[Sabertooth]

CHENEY TO HOST PRO-TERRORIST MUSLIM GROUP
By Melissa Radler
Jerusalem Post


NEW YORK (June 22) - The White House and Vice President Dick Cheney are hosting a Muslim organization whose leaders have voiced support for Hamas and Hizbullah, as well as calling for "death to the Jews."

Representatives from the American Muslim Council (AMC), which has also outraged anti-slavery activists by calling slavery in the Sudan a "sham," are meeting with Cheney this morning at the White House for a briefing on the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies of interest to the American Muslim community, according to an AMC
release.  "It will be the first time in the history of the AMC conventions that a US vice president will personally address an exclusive Muslim audience at the White House," the statement noted.

In October, then-presidential candidate George W.  Bush returned a $1,000 campaign contribution to former AMC executive director and current secretary of the board Abdurrahman Alamoudi, due to his support for terrorist groups including Hamas.  Senate candidate Hillary Clinton also returned a $1,000 contribution from Alamoudi.

Cheney's decision to address the AMC came as a surprise to Jewish leaders and terrorism experts, many of whom have viewed Bush's refusal to meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat as a sign that the White House is committed to fighting terrorism and supporting a secure Israel.

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who has reported extensively on the Clinton administration's courting of radical Islamic groups, "This an alarming development that unfortunately legitimizes militant Islam, especially groups that support
terrorism...  It perpetuates a very bad precedent set by the [former president Bill] Clinton."

In press releases and statements attributed to AMC leaders, the "apartheid-like existence of the Palestinian people" is lamented and Israel is termed "a regime that does not observe any rules of morality or humanity."  On June 5, the AMC called on the Bush administration to "stop aid to Israeli occupation," which they said began in 1948.

Immediately after the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, the AMC cosponsored a rally in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, where a member of AMC's board of advisers, Dr.  Ayman Serajoudin Alouri, led the chant: "O Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you."

Alouri also stated: "A Jew has no morals, unless they stand up to tell the State of Israel that you are killers and there is no difference between Barak and Sharon and Hitler."

Following Sen.  Clinton's decision to return AMC-related campaign contributions, Alamoudi was videotaped in front of the White House voicing his support for Hamas and Hizbullah.  In January, he participated in a Beirut conference alongside leaders of Hamas,
Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, and Osama bin-Laden's terrorist network.  A communique issued by the groups called for a boycott on American and Israeli products, stating: "America today is a second Israel."

Last June, Alamoudi was quoted in the US-based publication Al-Zaitunah stating: "[AMC's] position with regard to the peace process is well-known.  We are the ones who went to the White House and defended what is called Hamas."

Four days after the June 1 suicide bombing that killed 21 mostly teenage disco-goers in Tel Aviv, AMC executive director Aly Abuzakouk said during a demonstration in front of the State Department: "In all world international law, it says that people under occupation have the right to resist occupation.  That's what the Palestinians are doing."

Officials at the AMC and Cheney's press office did not return calls seeking comment.

The director of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, said the AMC "is a group that represents fringe, radical views that are outside the mainstream of the political spectrum.  And the leaders of this country are ill-advised to cooperate with it and thereby boost its standing."

Also concerned is Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who said the scheduled meeting "runs in the face of everything the administration supports and believes in."

The AMC has also tackled slavery in Sudan, which it says does not exist.  A June 1 press release titled "Slavery in Sudan is a sham" urged Muslims to attend educational seminars refuting "the current rash of allegations and disinformation campaign against the Sudanese government," and examining "the underlying agendas behind them."

Since taking office, Bush has taken a strong stance on Sudan, where an 18-year civil war has seen more than 2 million fatalities.  In addition, the country's Muslim government has enslaved some 12,000 to 15,000 Sudanese Christians and animists, according to the UN.

"We must turn the eyes of the world upon the atrocities in the Sudan" said Bush in a May 3 speech to the American Jewish Committee.

"No official should meet with any group that defends Sudan and denies the slavery there," said Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, whose Web site on slavery in Sudan includes letters of support from Coretta Scott King, Rev.  Al Sharpton, and Rev.  Jesse Jackson.  "The American Muslims continue to circle the wagons, that nothing any Muslim state does could be bad, which is not good for them when they say they want to be seen as any other Americans."

It remains unclear how many of the country's 6 million Muslims are represented by groups such as the AMC.  According to former congressman Paul Findlay's recent book Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam, fewer than 200,000 American Muslims,
or 3 percent, are active on issues taken up by these groups.  "The rest ...  remain silently on the sideline, unsupportive even with their checkbooks," writes Findlay.

LINK

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))

[dalebert]

I thought this guy met more with Clinton/Gore

[Sabertooth]

Washington Post: Terrorist suspect was part of White House outreach to Muslims

People are asking: Who is responsible for getting terrorist figures into the White House?

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, arrested this week by the FBI as an alleged mastermind and funder of suicide bombings, was part of the White House's controversial outreach plan to Muslims and Arab-Americans, the Washington Post reports. In a separate story, the Wall Street Journal reports that the alleged terrorists were running influence operations to penetrate the US political system and influence policy.

