The largest networks and most dangerous terrorist groups in the United States are Hamas, al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad. Some of their members and supporters have entered the country illegally using visa fraud. For example, Abu Mezer, who was arrested by New York City police in 1997 for planning to bomb the city subway system, had been captured three different times by the INS within little more than a year prior to his arrest, each time for illegally entering the country from Canada.35
Terrorist Cells in the United States
Of all the Islamic terrorist groups in the United States, Hamas has developed the largest network of cells, spreading across the U.S. from sea to shining sea. According to intelligence information, it has cells in Boston; New York City; Laurel, Maryland; Potomac, Maryland; Washington, D.C; Herndon, Virginia; Springfield, Virginia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Boca Raton, Florida; Ft. Lauderdale, Florida; Philadelphia; Cleveland; Charlotte; Orlando; Tampa; Detroit; Houston; Columbia, Missouri; Plainfield, Illinois; Kansas City, Kansas; Chicago; Denver; Oklahoma City; Arlington, Texas; Dallas; Tucson; Seattle; San Francisco; Santa Clara; Los Angeles; and San Diego.36
Hamas is right in many of your towns and cities, right in your backyard. And it’s our lazy and ignorant government officials and lax laws that have allowed them to come here to plan our destruction. Many are still blind in this country to the threat that we face. When are we going to wake up? Yes, we now have the Department of Homeland Security, but without all Americans, the public as well as all branches of government, supporting the war on terrorism, our success will be limited.
We need to know our enemy better. And I’m not talking just about al Qaeda. How many of you have read the Hamas charter published in August 1988? It is public information and will open your eyes as to why you need to become active and involved in protecting our country. For example, Article 22 states:
Our enemies have planned from time immemorial in order to reach the position they’ve obtained now. They strive to collect enormous material riches to he used in the realization of their dream. With money, they’ve gained control of the international media beginning with news agencies,newspapers and publishing houses, broadcasting stations. They also used this wealth to stir revolutions in different parts of the world in order to fulfill their interests and reap their fruits. With their money they created secret organizations that spread around the world in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’naiB'rith and the like. All of them are destructive espionage organizations. With their money they’ve taken control of the imperialist states and pushed them to occupy many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread corruption there.37
Did any of you Rotary Club and Lions Club members know you are mentioned in the charter of Hamas, the largest terrorist Islamic group in the United States, and that you are considered the enemy to be destroyed?
We are now facing the distinct possibility of mass murder on a far grander scale than the Holocaust. With al Qaeda threatening a nuclear attack on major U.S. cities,38 with its desire to obtain weapons of mass destruction including chemical weapons and radiological-dispersion devices, and having some American Muslim citizens committed to our destruction in the name of jihad and in loyalty to Dar al Islam (the house of Islam), we could be facing disaster.
Our willingness as a nation to support our intelligence community and provide it with whatever laws that will enable it to track and infiltrate cells in America will determine our demise or survival. The tragedy of September 11 could be the end of terrorism on American soil or the beginning of the end of American civilization.
After driving most of the Christians out of the Middle East and successfully infiltrating Europe, the Islamists have set their eyes on fighting the infidels of the United States. They are using our laws, Bill of Rights, Constitution, and fair-mindedness to plot our destruction. When the news broke about federal officials checking U.S. mosques for radiation levels, CAIR was in uproar. Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s spokesperson, stated: “This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims.” A CAIR statement said that the monitoring “could lead to the perception that we are no longer a nation ruled by law, but instead one in which fear trumps constitutional rights. All Americans should be concerned about the apparent trend toward a two-tiered system of justice, with full rights for most citizens, and another diminished set of rights for Muslims."39
Here we have the head of an Islamic organization in America whose founders have been convicted of ties to terrorism with the audacity to use the Constitution against a genuine effort to protect our country from a catastrophic attack. If Mr. Hooper and CAIR invest their efforts in investigating the jihadists living among us, working with our authorities to turn them in, working with imams on preaching tolerance and American patriotism, maybe we wouldn’t have to monitor mosques. Instead, all CAIR does is complain about every effort we put forth in trying to protect America. There is no constitutional right that will protect anyone or any institution that wants to harbor radioactive material to use in killing American citizens. We are in a time of war and must do whatever it takes to protect our citizens.
People and Organizations in the U.S.
