Muslim Mafia

by Sperry, Paul

  SITE Institute executive director Rita Katz told the St. Petersburg Times that Taja Alwani is a “person who supports and funnels money to terrorist organizations, and he’s training Muslim chaplains for the military.” He also co-founded a fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, organization with Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood spiritual leader who has issued fatwahs calling for suicide attacks against U.S. soldiers.

  GSISS, which adopted the alternate name Cordoba University after federal agents raided its offices, has trained and certified an alarming ten of the Pentagon’s fourteen Muslims chaplains, as well as some of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ chaplains. It counts among its alumni one Warith Deen Umar, a longtime federal and state prison chaplain in New York who applauded the 9/11 hijackings and promoted black inmates who converted to Islam as ideal candidates for future terrorist attacks.

  A few years ago, the Justice Department’s inspector general recommended that the Federal Bureau of Prisons suspend ties to ISNA until the FBI could conduct a thorough investigation of the group. The inspector general cited reports that ISNA-sponsored chaplains were helping radicalize inmates.

  But after pushback from ISNA, the prison bureau lifted its moratorium the very next year. It’s now accepting ISNA’s endorsement of Muslim prison chaplains—and by extension, GSISS’s.

  So is the Pentagon. It rejected a recommendation from its own inspector general to use the FBI to help screen ISNA and other religious organizations that certify military chaplains. The Pentagon said it would be “legally problematic” to do so.27

  As it stands now, the Pentagon will not remove or reject Muslim chaplains unless they have been charged or convicted of terrorism or if the religious organization endorsing them appears on the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.28

  Even at the FBI, the PC outreach continues unabated.

  Earlier this year, with the conviction of the Holy Land charity still making headlines, the FBI allowed its general counsel to sit on a Yale University panel on civil rights with ISNA official Louay Safi. During the same month, ISNA boasted that it met with the FBI to voice outrage over undercover agents in mosques.29

  And more recently, FBI Executive Assistant Director Tom Harrington met at FBI headquarters with a vice president of ISNA, a move that followed the bureau’s decision “to use ISNA as their official point of contact with the American Muslim community,” according to Guandolo, who has worked at the FBI since 1996, most recently in the Washington field office’s counterterrorism division.30

  Career FBI agents say they were scandalized by news of the high-level contacts, which took place over their objections and in spite of ISNA’s recent Justice Department blacklisting. They say FBI assistant directors involved in outreach and civil rights are hesitant to cut off formal ties to the group because they remain impressed with the moderate and patriotic rhetoric of ISNA officials.

  The FBI officials “are quite friendly with them and refuse to believe they are nefarious, because they say—and I quote—‘I have lunch with Sayyid Syeed every week; he is a nice guy,’” Guandolo says.

  “Nice or not, he’s Muslim Brotherhood,” the veteran agent asserts. “And they’re the enemy.”

  And their next target is the Treasury Department—and Wall Street.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NAIT AND THE ECONOMIC JIHAD

  “We can communicate grievances and positions that are relevant to the well-being of the Muslim community to these [non-Shariah-compliant American] corporations through shareholder resolutions, press releases, and divestitures…We are able to implement an economic boycott that reflects our values and priorities.”

  -- Omar Haydar, mutual fund director for the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), 2008 letter to CAIR1

  THE COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS invests its employee retirement funds and other accounts with the North American Islamic Trust, another Muslim Brotherhood subsidiary in the center of the conspiracy to conquer North America for Allah.

  Adopting a relatively low profile, NAIT fronts as an investment bank, managing the financial accounts of most of the organizations in the Brotherhood network and providing the capital that has helped the Islamofascist movement expand from college campuses to major cities including the nation’s capital. It also holds title to most of the radical mosques and Islamic schools in America.

  Millions of dollars in Brotherhood and Hamas money has flowed through NAIT since its founding in 1973—with ample seed capital from Saudi and other Mideast sources. In fact, U.S. prosecutors recently named NAIT in the U.S. Brotherhood conspiracy to fund Hamas and other terrorists.2

  While that’s bad enough, the Chicago-based trust is at the center of a broader Brotherhood scheme to create a parallel economic system in America complying with Shariah laws against interest, credit, and other “impure” Western financial practices. The ultimate goal is to Islamize the banking industry and Wall Street in an economic jihad.

  It is part of the larger civilization jihad, or “grand jihad,” to destroy and overthrow the non-Islamic system of the West revealed in the secret Brotherhood manifesto uncovered by the FBI. Deep inside the eighteen-page document is a section calling for the creation of an “Islamic Central Bank” and “an organization for interest-free loans.”3

  The manifesto does not spell out the Brotherhood’s tactics for imposing Shariah-compliant finance on corporate America. Nor the tools for enforcing it.

  However, a letter intercepted from one of the boxes of files that CAIR had marked for shredding at its Washington headquarters provides clues.

  The correspondence reveals a “strategic partnership” between NAIT and CAIR to bully publicly traded American firms to conform to Shariah rules or face punishments—including shareholder resolutions, divestments, and boycotts.

