Radical Muslims Still Have Access to US Gov't
Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 2:48:08 pm PST
Today in Washington the United States Institute of Peace is hosting an event on reforming Islam—and one of the guests in the panel discussion is Muzammil Siddiqi, former president of the ISNA who is on record threatening the US and supporting terrorist groups: Pipes Objects to Fox in the Henhouse. Daniel Pipes has announced he is “distancing” himself from the event.
Among the guests in this afternoon’s panel discussion is Muzammil Siddiqi, who until November 2001 was president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a leading Wahhabi front organization in the United States. Wahhabism is a radical form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia and advocated by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his terrorist leaders.
Siddiqi has accompanied visiting Saudi officials from the Muslim World League on fund-raising tours across America, and is listed on its Website as the organization’s official representative in the United States. Offices of the Muslim World League in Herndon, Va., were raided by a federal antiterrorism task force in March 2002 because of suspected ties to al-Qaeda.
During an anti-Israel rally outside the White House on Oct. 28, 2000, Siddiqi openly threatened the United States with violence if it continued its support of Israel. “America has to learn ... if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? ... If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of God will come.” By “injustice,” he meant U.S. support for Israel.
Siddiqi also has called for a wider application of sharia law in the United States, and in a 1995 speech 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,” he was quoted as saying by the Kansas City Star on Jan. 28, 1995.
A Bush appointee to the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) says he must distance himself from today’s event because it associates the USIP with groups “on the wrong side in the war on terrorism.” USIP board member Daniel Pipes tells Insight that, in addition to his objection to Siddiqi, he has warned the USIP about the presence of the U.S. spokesman of al-Muhajiroun, a London-based group that claims to be recruiting jihadis for a worldwide “Mohammed’s army” faithful to bin Laden.
Pipes tells Insight: “I believe that President [George W.] Bush appointed me to the USIP board in part to serve as a watchdog against militant Islamic groups. Unfortunately the management of USIP is not listening to my advice. I cannot be associated with the event today which associates USIP with some of the very worst militant Islamic groups.”
And the Siddiqi connection is not even the worst of it; the co-sponsor of the event is the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, one of whose members is the former North American spokesman for al-Muhajiroun.
The March 19 event is cohosted by USIP and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a U.S.-based group that was created by board members and former staff of the American Muslim Council (AMC), a radical pro-Saudi group that largely ceased operations after its former chairman, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, was jailed last October on terrorist-related charges.
Pipes raised his concerns with USIP Chairman Chester Crocker and President Richard Solomon over the “extremist nature of CSID itself” starting last November. In addition to board members and an executive director who shifted over to the new group from AMC, Pipes pointed out that CSID fellow Kamran Bokhari has ties to al-Muhajiroun, an al-Qaeda support group. Until last year, Bokhari was the self-acknowledged North American spokesman for al-Muhajiroun.
Insight reported on the group’s first anniversary “celebration” of the 9/11 attacks, held at the radical Finsbury mosque in London, where al-Muhajiroun showed off a poster that portrayed a burning World Trade Center under attack and called September 11 “a towering day in history.”
At the group’s second anniversary 9/11 “celebration,” its members distributed a poster with photographs of all 19 hijackers, calling them “the magnificent 19.”
CSID “fellows” are not research assistants, but integral members of the leadership of the organization. According to a copy of the CSID bylaws Insight has obtained, CSID fellows are responsible for electing the group’s board of directors. All board members must first be fellows.
Bokhari has issued a statement denouncing political violence and al-Qaeda, and referred to himself as a “former Islamist activist.” But given his leadership role with al-Muhajiroun, Pipes says, such statements were “deeply insufficient to rehabilitate him ... or make him someone suitable to be associated with USIP.”
