Last week’s anti-terror fatwa (or legal pronouncement)
issued by 18 leading American Muslim scholars was more interesting
for its omissions than for what it supposedly said. Normally when
Westerners read of an announced fatwa — such as that
proclaimed by Osama bin Laden against Jews and “Crusaders,” or that
by Ayatollah Khomeini against novelist Salman Rushdie — there is a
rather substantial price placed on someone’s scalp. Not so here. In
fact no leading terrorist or terrorist group was mentioned. Nowhere
was there a denunciation of Islamic jihad or its ultimate goal of a
return of the Islamic Caliphate. In fact, last week’s
fatwa was about as sincere as a snake oil salesman’s
pitch. It was a useless feel-good measure intended to convince
Americans that the leaders of America’s largest Islamic groups
oppose the goals of the extremists.
But do they?
You wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media’s reportage, but
a significant number of the Muslim “scholars” behind the
anti-terrorist fatwa may well pose more of a security risk
to the U.S. than all of the inmates at Guantanamo Bay combined.
Numerous officials from the Fiqh Council of North America, and the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — the organizations
responsible for the fatwa — have openly threatened the
U.S. or else have proven ties to terrorist organizations.
Beginning with Fiqh Council spokesman Muzammil Siddiqi, who
announced the fatwa at last week’s press conference.
“There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism,”
read Siddiqi. “Targeting civilian life and property through suicide
bombings or any other method of attacks is ‘haram’ — prohibited in
Islam — and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals,
not martyrs.” During the reading of the fatwa, Siddiqi
also labeled as criminals those who associate with terrorists. In
that case nearly everyone involved in last week’s fatwa
should be locked up, or at the very least deported.
This was the same Muzammil Siddiqi who on October 28, 2000, at
an anti-Israel rally outside the White House, explicitly threatened
the U.S.: “America has to learn — if you remain on the side of
injustice (Israel), the wrath of God will come!” Earlier, in a 1995
speech reported by the Kansas City Star, Siddiqi
enthusiastically praised suicide bombers: “Those who die on the
part of justice are alive, and their place is with the Lord, and
they receive the highest position, because this is the highest
honor.” Not surprisingly, he has also called for a wider
application of the medieval and misogynistic Sharia law in the
U.S.
The government has also accused Fiqh Council Chairman Taha Jaber
Al-Alwani of maintaining links to terrorist financiers in Northern
Virginia. (Recent court documents indicate that Alwani also funded
Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa.) Another former trustee of the
Fiqh Council, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, now serving a 23-year prison
sentence, has confessed to his part in a plot to assassinate the
Saudi Crown Prince, and was recently named by the Treasury
Department as having been a financier for al Qaeda.
In 1998, Fiqh Council member Sheikh Muhammad al-Hanooti
delivered a speech calling for jihad against the U.S. and Britain,
saying that “Allah will curse the Americans and British” and “the
curse of Allah will become true on the infidel Jews and on the
tyrannical Americans.” That’s just for starters.
The mainstream press was far too busy uncritically scribbling
down the harmonious utterances of CAIR’s executive director, Nihad
Awad, to bother much with figuring out who these people really are
or what they stand for. Awad told reporters that Muslims have been
trying for more than a decade to demonstrate to their fellow
Americans that they should not condemn all Muslims because of the
actions of the very few. The folks from CAIR have an interesting of
way of doing that, to say the least.
This is the same Nihad Awad who once praised Ayatollah Khomeini
and told a Barry University forum in 1994: “I am in support of the
Hamas [Palestinian terrorist] movement.”
What do we really know about Awad’s organization? Andrew
Whitehead, who runs a group called Anti-CAIR, has documented how
CAIR was founded by Islamic terrorists. CAIR has sued Whitehead for
libel, but is no longer challenging Whitehead’s allegation. In
fact, five current or former CAIR affiliates have been arrested,
convicted, or deported on terrorism-related charges. Two years ago
the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and
Homeland Security heard compelling evidence that CAIR is one of
many defenders, financiers, and front groups for international
terrorists. Even Sen. Chuck Schumer has said, “We know [CAIR] has
ties to terrorism.”
Another of the fatwa’s signatories, CAIR’s
Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, has defended Saudi Arabia’s
financial aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Hooper also told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4,
1993: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t
like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in
the future.” The instances of anti-Americanism among CAIR members
is too long to document in this space, but interested parties can
find much more here and
here.
So what does CAIR really believe? Here is co-founder Omar Ahmad
as quoted in a Fremont, California newspaper: “Those who stay in
America should be open to society without melting… Islam isn’t in
America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant.
The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the
only accepted religion on Earth.” (Ahmad now denies making the
statement.) His sentiments were echoed by one Ihsan Bagby, a future
CAIR board member, who insisted that Muslims “can never be full
citizens of this country [the U.S.], because there is no way we can
be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this
country.”
Another signatory, the Muslim American Society, is a known front
for the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., whose publications have
repeatedly supported suicide bombings, notes the Investigative
Project on Terrorism’s Steven Emerson.
And on and on…
How serious should Americans take a fatwa issued by
organizations that seem to loathe everything about American
democracy save their ability to speak freely? The mainstream media
accepted the fatwa without comment and Fiqh and CAIR both
gained a wonderful PR opportunity. Happily the American public is
less likely to be so gullible.
Christopher Orlet, a frequent contributor, runs the
Existential Journalism blog.
