Former Muslim Brotherhood Front Man Running for Office As Democrat in Virginia
US News | Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 10:47:39 am PST
Look who’s popping up again, running for office as a Democrat in Virginia: Esam Omeish, former president of the Muslim Brotherhood front group MAS.
Elections for vacant seats in the House of Delegates are always interesting, but the Democratic nomination fight in the 35th District looks like it’ll be interesting indeed.
Esam Omeish, a pediatric surgeon from Northern Virginia, has joined the race to succeed Del. Steve Shannon, D-Vienna. The 35th District includes the areas of Fairfax County just north and west of the city of Fairfax. Shannon is running for Attorney General.
Omeish, the president of the Muslim American Society at the time, came into the political limelight nearly two years ago after he was appointed to the Commission on Immigration by Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine.
The appointment didn’t sit well with Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, a fellow member of the commission. The society was too closely connected the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian group that gave rise to Hamas, for his taste. Gilbert wrote to Kaine and asked him to reconsider the appointment.
A spokesman for the governor at the time dismissed Gilbert’s concerns as “innuendo, moving dangerously close to slander,” and challenged Gilbert to offer proof. Omeish resigned less than a day later, after online videos came to light in which Omeish accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians and exhorted Muslims to “the jihad way.”
Here’s that video, in which Esam Omeish tells a crowd of Washington-area Muslims at a Jerusalem Day rally, “...you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”