  FORBIDDEN BUSINESS

  What are the Shariah rules for finance? Among other things, Islamic law forbids any businesses dealing in:

  conventional Western banking;

  alcoholic beverages;

  pork or pork byproducts;

  tobacco;

  Western aerospace and defense;

  movie production and theaters;

  music;

  hotels and casinos; or

  any other entertainment.

  Business with Israel also is forbidden.

  Now back to the smoking-gun letter, which was written in 2008 by Omar Haydar, director of fund operations for NAIT subsidiary Allied Asset Advisors, Inc. He was following up on a prior “discussion” with CAIR’s then-national operations director, Khalid Iqbal.

  In his introduction, Haydar informed Iqbal that NAIT has about $20 million under management in one stock mutual fund and plans to offer other Islamic investment products in the future, which would add to its muscle and help it bend Wall Street and corporate America to the will of Islam.

  “Currently, we own nearly four hundred U.S. equities, such as Walgreens, Cisco, and Exxon-Mobil. Thus we have some leverage with the companies whose shares we own,” Haydar wrote. “More specifically, we can communicate grievances and positions that are relevant to the well-being of the Muslim community to these corporations through shareholder resolutions, press releases, and divestitures.”4

  If a company does not change its business plan and conform with Islamic principles, he proposed, NAIT could threaten to divest its funds.

  “If a corporation does not seem to be receptive to the grievances and concerns,” Haydar said, “we have the discretion to divest ourselves of the corporation’s assets, and making [sic] it a public matter.”5

  With CAIR’s help, NAIT could trigger an “economic boycott” forcing targeted corporations to bow to Islamic demands.

  “Thus,” Haydar said, “we are able to implement an economic boycott that reflects our values and priorities, putting our money where our mouth is.”6

  ‘PRESSURE DOW JONES’

  He advised CAIR that the financial jihad “process” against Wall Street firms
would work as follows:

  Pursue the matter quietly through their public relations/press office.

  Draft shareholder resolution.

  Submit resolution as a shareholder for annual shareholder meeting.

  Issue press release statement on stance and issue.

  Divest holdings and pressure Dow Jones to remove company from index with your assistance.7

  Patrick Sookhdeo, a London scholar and Shariah finance expert, says such pressure tactics have worked frighteningly well for the Brotherhood in Britain, which has become a mecca for Shariah finance while suffering rapid Islamization.

  “Islamic banking and finance is but one of the multiple tools they use to further their cause,” Sookhdeo says. “It is economic jihad, a key and integrated part of the larger civilizational jihad.”8

  He elaborates that Shariah finance accords with the Brotherhood’s wider “vision of the overthrow of non-Islamic systems and the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate that will rule the earth.”9

  Meanwhile, NAIT and other Brotherhood front groups are lobbying Congress and the Treasury Department to change banking rules to accommodate Islamic financing principles in everything from stock investments to mortgages to insurance.

  Recently, Treasury has encouraged the groups by taking conciliatory steps in their direction.

  ISLAMIC FINANCE 101

  For example: After acquiring a majority stake in failed insurance giant AIG—the U.S. market leader in Shariah-compliant financial products—Treasury co-sponsored a forum entitled “Islamic Finance 101.”

  Major Stephen Coughlin, a Pentagon consultant and expert in Islamic doctrine, argues that the government’s ownership of AIG may be unconstitutional since it tacitly supports the practice of Shariah, and Shariah is a separate legal system at odds with the law of the land.

  “If politicians and the Treasury make an exception to U.S. law and allow Shariah-compliant finance,” he says, “they are disobeying their oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.”10

  A public-interest law firm agrees, and is suing the department claiming that government ownership of AIG is an unconstitutional government “establishment” of Islam. The Thomas More Law Center also argues there are a number of links between charities that receive funds as a result of Shariah-compliant financing and “terrorist organizations that are hostile to the United States.”

  Indeed, a share of the proceeds from Shariah-compliant investments is automatically transferred to Islamic charities, many of which finance jihad.

  An elite group of Shariah advisors determines how much of the proceeds will be “purified,” and which charities will be the beneficiaries. Who are these gurus? Radical Muslim Brothers who support jihad.

  One leading Shariah advisor, Muhammad Usmani, advocates aggressive jihad against infidels. Fiercely anti-American, he has urged all Muslims to support the Taliban.11

  Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who sits on the international advisory board, is an open supporter of suicide bombings, including those targeting U.S. troops. He thinks Islamic charity should be spent on jihad. In fact, the Brotherhood leader says he prefers to call such donations “jihad with money, because Allah has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money.”12

  CHECKERED BOARD

  One of NAIT’s founding directors is Jamal Barzinji, a major Brotherhood figure who has a criminal record and has been the subject of post-9/11 terror financing investigations. According to federal court documents cited earlier, Barzinji is “not only closely associated with PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) but also with Hamas.”

