Muslim Student Association

Sun, January 20, 2013 UC Irvine’s ‘Islam Awareness Week’

by: 
Arnold Ahlert

The Muslim Student Union (MSU) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) is holding its 2013 “Islam Awareness Week 2013” from January 22-25. Although the program is billed as one “dedicated to encouraging dialogue, dispelling misconceptions, and bringing thought-provoking content to the entire campus community on topics related to Islam,” it is little more than another link in the historical chain of Islamist-influenced events that the MSU has sponsored over several years. The disturbing list of speakers on this year’s roster says volumes about the MSU’s pernicious influence on campus and its Muslim Brotherhood origins.

Speaking about freedom of speech will be Hussam Ayloush. Ayloush is the head of the Southern California chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot and an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) case where five defendants were convicted of financing terrorism. In October 2000, Ayloush was a guest speaker at an event where the president of the UCLA branch of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) led a crowd of demonstrators in chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to the Jews!” in front of the Israeli consulate. Ayloush was soliciting funds for the HLF at the time.

At another Muslim Student Association event in 2006, Ayloush contended that any attempt to shut down Hamas-linked charities that were funding Palestinians was ”an attempt at genocide.” In 2009, angered by FBI attempts to surveil Muslims for possible ties to radicalism, he declared that “our mosques,” “our Koran,” and “our youth who they try to racialize” are “off limits.”  On September 12, 2012, when “the blame video” meme was being used to explain the attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans, Ayloush didn’t wait for any confirmation of the facts before tweeting, ”Extremist Jews produce hateful film, extremist Christians promote it. Extremist Muslims riot and kill. The whole world will suffer.” Moreover, the man who will speak about freedom of speech supported the power grab by Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi, and the country’s new constitution that prohibits “insults” to “religious prophets.”

Speaking on the topic of “Jihad: the Struggle For Peace” is Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, the former president of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), another unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, and an organization, like the MSA, with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2000, Siddiqi claimed that Jerusalem is land “that belongs to Muslims,” further warning Americans that if they “remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.” In June 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about Siddiqi’s views on homosexuality, during which he revealed that “Islam is totally against homosexuality.” And while he doesn’t condone violence against gays and lesbians, he reportedly supported countries whose laws make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.

During a 2006 sermon, Siddiqi added his voice to those Muslims who promote free speech limits concerning Islam. “We do not force others to believe in Prophet Muhammad the way we believe in him; but they should not insult us and humiliate us by abusing his name, his personality and character in public,” he said. As for the so-called jihadist struggle for peace, Siddiqi had a slightly different take on the subject, tape recorded around 17 years ago. He said he could see Jihad’s impact “in the Intifada movement in Palestine,” where “in a few years we will be celebrating with each other the victory of Islam in Palestine…celebrating the coming of the Masjid al-Aqsa under the Islamic rule…and the whole land of Palestine insh’allah and the establishment of the Islamic State throughout that area.”

Zahra Billoo, executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco Bay Area chapter, will be addressing women’s rights in Islam. She is associated with several MSAs through MSA West “an umbrella organization comprised of Muslim Student Associations (MSAs), representing Muslim students and their organizations from campuses across the West Coast,” according to its website. Her communications on Twitter have referred to “apartheid Israel,” claimed American troops “are engaged in terrorism,” and characterized Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) congressional hearings on Muslim extremism as a “witch hunt.” She also claims to “find inspiration” in Sami Al-Arian, convicted of conspiracy for his involvement in funding the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan was barred from entering the United States for six years due to his ties to a charity that supported Hamas.

Billloo is also a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, and a big fan Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government. Two Tweets from June 2012 sum up her feeling towards Israel. “Zionism IS racism,” she posted on June 4.  “[Apartheid] Israel commits war crimes as a hobby,” she posted a week later.

None of this is even remotely surprising. UCI’s MSU, founded in 1992, is notorious for its overt promotion of the Islamist agenda and anti-Semitism over the years. Its radically pro-Palestinian efforts came to prominence during the Second Intifada, when MSU members began wearing “Freedom Fighter” t-shirts on campus, a slogan that changed to “UC Intifada” as the group grew more confident of its place at the university. MSU members walk around campus wearing green armbands to signal solidarity with Hamas, and each year at graduation they don green stoles with the Arabic word shahada (“martyr”) on them–as a tribute to Islamist suicide bombers.