Who Are Aiding Our Enemies
Americans should be concerned when they hear the likes of CAIR up in arms condemning the surveillance of mosques and the monitoring of U.S. citizens' phone conversations when talking to terrorists in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world. Since September 11, 2001, there have been hundreds of arrests and convictions of Muslims inside the United States. These Muslims have been arrested for plotting terrorist attacks on American soil, for money laundering activities, for drug trafficking, for credit card fraud, and for car theft. Our U.S. authorities investigating and putting these people on trial have concluded that these activities have been linked to financing Islamic terrorist attacks against innocent civilians. According to a Washington Times article, criminal prosecutors and investigators, working with state and local authorities, have disrupted more than 150 terrorist cells and threats from Portland, Oregon, to Lackawanna, New York, incapacitating more than 3,000 known operatives. Law enforcement officials have also charged 375 persons in terrorism-related cases, 195 of whom have already pleaded guilty or been convicted, and have removed from the country more than 500 people linked to September 11. The targeted terrorists have included members of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas as part of an effort to prevent and prosecute those who commit or intend to commit terrorist acts against the United States.40
As our federal agents and investigators have started digging deeper into the base of the Islamic American communities in their quest to discover and unveil terrorists living among us, they have implicated some of America’s most politically active Muslim groups operating under the cover of human and civil rights organizations and charities. By August 2003 President Bush had named five Islamic charities and six senior Hamas officials as Special Designated Global Terrorist Entities (SDGTs). The assets of these organizations were frozen immediately.
One of the people named was Musa Abu Marzook, who founded the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in Richardson, Texas, in 1981. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the organization held annual conferences throughout the United States, inviting as keynote speakers radical Islamists and terrorists from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood who bragged about executing successful terror attacks on innocent civilians overseas, especially in Israel.
The IAP worked closely with another Richardson-based organization, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the federal government froze on December 4,2001. Then-treasury secretary Paul O’Neill accused the organization of masquerading as a charity while its primary function was raising funds for the terror group Hamas.
It is also out of IAP that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was formed by two IAP officials, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad.41 Of all the Islamic organizations
in America, CAIR has risen to the top as the most visible, most outspoken defender of Muslims in the United States. Masquerading as a civil rights organization, CAIR has had a hidden agenda to Islamize America from the start. Its cofounder and chairman, Omar Ahmad, a Palestinian American, told a Muslim audience in Fremont, California, in 1998: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national spokesman, is on record stating: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic.” Three of CAIR’s officials have already been convicted of terror-related crimes.42 One even worked for Hooper. He’s now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.
Despite its links to terrorism or providing support to terrorists, CAIR grew to become a major player in Islamic American politics. The organization is lobbying in Washington, D.C., and working hard in fighting the United States government under the name of civil rights and civil liberty while complaining against every security measure our government is trying to take to fight terrorism at home.
CAIR has refused to come out and condemn terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, al Gamaat al Islamiya, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah by name. Any time CAIR speaks against terrorism, its verbiage is so vague and general, it’s an insult to the intelligence of the American public to call the statements condemnations of terrorism. After the London bombing, CAIR issued a condemnation so meaningless it required explanation. CAIR’s statement denounced “all acts of terrorism targeting civilians and innocent lives.” Now that sounds satisfactory to the average American ears, doesn’t it? CAIR counts on ignorance and the West’s hunger to hear any condemnation coming from a Muslim organization. The fact is that Islamic jihadists do not consider innocent or civilian any American and most certainly any Jew. The Islamic jihadists consider any tax-paying American guilty of contributing and supporting the Great Satan with his or her money and allowing evil to spread via the American government elected by the American people. The Islamic jihadists consider every civilian Israeli a guilty soldier because at one time in their lives, all Israelis serve in the Israeli army, as mandated by the Israeli government. So every child is a future soldier and every grandmother is a former soldier. Their death is a gift to God, and martyrdom while killing them is the way to God and his blessings.
CAIR may talk a good and moderate talk, but its actions speak louder than words. The statement condemning terror was written by Taha Jaber al-Alwani, who himself happens to be an unindicted coconspirator in the ongoing terror case against Sami al-Arian, the Florida professor linked to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in America.
What is also disturbing is that a Saudi foundation run by the crown prince of Dubai owns the deed to CAIR’s headquarters, located practically in the White House’s backyard. This terror-supporting foundation has raised millions using a TV telethon to support families of Palestinian suicide bombers and to glorify suicide bombers and martyrdom. During the televised event, Islamic clergymen made calls for the destruction of Israel and America. According to various reports, one Saudi offered his car so that it could be used “to blow up a military barracks and kill [Israeli] soldiers,” and a six-year-old boy made a symbolic donation of fake plastic explosives.43
CAIR was also associated with and worked with the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation. After September 11 both organizations were closed down by the U.S. government on terrorism-related charges. According to a report by the Treasury Department, “the Global Relief Foundation has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al-Qaeda Network, and other known terrorist groups."44
You would think that after that, CAIR would stay out of sight. Instead, CAIR came out vigorously defending these two groups. CAIR blamed the U.S. government for racial profiling in the closure of the Global Relief Foundation, calling it an organization that “had established a track record of effective relief work."45 The great scholar of Islam Daniel Pipes sites:
CAIR is also on the wrong side in the war on terrorism. A few examples of many:
In October 1998, the group demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as “the sworn enemy,” claiming this depiction was “offensive to Muslims."