  The FBI has identified Barzinji as a key Brotherhood radical who is “in a position to direct the activities and support of Muslims in the U.S. for the Islamic revolution.”13

  What’s more, current NAIT Chairman Muzammil Siddiqi appears in secret Brotherhood documents as a high-ranking member of its shura council.14 And current NAIT Trustee Gaddoor Saidi shows up on the Justice Department’s list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation scheme to fund Hamas terrorists.15

  NAIT has established several Islamic mutual funds, including the Iman (Arabic for faith) Fund and Saturna Capital’s Amana (Arabic for trust) Growth Fund and Amana Income Fund, which have combined assets of more than $1 billion. About half of the seventy thousand investors who buy the funds through financial advisors aren’t Muslim.

  Caveat emptor: Investing in NAIT’s financial empire may mean investing in the holy war against the United States.

  “Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being part of a covert network of revolutionaries,” the FBI warned in a previously classified internal memo about the Muslim Brotherhood.16

  “This faction of Muslims have declared war on the United States, Israel, and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam,” the memo continues. “The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political, with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war [Islamic jihad].”

  AFTERWORD

  BACK TO BASICS

  AMERICA’S GREATEST CHALLENGE in this ongoing national security threat is our reluctance to admit that our law enforcement agencies are some fifty years behind the intelligence gathering techniques of Islamic terrorist groups and their agents such as CAIR and ISNA.

  Many readers will scoff at this notion. America has spent billions of dollars on electronic surveillance and data collection. Law enforcement has the best gadgets known to mankind. Officers today have better surveillance equipment than any other law enforcement agency in the world. And its sophistication is generations ahead of anything used by al-Qaida.

  But our first-line defenders at the local, state, and federal levels have become so technologically advanced that they have lost sight of the common sense, street-wise approaches to law enforcement that work best in disrupting terrorist plots and dismantling terror-support networks. These approaches include basics such as talking to people on the street, and studying habits and customs to gain clues about tactics used by the bad guys. Infiltrating their culture and community is key to getting the jump on them.

  For robberies, homicides, narcotics, and white-collar fraud cases, keep the Blackberries, laptops, and night vision goggles. Fighting Islamic jihadists, on the other hand, requires learning their mindset, ideology, and tactics. CAIR and other jihadist front groups block the real training officers need. In fact, their “sensitivity” training is designed to throw sand in their eyes.

  For starters, police chiefs, sheriffs, and FBI special agents in charge must refocus their efforts on self-study of the materials used by the enemy. If al-Qaida manuals and jihadi literature detailing how to fight the West are produced in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, then it’s incumbent upon our police forces to get these materials. Note: They are available in virtually every U.S. mosque or Islamic bookstore. Focus on the Sunni materials first.

  Next, start relying on Human Intelligence (HUMINT). This does not have to be limited to recruiting criminal informants to obtain counterterrorism intelligence. Use your own officers after they’ve been properly trained. Islamic groups and scholars—and the FBI officials they’ve brainwashed—will tell you the Islamist ideology is very complicated. And they will tell you that if you’re not Muslim, or haven’t lived in an Islamic country, or don’t speak Arabic, then you or your informants will not understand what to look for if they conduct an undercover operation in the local Islamic center.

  This is what CAIR and the rest of the Muslim mafia want officers to believe. But don’t buy it. Jihadism is not rocket science. There are telltale signs to watch for when identifying radicalism. And you don’t need sophisticated tools to help you detect them, according to veteran federal investigator P. David Gaubatz:

  The first-hand research my team and I conducted within CAIR and in nearly two hundred U.S. mosques across the U.S. is very basic. During the training of my researchers, I provided them the kind of old-sch
ool training that veteran law enforcement officers have used going back decades. These time-tested methods rely on common sense, street smarts, and the most basic of equipment (pen and notebook), combined with the ability to handle stress in a hostile environment. We had little funding and basic equipment. But my researchers had the ability to adapt quickly to various situations; they utilized basic skills such as human communication. They were very personable, and did not portray themselves to be above others or to know more than they actually did.

  Gaubatz stresses humility:

  Oftentimes law enforcement officers who work undercover have a hard time checking their egos. Criminals see through this very quickly. When conducting undercover operations, you must realize you most likely do not know as much about your target as they know about the illegal work they are conducting. Build rapport with them. People love to talk about their jobs and accomplishments. Even Corey Saylor and Ibrahim Hooper, who are trained to say as little as possible to people outside CAIR’s inner circle, will talk when they do not feel intimidated or threatened. Abide by their Shariah law, and always be professional and respectful.

  All the while searching out clues to extremism and radical behavior:

  Investigators and the public, just as importantly, should understand that Muslims who follow the most violent aspects of Shariah law adhere to very specific rituals, habits, and styles of dress that to the untrained eye appear otherwise harmless. But they are red flags signaling extremism. Within Shariah law, Muslims must always do everything opposite their enemies the Christians and the Jews. For instance:

  If a Muslim wears a beard it should be a fistful in length, but the mustache should be trimmed because this would be opposite the style of the Christians and Jews.