In the early 2000s, a series of anti-Semitic speakers were invited to campus. These included radical Imams Muhammad al-Asi, who in 2001 spoke of a ”psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings,” and Abdel Malik-Ali, who proposed a “one state solution” in 2002, delivered a speech entitled “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda” in 2004, and called Zionism “a mixture, a fusion of the concept of white supremacy and the chosen people” in 2005.

In 2006, the MSU organized “Holocaust in the Holy Land,” a four-day hate fest where Israel was compared to Nazi Germany, and the keynote speaker, Holocaust-denier Norman Finkelstein, called the Jewish State the world’s worst human-rights violator. In 2007, the MSU featured “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” week, followed by “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust” in 2008, and an event in 2009 featuring extreme left-wing UK politician George Galloway, after which an eight month investigation was initiated by the university to determine if the MSU knowingly raised funds for Hamas, a federal felony. University officials eventually relented, despite acknowledging the fund-raising activities, claiming they couldn’t determine whether they were “negligent, reckless or intentional.”

[ad] In 2010, UCI officials could no longer ignore the MSU’s thuggishness when Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren visited the campus to give a speech. A pre-planned and coordinated effort to deride the Ambassador and disrupt his speech resulted in a year-long suspension for the MSU and 50 hours of community service for the offenders. Upon appeal, the suspension was reduced to the fall quarter of 2010, but the community service was upped to 100 hours.

In 2011, the students involved were also convicted by an Orange County jury for their actions. DA Tony Rackauckas characterized the student’s behavior as “thuggery.” ”In a civilized society, we cannot allow lawful assemblies to be shut down by a small group of people using the heckler’s veto,” he contended.

What has happened at UCI is not anomalous. The national Muslim Students Association (MSA) was established in 1963, and now boasts more than 600 chapters in the United States and Canada. Muslim Brotherhood documents discovered through the Holy Land Foundation trial list the MSA as one of the Brotherhood’s “organizations and the organizations of our friends.” Despite their self-professed innocence, terrorism expert Patrick Poole, who has investigated them, explains who they are. ”The Muslim Students Association has been a virtual terror factory,” said Poole. “Time after time after time again, we see these terrorists — and not just fringe members: these are MSA leaders, MSA presidents, MSA national presidents–who’ve been implicated, charged and convicted in terrorist plots.” The NYPD has also referred to them as an “incubator” for Islamic radicalism.

FBI Special Agent John Guandolo reiterates the genesis of the problem: the MSA’s roots can be traced to the Muslim Brotherhood. ”The MSA serves as a recruitment tool to bring Muslims into the Brotherhood,” he said. “Which was its original purpose: to evaluate Muslims and to bring them into the Brotherhood and to recruit non-Muslims into Islam as a dawa entity, giving them the call to Islam.” He goes further. ”Their goal, both from their senior leaders, presidents of MSA’s around the country, national leadership, is to implement Islamic government here in the United States,” he explained. “And they say that.”

The overlooked threat of the MSA is analogous to the threat of Islamist influence in the federal government, which Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been on the forefront of exposing — and vindicated in doing so. That she is not being taken seriously, and being slandered, is unsurprising. The Obama administration’s proposed nominees for high-level positions relating to such matters include Secretary of State John Kerry, who referred to Syrian butcher Bashar Assad as a “reformer,” CIA director John Brennan, a serial apologist for violent jihad, and Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, whose disdain for Israel is matched only by his indifference to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and his desire to conduct negotiations with designated terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Bachmann has also courageously raised the alarm about Hillary Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, due to her abundant and well-documented connections to the Brotherhood and its affiliate organizations. Leftist criticism directed at Bachmann has been relentless, but the truth is on her side, just as it is for those drawing attention to the MSA.

Such self-inflicted myopia is underscored by Guandolo, who revealed that one former MSA member was a man once held in high esteem by the U.S. government. So much so, that this former leader of the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, and Muslim Chaplain at George Washington University, was invited to lunch at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11, as part of the government’s Muslim outreach program. That former MSA member was Anwar Al-Awlaki, the terrorist recruiter who was killed by a drone strike in 2011. If America’s college campuses are susceptible to would-be Islamists, how can it be impossible to believe the federal government remains immune to infiltration?

