IBD: Tale of the Fibbing Imams
One of the few mainstream papers with the courage to tell the truth about the agenda of radical Islam is Investor’s Business Daily: Tale Of Fibbing Imams. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
When the story first broke, the imams denied they chanted “Allah.” Yet, several witnesses in the police report say they did. The imams also claimed they were handcuffed and harassed by dogs. “Six imams. Six leaders in this country,” Shahin complained. “Six scholars in handcuffs.” But the police report puts the lie to both those claims, too.
Shahin also claimed that a local FBI agent pleaded with US Airways to sell the Saintly Six imams another plane ticket, telling airline reps that the government had “no problem” with the men. “Never happened,” says an FBI spokesman in Minneapolis.
Shahin and his fellow imams, who were educated in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, says he and the imams are all moderates who love the U.S. and denounce terror. He doubts Muslims were responsible for 9/11.
“We have been asked by God and by the prophet Muhammad to respect all human life,” he said. “The Quran is very clear, to save one life he saves all human life, and whoever kills one person he kills all humankind, and that is what Islam is all about.”
But Shahin engages in more dissembling. He leaves out a key part of the verse (5:32) that condones killing those who murder fellow Muslims or spread “mischief in the land.” Mischief is defined as “treason against Allah,” and the very next verse calls for guilty infidels to be beheaded.
Shahin himself has ties to terrorism. He served (unknowingly, he now says) as an agent and fundraiser for a Hamas front. He ran a mosque in Tucson, Ariz., attended by several al-Qaida operatives including the hijacker who flew the plane into the Pentagon. And he now runs an imam federation that counts an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing among its trustees.
Shahin also teaches at an Islamic school fully accredited by an Egyptian university tied to the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood. The school’s founder preaches sharia law. One of the imams kicked off the US Airways flight, an Egyptian native, praised sharia law, according to a passenger who sat next to him.
“He expressed views I consider to be extreme fundamentalist Muslim views,” said the witness, a clergyman who has traveled to the Middle East. “He indicated that it was necessary to go to whatever measures necessary to obey all that’s set out in the Quran.”
But most disturbing, these imams aren’t the fringe. Shahin’s group, the North American Imams Federation, represents more than 150 mosque leaders across the country. It works in concert with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which wasted no time slamming US Airways for “stereotyping” Muslims and calling on Congress to pass legislation to outlaw passenger profiling.
Both CAIR and NAIF work closely with Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim member of Congress. Conveniently enough, he immediately stepped in on their behalf to pressure US Airways and the local airport to change security policies.