Another tradition from the Bush administration that apparently will be continued by Barack Obama: pandering to radical Islam’s US front groups.

As part of the inaugural festivities for President Barack Obama, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) President Ingrid Mattson is scheduled to participate Wednesday in a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral.

Given her organization’s historic connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks to establish Islamic law, or Shari’ah, as the basis controlling society, Mattson’s invitation is generating some criticism.

Her organization was founded in 1981[1] by Muslim Brotherhood members who had been part of the Muslim Students Association.[2] ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-support prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which ended in the conviction of five former HLF officials on 108 counts. Federal prosecutors identified ISNA as a “member organization” of the “U.S. Muslim Brotherhood” on its list of “Unindicted Co-conspirators and/or Joint Venturers.”[3]

It is important to note that none of the activity related to ISNA’s involvement in the HLF case occurred under Mattson’s leadership. However, she has an established pattern that should be known in advance of her inaugural participation of making statements which minimize the nature of extremist forms of Islam and rationalize the actions of Islamist terrorist movements.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has assembled this report on Mattson.

Read the whole thing…

When Pastor Rick Warren’s “Global Peace Coalition” presented President Bush with the International Medal of Peace recently, one of the groups invited to attend the ceremony was the Islamic Society of North America—one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial: ISNA ATTENDS SADDLEBACK CHURCH CIVIL FORUM ON GLOBAL HEALTH.

This event took place after the convictions of the Holy Land Foundation defendants.

(Hat tip: SoCalJustice.)

Now that the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial has resulted in convictions, will the unindicted co-conspirators in the case still be treated by the media as legitimate “civil rights organizations?” Steven Emerson says this is CAIR’s Make or Break Moment.

Recently, we lightly mocked the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for its quick condemnation of Al-Qaeda No. 2 man Ayman Al-Zawahiri’s slur of President-Elect Barack Obama as a “house Negro.” Way to take the hard stand, folks.

Our point was serious though. If CAIR wants to be accepted as the mainstream Muslim-American civil rights advocacy organization that it claims to be, it must take an unequivocal stand against terror from all actors, including those who kill, and those who enable the killers, in the name of Palestinian liberation.

It has never done so. And evidence unveiled at the Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) shows why. CAIR was born of an effort to support Hamas in America – its founders part of the Palestine Committee who agreed in 1993 that a prospective peace deal was bad and who saw the need for a new organization to bring their message, surreptitiously, to Washington.

HLF now stands guilty of routing more than $12 million to benefit Hamas through a series of Palestinian charities. As witnesses like Matthew Levitt and Bruce Hoffman testified, that support – even when channeled to humanitarian needs – is crucial in winning popular support for the terrorist group responsible for it.

And, as the evidence made clear, the view about HLF and the charities it supported was not merely an Israeli belief. Palestinian Authority security documents reach the same conclusion. That took away a key defense argument from the first HLF trial, which ended in a mistrial last year.

Quite simply, it is time to move past the reflexive and discredited denials. If CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) want to show that we’re wrong when we consider them terror apologists, they can start by offering unequivocal endorsements of the jury’s verdict and their respect for the justice system even when it disappoints them.

Don’t hold your breath. On Wednesday, CAIR issued a brief statement…

Read the whole thing…

Coming up: the second round in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial, in which the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are both listed as unindicted co-conspirators, despite their repeated attempts to be removed from the list: Terrorism Financing Case Back in Court.

The government’s largest terrorism financing case returned to a courtroom in Dallas this week as prosecutors once again try to secure criminal convictions against five men for allegedly raising more than $12 million in what investigators call “blood money” to support overseas suicide bombings.

The case against former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas charity that authorities shuttered seven years ago because of its alleged links to the militant Palestinian group Hamas, comes nearly a year after a previous trial ended in disappointment for the government. Jurors acquitted one man outright on 31 charges and deadlocked on charges against the others. Senior U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish declared a mistrial in October 2007.

The turbulent jury deliberations ignited debate about the strength of the government’s evidence and its pursuit of financiers who back terrorist groups. In the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, authorities increasingly have accused suspects of providing “material support” to hostile groups, but the Justice Department’s trial record in such cases has been mixed.

As we noted earlier this month, the Democratic Party invited a representative from the radical Islamic front group ISNA to participate in an “interfaith service” at the opening of the convention; here’s the Investigative Project’s take on this disgraceful event that went completely unnoticed by mainstream media: Of Democrats and Co-Conspirators.

On Sunday, Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), participated in a “public interfaith service of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists” at the opening of this week’s Democratic National Convention. While there is nothing wrong with a “public interfaith service” in and of itself, the invited guests and speakers can raise legitimate questions about the motives and mindset of the organizers. Mattson’s presence does just that.

Reporting on Mattson’s appearance, the website for the Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera stated:

Dr Ingrid Mattson, director of the MacDonald Centre for the study of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations in the US state of Connecticut, told the crowd it “saddened” her that “so much out there is being done because of my religion”, but took pains to stress both the work of the US Muslim community with local officials to combat extremism and the support she had from leaders of other faiths.

Aside from reaching out to a handful of naïve Jews and Christians for “interfaith” dialogue, constantly whining about “Islamophobia” and claiming that the U.S. government’s “war against terror” is, in fact, a “war against Islam,” one wonders just what ISNA has done to “combat extremism.”