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist. He may be reached at [email protected]

This article appeared originally on FrontPageMag.com

Wed, November 21, 2012 CAIR Gives Award to Anti-American Islamist

by: 
Ryan Mauro

The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presented Hatem Bazian, chairman of American Muslims for Palestine, with an “Empowering American Muslims” Award on November 17. The group’s honoring of an Islamist that spews anti-American rhetoric is in line with the worldview espoused by its executive director, Zahra Billoo, especially since Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense against Hamas started.

In 2004, Bazian seemed to endorse the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and violence in Israel by praising the “uprising in Iraq” and “intifada in Palestine.” In the same speech, he urged Muslim-Americans to follow in their footsteps by launching an intifada in the U.S. to “change fundamentally the political dynamics here.” Aware of the incendiary nature of his remarks, he eerily said, “They’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical—well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet.”

According to Kashmir Media Service News, Bazian said in June, “The United States wants India to balance China, because if there is a conflict with China, we always like that the darker people fight our war and the more these people die is better for the officers because racism can be manifested across many sectors.”

He also accused the U.S. government of persecuting the Muslim-American community. He said, “In the post 9/11 era there is [a] strategic and systematic process of targeting the Muslim leadership of organizational structures by eliminating the existing leadership that has developed over the last 40 years…”

A board member of Bazian’s organization, Osama Abu Irshaid, defends Hamas’s rocket fire into Israel as “legitimate resistance.” He used to be the editor of a publication by the Islamic Association for Palestine, a Muslim Brotherhood front that advocated for Hamas when it was in existence.

[ad] As we reported, AMP’s conference this month features over a dozen Islamist speakers, most of which are tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and have spoken in support of Hamas. Its conference logo shows the state of Palestine replacing Israel.

In addition to leading American Muslims for Palestine, Bazian is a co-founder of Zaytuna College, America’s first Muslim college. Another co-founder is Imam Zaid Shakir, a cleric whose extremism RadicalIslam.org has thoroughly documented.

The award was given at CAIR-SFBA’s 18th annual banquet, which also featured Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, director of outreach for the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque. A 2002 Customs and Border Protection report said the mosque was “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.” In 2001, Abdul-Malik endorsed attacks on Israeli infrastructure.

The honoring of Bazian is predictable given the activism of CAIR-SFBA’s Executive Director, Zahra Billoo. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, she was an adviser to the Muslim Students Association West from 2005 to August 2010. The Muslim Students Association was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood. During her time at MSA West, outrageous extremism was preached by speakers it booked.

In February 2011, CAIR-SFBA’s website featured a poster for an event that said, “Build a Wall of Resistance; Don’t Talk to the FBI.” The graphics on the poster portrayed the FBI in dark ways. The poster was removed after it got negative attention.

The Israeli operation against Hamas prompted a furious series of tweets by Billoo, including one on November 21 that explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel when she  retweeted:

"From the river to the sea, Palestine WILL be free [referring to the entire width of Israel which spans from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea]."

November 20, she compared Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel to fighting off a rapist:

“#LiesImTiredofHearing: Apartheid Israel is only defending itself. That is as true as a rapist who invades your home may defend himself.”

Here are some more:

“#LiesImTiredofHearing: Zionism is not racism. It is.”

“#LiesImTiredofHearing: Apartheid Israel takes measures to avoid killing civilians.”

On November 20, she retweeted a message that read:

“So Israel has ‘unleashed the gates of hell’ on #Gaza, so let the gates of hell be unleashed on Israel on the Day of Judgement. #Pray4Gaza”

The phrase “gates of hell” is a quote from Hamas after the operation began.

On November 15, she retweeted from the same person the following:

“Israel ‘defending’ itself is analogous to Nazi Germany defending itself from Jewish uprisings.”

In Billoo’s world, Hamas’s attacks on Israel are just as legitimate as “Jewish uprisings” were against Nazi Germany. That’s the mindset that’s behind the misleading press releases by groups like CAIR that are demanding U.S. action against Israel for trying to stop rockets from falling on its civilians and condemning the Senate for its "obsession with Israel's unequivical [sic] 'right to self-defense.' "

Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security Analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

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