An Islamist Thanksgiving

on December 6, 2013

Islamists even see Thanksgiving as a time to advance their cause. In the morning, Islamists exploited the parade and in the evening, Islamists assembled in Illinois for the “Conference for Palestine in the U.S.” And one of their favorite evangelicals was there to join them.

The organizer of the event was American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and it took place at Crowne Plaza O’Hare in Rosemont, Illinois from November 28 to December 1. The Islamist group often works with interfaith coalitions and one of its very partners is Presbyterian Reverend Donald Wagner, former director and current board member of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding.

Last year’s AMP conference had at least 13 Islamist speakers with pro-Hamas and pro-Muslim Brotherhood agendas and had education for children about their cause. Reverend Wagner was also on the speaker’s roster and is back again this year.

The AMP explicitly says that he “works internationally to educate Christians about the problems of Christian Zionism.” He falsely states that evangelicals support Israel only to trigger an Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. To put it another way, Wagner and his group see them as the Christian equivalent of Ahmadinejad.

And his group isn’t just talking among themselves and to Islamists that don’t need convincing. In November 2012, Wagner’s group held a Middle East briefing at the Billy Graham Center of Wheaton College. The speakers were hostile to Israel and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

Wagner’s fellow speakers at the Thanksgiving Weekend conference are prominent Islamists whose backgrounds are simple to find. He and the other non-Muslim speakers like Max Blumenthal and Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, have no excuse. They are either don’t care about the conference’s extremism or don’t care to know.

AMP Chairman Hatem Bazian is one of the Islamist co-founders of Zaytuna College in California. In 2004, he was videotaped calling for an “intifada” in America to “change fundamentally the political dynamics here.” He told Muslims to follow in the footsteps of Palestinians fighting Israel and Iraqis fighting U.S. forces.

Osama Abu Irshaid is a board member of the AMP. He used to be the editor for a Muslim Brotherhood front in the U.S. and legitimized Hamas’s attacks on Israel in 2010 as legally justifiable. He also has called Hamas “the resistance.”

Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University is well-known for his incendiary comments. He says he is a “severe critic” of Hamas but described the killing of Israeli soldiers as “resistance” in 2002. His wife also worked for the PLO when it was officially designated as a terrorist group by the U.S.

Abdelfattah Mourou is a co-founder of the Ennahda Party that currently leads Tunisia. The population that once elected it to power has since turned against it. It is essentially the Brotherhood’s branch there and he co-founded it with Rachid Ghannouchi, a prominent Islamist with a long record of extremism.

Sheikh Kifah Mustapha is an imam and Associate Director at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois. He is an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation.

The U.S. government specifically listed him as an elite operative of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as a member of its secret Palestine Committee. These operatives covertly advance the interests of Hamas through a web of fronts. He was even in a pro-Hamas band.

According to AMP, Mustapha is the chairman of the Quran Institute of the Chicago chapter of the Muslim American Society. He is also the President of the Shura of Islamic Family Counselors of America and chairman of the Illinois Council of Imams and Scholars. Several other positions are listed in his bio, reflecting the success the Brotherhood has had in building and infiltrating Islamic institutions in America.

Rafeeq Jaber is a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator. He is on the Board of Directors of the Mosque Foundation, making him a colleague of Mustapha’s. He is also the regional director of the Greater Chicago Area for the Muslim Legal Fund of America, a group that defended the Holy Land Foundation officials that were convicted.

Mohammed Kaiseruddin is the chairman of the Board of Trustees for the IMAN Fund. The organization shares an address with the North American Islamic Trust, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator.

He is also the chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago and vice chairman of the Downtown Islamic Center.

Safaa Zarzour is the former secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America, which is—you guessed it—another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator. He leads the Zakat Foundation and is a board member of the Council of Islamic Schools of North America.

He’s also part of the Islamist involvement in colleges and interfaith programs. He is an adjunct professor at Loyola Law School, where he teaches Education and Islamic Law. He is also an official with the St. Xavier School of Education, Governor State University Foundation and Bernadine Center at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

Lamis Deek is a board member of the New York chapter of CAIR. She supports the Muslim Brotherhood, defends Hamas and wants jihadists to fight in Israel instead of Syria.

Othman Atta is the executive director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee. . He opposes the labeling of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups. He legitimizes violence against Israelis, saying “it’s within the right of an occupied people to resist their occupiers” but condemns attacks on “innocent civilians.”

A 2001 FBI memo documented that some members of the mosque were fundraising for the Holy Land Foundation.

Sheikh Amin Al-Ali is the imam of the Islamic Community Center of Illinois. His mosque’s website has had a page of recommended reading about the “Islamic movement and training” that features the work of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder, the Brotherhood’s current terrorism-supporting spiritual leader and the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, essentially the Brotherhood branch of Pakistan.

Warner is joining at least seven speakers with documented ties to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network and three more with known Muslim Brotherhood allegiances. And this evangelical activist and other interfaith allies of this network are dedicated to their mission of winning Christians to their side.

Islamists never take holidays off from their ideology. And some of their interfaith allies don’t either.

This article was originally published at FrontPageMag.com

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