Mattson’s organization, ISNA, is currently an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Hamas-fundraising case in U.S. history, against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). In petitioning the federal district court in Dallas to remove itself unindicted co-conspirator status, ISNA’s attorneys conceded substantial financial ties to top-Hamas operatives, claiming merely that such documentary evidence dated back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, before Hamas was officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

One of the participants at an “interfaith service” at the upcoming Democratic Convention is Ingrid Mattson—a deceptive shill for the Islamic Society of North America, one of the groups listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial: Radical Islamist to Appear at Democrat Convention ‘Interfaith Service’.

Hamas co-conspirators at an “interfaith service.” Welcome to the modern Democratic Party.

The court-appointed defense attorneys in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial seem to be getting on the judge’s nerves, with a request to delay the retrial because they aren’t getting their money quickly enough: Judge denies request for delayed re-trial in Holy Land case.

A federal judge has denied a request by defense attorneys in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case who asked that next month’s re-trial be delayed.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis called their claim that they cannot be ready for trial because of delays in payments of their court-appointed attorneys’ fees “hyperbolic and inaccurate.”

Judge Solis chastised the court-appointed attorneys in the case for waiting until late March, about five months after the October mistrial, to file their budget for the re-trial, which includes expenses for pre-trial preparation such as pay for experts and air travel.

The judge said that after they submitted their budget to him in late March, twice he had to ask them for more detail and explanations of what he thought were “unreasonable” expenses before finally feeling comfortable enough forward the budget to the circuit court for review in June.

He did not detail any of the defense expenses, which are under seal so that prosecutors cannot gain an advantage by knowing how the opposition is spending its money and preparing for trial. …

For the first trial, court appointed attorneys have so far been paid $2.4 million, including more than $1.6 million for attorney and paralegal fees and expenses; $191,000 for expert fees and expenses; $458,700 for translator fees; and more than $100,300 for airfare. So far, about $47,000 has been paid out for the second trial, including $35,000 to defense attorneys, $6,000 for experts, and about $6,200 for airfare, the federal court clerk’s office said Wednesday.

As we’ve noted previously, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has been trying to get the government to remove them from the list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial, and they’ve hit on a novel method of arguing their case. They’re not denying ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood; they’re just claiming that the information is “out of date.”

In its latest filing before the federal district court in Dallas on behalf of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and its affiliate organization, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in the Hamas-terrorism financing case, the ACLU has made a noteworthy admission.

Rather than deny that there is copious evidence tying ISNA and NAIT to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the brief argues that such evidence is merely dated. In a curious footnote on page 7, the reply states:

Assuming the authenticity of documents’ dates, the most recent documents to mention either ISNA or NAIT are dated 1991, Gov. Exhs. 3-3 and 3-85, but the majority of the documents are older. Almost all of the numerous exhibits that purport to show financial transactions and that contain any mention of ISNA or NAIT are dated 1988 and 1989 (there are two dated 1990), almost a decade before the majority of the overt acts the government alleges in support of its conspiracy charges against the HLF defendants.

So ISNA and NAIT are not saying that the documents tying their organizations to Hamas are “inauthentic,” but that the problem with the evidence is just that it is old. Then, even more curiously, the reply goes on to argue something that the government has not even alleged:

Even if the “evidence” provided some basis for alleging criminality against petitioners, the government’s discussion of it shows the government utterly fails to grasp the singular weight and consequence that an official accusation of criminal conduct carries in our criminal justice system and in our society.

But, of course, the government has not charged ISNA or NAIT with criminal conduct, or the two groups would be indicted in their own right, rather than un-indicted co-conspirators who worked with the Holy Land for Relief and Development (HLF), the defendant and alleged Hamas-front. The reply brief then, as Shakespeare might write, “doth protest too much.”

Federal prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial are rejecting the claims of radical Islamic front groups ISNA and NAIT that they were unfairly listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the case: U.S.: Facts Tie Muslim Groups To Hamas Front Case.

In a filing yesterday in federal court in Dallas, prosecutors said the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust suffered no lasting harm by being included on the co-conspirator list prosecutors filed prior to the trial last year of the Holy Land Foundation and five of its officers because evidence supporting the claim became public just weeks later.

“During last year’s trial, numerous exhibits were entered into evidence establishing both ISNA’s and NAIT’s intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case,” the prosecutors wrote. “They were intimately connected with the HLF and its assigned task of providing financial support to HAMAS. … That ISNA and NAIT appeared in these documents and share a common history with these defendants is a reflection of the evidence, not any attempt to ‘disparage’ or ‘vilify.’”

There’s the jihad of the sword, and the jihad of the courts, and the ACLU is joining with the legal jihadists again to promote Islamist front groups: Groups Want Names Cleared in Holy Land Case.

They just keep coming back with this stuff, no matter how many times they’re refused. And the way our legal system currently works, eventually they will probably be successful.

Two major Muslim organizations, the North American Islamic Trust and the Islamic Society of North America, are asking a federal judge to rebuke prosecutors for publicly naming the groups as unindicted co-conspirators in a federal criminal case against officers of an alleged Hamas front, the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas.

In a motion filed yesterday in federal court in Dallas, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union contend that prosecutors violated the constitutional rights of NAIT and ISNA by branding them as conspirators even though they were not indicted in the case and have not been charged with wrongdoing.

“It is an egregious departure from regular practice,” an ACLU attorney, Hina Shamsi, said in an interview. “The smear happened and the notoriety of our clients as a result has spread and there’s no way they are able to defend themselves.”

In court papers, leaders of NAIT and ISNA said the co-conspirator designation has hampered their relations with law enforcement entities, such as the FBI, and stymied interfaith dialogue with Jewish organizations.

It shouldn’t have taken a co-conspirator designation to wake up the FBI and interfaith groups, of course; these radical Islamic front groups make only token attempts to hide their ideologies.