CAIR deemed the conviction of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing “a travesty of justice."
CAIR called the conviction of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheikh who planned to blow up New York City landmarks, a “hate crime."
When President Bush closed the Holy Land Foundation for collecting money he said was “used to support the Hamas terror organization,” CAIR decried his action as “unjust” and “disturbing."
When evaluating anything CAIR says, readers should keep this organization’s history—and demonstrated sympathies—in mind.46
In an article titled “Profile of Terror,” Evan McCormick, a Research Associate at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., writes: Since September 11,2001, no fewer than three CAIR officials—Randall Todd Royer, Ghassan Elashi, and Bassem Khafagi—have been found guilty on charges resulting from major counterterrorism investigations. Royer, who worked as a communications specialist with CAIR, was charged with providing material support to al Qaeda. Nihad Awad, one of CAIR founders, has stated, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.” Communications director Ibrahim Hooper has defended Saudi financial aid given to families of suicide bombers.47
The sad reality is that CAIR and other Islamic groups speaking as representatives of mainstream Muslims in the United States and trying to influence U.S. antiterrorism policy are undeniably and clearly linked to the very terrorist network that U.S. officials are trying to thwart.
Another Islamic organization of concern in our war against terrorism is the Muslim American Society (MAS). The society was founded by extremists, and despite its efforts to clean up its public image, the core of its teaching remains hostile to non-Muslims. In 1993 American leaders of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamic fundamentalist group, decided to start calling themselves the Muslim American Society. Their founder, Hassan al-Banna, has endorsed violence as a means to spreading the rule of Islamic law throughout the world, according to the Brotherhood’s goal.
Even though listening to Mahdi Bray, the society’s executive director, speaking on Fox News, would give you the idea that MAS has moved away from its extremist foundation, its actions demonstrate that this couldn’t be further from the truth. In an interview with Fox Bray said that MAS plan is to “inoculate our young people by making sure they’re actively and constructively engaged in positive activities that reflect the main views of their faith tradition, as opposed to someone who would want to influence them into extremist points.” This sounds wonderful. However, as you peel the layers off this rhetoric and look at MAS’s policies, actions, and teachings, you will see that they are the exact opposite of his words.
MAS requires its members to read Hassan al-Banna’s theological tome Message of the Teachings. In it, al-Banna clearly states that all governments must become Islamic, and he encourages his followers to “completely boycott non-Islamic courts and judicial systems” and to “dissociate yourself from organizations, newspapers, committees, schools and institutions which oppose your Islamic ideology.” In addition to al-Banna’s work, members of MAS are required to read Sayyid Qutb’s book Milestones, in which Qutb states that a legitimate goal of jihad is “to establish God’s authority on earth” or to “arrange human affairs according to the true guidance provided by God.” Qutb is discussed at length in the 9/11 Commission Report because he is one of Osama bin Laden’s theological inspirations.
Among the many books the society also recommends is Methodology ofDa’wah by Shamim Siddiqui. According to counterterrorism consultant Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the book
argues for an Islamic takeover of America because Washington’s “treacherous hands” allegedly intervened whenever Muslims were on the verge of establishing an Islamic state. Siddiqui states that society will polarize between Muslims and non-Muslims “in every walk of life” as Muslims gain power, but that if Muslims are careful, there will be a general “rush to Islam” that can make the faith dominant in the U.S.48
So let’s look at Mahdi Bray, MAS’s executive director. Here is an excerpt from testimony by Dr. J. Michael Waller, Annenberg Professor of International Communication the Institute of World Politics, regarding “Terrorist Recruitment and Infiltration in the United States: Prisons and Military as an Operational Base,” before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, on October 14, 2003:
Appendix 2: Key Organizations Involved in Muslim Prison Recruitment
National Islamic Prison Foundation (NIPF)—Contact: Mahdi Bray; 1212 New York Ave. NW, Suite 525, Washington, DC 20005. This is the same address as the American Muslim Council (AMC).
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America Page 19