The news confirms what the Center for Security Policy has warned the Bush administration - first privately and later publicly - for nearly two years: That the architects of the White House's well-meaning Muslim outreach program paid little or no regard to national security issues, and ignored information about alleged extremists, including supporters of terrorism, who had hijacked the administration's initiative.

According to the Post, Al-Arian was invited to the White House as part of an American Muslim Council (AMC) delegation on June 22, 2001: "The meeting was controversial within the White House even before it took place. The group that included Al-Arian was scheduled to be briefed by Vice President Cheney, but Cheney canceled. That morning, the Jerusalem Post had run a front-page article headlined, 'Cheney to host pro-terrorist Muslim group.'"

Al-Arian's arrest under a 50-count federal grand jury indictment is sure to prompt the Secret Service and others to revisit the issue, and to investigate just who has manipulated the White House to allow extremists and terrorists into the presidential compound where they have been treated as legitimate representatives of moderate, non-violent causes.

On Friday, February 21, the Wall Street Journal reported that Al-Arian's arrest "likely will inflame a debate embroiling the Republican Party over efforts to court Muslim Americans." The battle, according to the Journal, is led by conservative activist Grover Norquist, "a close ally of the Bush White House who spent years wooing Muslims through a group he founded called the Islamic Institute," against Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney and American Conservative Union President David Keene.

Norquist's Islamic Institute, the Wall Street Journal continued, has received money from "a network of Islamic organizations in Virginia under investigation by federal authorities for suspected ties to terrorism." Meanwhile, Norquist has been a vocal attacker of key provisions of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism legislation proposals, and has led an effort to discredit and undermine Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Insight magazine is reporting that Al-Arian and Norquist have worked together, and that Norquist has gone on record saying he is "proud" to have accepted an award in July 2001 from Al-Arian's National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF), which is described as a legal and political support group for international terrorist organizations.

According to the federal grand jury indictment, Al-Arian and his confederates tried to penetrate the mainstream political system to influence U.S. government counterterrorism policy. The Wall Street Journal states, "the indictment alludes to efforts by the defendants to gain political clout, alleging that they sought 'to obtain support from influential individuals in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights."

Again, the question must be answered: Who invited and cleared Al-Arian and other suspected terrorist supporters into the White House?
LINK

[Sir Gawain]

I missed the other thread before it got pulled.

[Dajjal]

BTTT

[ChadGore]

Am I the only one who finds it funny that the only muslim GWB could find turned out to be a terrorist? What does that tell us about the terrorist density among the muslim population today ?

If you can throw a stick and hit an "Osama-loving-sycophant", islam, as a political institution has *real* problems.

[FreeReign]

Sami Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida, had been under investigation by the FBI for at least six years at the time of the June 2001 briefing for a Muslim organization. Numerous news accounts also had said federal agents suspected Al-Arian of links to terrorism.

Have you seen any specific quotes from the FBI on this?

As sourced in the WP article, I can not conclude that Al-Arian was under FBI investigation for at least six years, at the time.....

[FreeReign]

Several pro-Israel and conservative activists had warned administration officials not to meet with the American Muslim Council contingent because the group had courted controversy for years, knowledgeable sources said.

The WP says, that knowledgeable soures said, that conservative activists had warned, unamed administration officials...........................

[TLBSHOW]

WASHINGTON -- President Bush issued an apology Friday over the removal of Abdullah Al-Arian, son of a University of South Florida professor, from a White House meeting of Muslim officials.

"The president is very concerned that an action was taken that was wrong, inappropriate, and the president apologizes for it on behalf of the White House," press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

A uniformed Secret Service officer ordered Al-Arian, a congressional intern and Duke University senior, to leave a briefing Thursday of Muslim officials. Al-Arian's father, USF professor Sami Al-Arian, has been entangled in an investigation of terrorists. His uncle is Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian who was jailed for three years on secret evidence the government said showed he had ties to terrorists. He was freed in December.

When Abdullah Al-Arian left the meeting, more than 20 Muslim leaders decided to walk out with him. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/849366/posts?page=

[Gurn]

Grover Norquist must be purged from the conservative movement. Ostracized. He is unapologetic in his support for radical muslims. He is now in the enemy camp.

[bvw]

The Muslim terr's are conservative in many ways -- family values, sexual mores, respect for accounting of monies spent, respect for the chain of authority. In the most recently released statement attribute to Usama Bin Laden, he rants at socialists and socialism.

But there is ONE big difference -- it must ever be kept in mind. And no it's not "allah the moon g-d" versus the One True God.

That difference is why you have them joining up with US white trash like Tim McVeigh, why they are recruiting the Black Muslims and teh prison-generated 5%'ers.

One word says it: "HATE".

The Muslim Terrorist's religious teachings (not all Muslims suscribe to them either -- Shiite, Druze, Bedouin, Sufi, Bogomil, etc are more or less distant from them) all idolatrize HATE.