis is Al-Timimi’s lecture on “The Islamic Ruling on the Peace Process,” based on the writings of Shaykh ‘Abdur-Rahman Abdul-Khaliq.
A London charity, JIMAS, at whose conferences, Ali would speak published the translation of the al-Khaliq’s book.
He would give talks such as “Our Need for a Fiqh Suitable to Our Time and Place” at the 1997 conference in London.
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:reB0t6cl01MJ:www.jimas.org/fiqhtime.pdf+Timimi+JIMAS&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us
Or his “Cure for the Cancer” at the 2001 JIMAS conference.
The UK Islamic charity published the book calling on Muslims worldwide to “overthrow” peace treaties between Arab states and Israel.
Sheikh Abdur Rahman Abdul Khaliq’s book published by JIMAS, The Islamic Ruling on The Peace Process, that “the Jews are the enemies of the Islamic ummah (nation).”
I sense based on what Jamestown Foundation article said today it was translated by Ali who has given a lecture based on the book.
The US government’s National Commission for investigating the 9/11 attacks listed the book as one of a number of texts “espousing violence and hatred towards the west and reinforcing the victimization of Muslims as the hands of the infidels.”
“The Jews have been the enemies of the Islamic ummah since the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be on him, began his call to Allah; and their hostility to this ummah will continue till the Day of Resurrection,” the National Commission’s website quoted from the book. “…War or Jihad is an obligatory duty which remains in force till the Day of Resurrection.
According to another version of the book made available by a separate jihadist website (currently offline), Muslims are completely prohibited from making peace with non-Muslims “except when the kafir (infidel) is humbled and surrenders.” The jihadi website said its book “was translated by our brothers at JIMAS,” providing a link to the charity’s homepage.
Any peace made by Muslim countries with Israel contravenes the Quran and must be reversed, the text says.
“Their (the Jews) hostility to the Muslims continues, so much so that stones and trees call out to the Muslims saying: ‘O Muslim, here is a Jew behind you, so fight him,’” a chapter in the book declared, based on an Islamic hadith (reported saying of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad).
The author commands Muslims to “firmly believe in the invalidity” of peace agreements with Israel , and calls on them “to work towards overthrowing these treaties.”
The first round of letters was sent to ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Post, and the publisher of the National Enquirer and Sun. Letters were sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy in a second batch, using a much more highly refined product. The letters to the news organizations were mailed — coincidentally or not — on September 17 or September 18, either the day the Camp David Accord was signed in 1978 or the next day when it was approved by the Israeli knesset. Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik, in the early 1980s, said: “We reject Camp David and we regret the normalization of relations with Israel. We also reject all the commitments that were made by the traitor Sadat, who deviated from Islam.” He continued: “As long as the Camp David Agreement stands, this conflict between us and the government will continue.”
At the time of the anthrax mailings, the Camp David Accord still dominated Zawahiri’s thinking. In Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, Al-Zawahiri argued in the Fall of 2001 that the Camp David Accord sought to turn Sinai into a disarmed area to serve as a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel. He cites the peace treaty between the two countries, particularly issues related to the armament of the Egyptian Army inside Sinai. He claims that Egypt has restored Sinai formally but it remains in the hands of Israel militarily. Al-Zawahiri cites many examples about the US flagrant support for Israel, including the US pressure on Egypt to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at a time when Israel publicly declares that it will not sign the treaty because of its special circumstances.
Despite this, Zawahiri says, the United States sympathizes with Israel and overlooks its actions. This means that the United States has deliberately left the nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel to threaten its Arab neighbors. Al-Zawahiri argues in his book that the western states have considered Israel’s presence in the region a basic guarantee for serving the Western interests.
Taking into account the fact that there was no mail postmarked with a Trenton postmark on Columbus Day, October 8, the letter to Senator Tom Daschle postmarked October 9 may actually have been mailed October 6. (The FBI, of course, may know the date it was mailed based on information that has not been disclosed.) (Some press reports, however, suggest that they are considering that the mailing may have been at anytime during the October 6-October 9 period). October 6 was the day Anwar Sadat was assassinated for his role in the Camp David Accord. President Sadat was assassinated on the national holiday called “Armed Forces Day.” He was killed during an annual holiday parade which marks the day, October 6, 1973, that Egypt made a critical successful surprise attack on Israel during the 1973 war.
“Death to Pharoah!” the young Army officer shouted. He and his confederates jumped off the truck shot into the reviewing stand where Sadat had been watching the annual parade. Sadat’s detention of Muhammad Shawqi al-Islambouli had spurred his brother, Khalid, to seize an opportunity presented on short notice to assassinate Anwar Sadat. Kamal Habib, founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and writer for the IANA quarterly magazine, who spent 10 years in prison in connection with the assassination, told academic Fawaz Gerges: “It was not a well-coordinated operation, and it succeeded by a miracle.” After leaving Egypt in the mid-1980s, Muhammad Islambouli operated in Pakistan recruiting Egyptian fighters for the war in Afghanistan, and headed a branch of Bin Laden’s Maktab al-Khidmat (‘Bureau of Services’) in Peshawar. Muhammad Islambouli was the subject of the December 4, 1998 Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks” explaining that Bin Laden planned an attack on the US involving airplanes and that the motvation was to free the blind sheik and imprisonment of a Saudi dissident sheik.
In his Fall 2001 Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, Zawahiri explained that the US support for Israel (at Egypt’s expense) was well-illustrated by the historic 33-day airlift to Israel after this October 6 attack. He argues that the US support for Israel made the difference between success or failure for Egypt. Al-Zawahiri describes how the United States shipped weapons, ammunition, and tanks to Israel for 33 days, with the goal being to compensate Israel for its war losses and to swiftly upgrade the combat capabilities.
He explained in his Fall 2001 book: “The animosity to Israel and America in the hearts of islamists is indivisible. It is an animosity that has provided the ‘al-Qa’dia’ and the epic of jihad in Afghanistan with a continuous flow of ‘Arab Afghans.’” Regarding the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, Zawahiri adds: “Whoever examines the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty will realize that it was intended to be a permanent treaty from which Egypt could not break loose. It was concluded in an attempt to establish on the ground, by force and coercion, a situation whereby it would be difficult to change by any government hostile to Israel that comes after Al-Sadat.”
After 9/11, a young Egyptian woman came to live with my family. She was the daughter of a senior Egyptian official who worked at the UN. I don’t know much about foreign relations. But given that peace seems a good thing, as we walked along a local duck pond, we discussed how Sadat was a hero of historical proportion. Now I don’t know enough about foreign relations or history to know whether that is right or not. But in profiling Amerithrax, and having watched the tv detective Columbo for many years, I know when a motive seems to fit a person of interest and when the facts seem to point to the motive.
When Ed Lake wrote that Senator Leahy had no role in foreign relations, he apparently was just unaware that he had the single most important role in appropriations to Egypt and Israel as head of a Senate subcommittee.