One would have thought that with all the attention that Ahmad al Akhras and his close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated group CAIR (as alleged by the Federal Government in the ongoing Holyland Foundation [HLF] trial in Houston, Tx.), that the International Academy of Columbus would have steered clear of any potentially controversial figures when creating a new Board of Education.
They didn’t. By replacing Al Akhras with Dr. Hazem Gheith, the operation went from ‘troubling’ to overtly dangerous (when looked at through the long term goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and their ‘grand jihad’ against the West).
On the good side, while CAIR is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF case, the Muslim American Society (MAS) is not. They are however considered the operational arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT),
[f]ounded as the United States chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, the international Islamist, anti-Western organization whose goal is the “introduction of the Islamic Shari`ah as the basis controlling the affairs of state and society.”
According to the Secretary of the State of Ohio, in 2007 Dr. Hazem Gheith incorporated a 501 c3 (not for profit) organization in Columbus, Ohio called the Muslim American Society.
Gheith is not only on the Board at the International Academy, but also served as the president of Masjid Omar ibnal Khattab (Omar Mosque) back when Columbus Al Qaeda ‘associates’ Iyman Faris, Nuradin Abdi, and Christopher Paul were ‘hanging out’ there (and involved in martial arts training — amongst other projects. . . .).
I wonder what the Muslim Brotherhood’s flagship, the MAS is doing wanting to be involved in educating Columbus’ children?
Maybe we can get Abukar Arman or Abukar Osman to check with Mr. Gheith and make sure they are not trying to subvert or influence Columbus’ youthful immigrant population.
Funny coincidence; Arman and Osman associated with another group advocating for Shari`a law dominance.
The Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim American Society: two sides of the same Islamic extremist coin.
It might only be the shores of Lake Erie, but the Muslim Brotherhood has established an invasion beachhead in Toledo. The most recent landing by the international Islamic extremist organization was last weekend when the Muslim American Society (MAS) – the ideological arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the US, identified as such by the Department of Justice in a court filing back in December — held a conference at the University of Toledo. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the Department of Homeland Security recently added Toledo to the list of high-risk terrorism areas.
Esam Omeish (left) and Mahdi Bray (right) — leaders and partners in the Muslim Brotherhood “grand jihad”
Among the speakers were national MAS leaders Esam Omeish and Mahdi Bray, respectively the MAS president and head of their Virginia Commission on Immigration just weeks after his appointment. According to a September 28, 2007 article in the Washington Post, Omeish was forced out when a video surfaced of Omeish preaching holy war against Israel at a December 22, 2000 Jerusalem Day rally in Washington DC, where he said:
“. . . you have learned the way, that you have known that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land . . . and we shall do everything we can to help your cause.”
Here’s the video with Omeish’s remarks (the full speech video is here; all videos courtesy of the Investigative Project):
And yet another video of Omeish shows him congratulating Palestinian terrorists for “giving up their lives for the sake of Allah”:
Upon learning of Omeish’s recorded call for jihad and his endorsement of suicide bombings, Virginia legislators quickly lined up calling for his resignation from the state commission.
Mahdi Bray, on the other hand, had to jet to Toledo from Egypt, where he had appeared earlier in the week at a rally defending jailed members of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood. An article on the Muslim Brotherhood website hails Mahdi Bray as “A Strong Voice for Human Rights”. On May 15, 2004, Bray also bestowed terrorist leader Abdurahman Alamoudi with a MAS Freedom Foundation award in abstentia as he was awaiting trial on terrorism charges (which he would later be convicted of and sentenced to 20 years in prison). Bray called him an “outstanding American Muslim who has courageously stood in defense of freedom and justice,” and vowed, “I don’t care what they say, we’re gonna continue to work with him, and the other detainees, Abdelrahim, and we are gonna continue to fight back. Let our people go! Let our people go!”
Bray’s enthusiasm for Abdurahman Alamoudi goes back many years, in fact. At an October 2000 rally in Lafayette Park across from the White House, Bray can be seen standing beside Alamoudi enthusiastically cheering his friend and compatriot (who again is currently serving 20 years in prison on terrorism charges) as he cheers the HAMAS and Hezbollah terrorist organizations:
As can be expected, the local dead-tree media showed up at the MAS conference and wrote a glowing report, “Muslims’ roots in America branch out”, describing MAS as “a charitable, religious, social, cultural, and educational nonprofit organization.” No mention was made by the Toledo Blade of the recent controversies surrounding Omeish or Bray, or the terrorist connections and Muslim Brotherhood origins of the MAS, which were covered in an extensive investigation of the organization by the Chicago Tribune in 2004. They also could have consulted the meticulously documented MAS dossier prepared by the Investigative Project on Terrorism to provide at least a thin measure of background on the group to their readers.
Had the Toledo Blade bothered to conduct actual research, they also would have discovered that the organization of yet another speaker at the MAS Toledo conference, Dawud Walid, state director for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan affiliate, had been named as un-indicted co-conspirator this past summer in a federal terror financing trial. During that same trial, the DOJ entered into evidence and FBI agent Lara Burns testified concerning documentation proving that MAS had been founded and controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
But in the event that the dead-tree media had asked too many questions, or stumbled accidentally upon any one of these scandalous background and activities of Esam Omeish, Mahdi Bray, or the MAS itself, no doubt Mahdi Bray would have been sent forth to attack the paper and the reporter as “Islamophobic”, and steadfastly deny even the most readily provable claims.
Such was the case following a Dallas Morning News article by terrorism expert Daveed Gartenstein-Ross following the 7/7 London suicide bombings, who noted that MAS had published in their March 2002 edition of their American Muslim magazine a fatwa authorizing suicide bombings, and that their membership study curriculum features a number of Muslim Brotherhood works and well-known jihadist tracts advocating for terrorism and violence.
Mahdi Bray responded by denying both charges, essentially accusing Gartenstein-Ross of lying, as expressed in a follow-up editorial in the same paper. He categorically denied the claims about the suicide bombing fatwa:
Additionally, Mr. Ross asserts that a fatwa (religious opinion) in our March 2002 American Muslim magazine supports suicide bombing. There is absolutely no such fatwa in the March 2002 edition of the American Muslim magazine.
As I pointed out in an article last May in FrontPage Magazine, “Cover-up and Deny”, while MAS had removed the fatwa in question from the magazine’s website (which read exactly how Gartenstein-Ross represented), the fatwa could still be found on various websites not controlled by MAS. Bray’s public denial was intentionally fabricated to conceal his organization’s institutional extremism.
In response to the terrorist-inciting jihadist tracts in the MAS membership curriculum, MAS responded by having all of their chapters remove the curriculum from their respective websites in a deliberate effort to conceal from the public their radical agenda. Once again, unfortunately, MAS could not remove the evidence from the Internet archive, which contains a copy of the curriculum as printed in the April 2001 edition of MAS’s American Muslim magazine. The entire MAS membership reading list can be found in the second-part of my response to Bray’s false denials, “Cover-Up and Deny, Part 2”.
The story of the MAS conference in Toledo earlier this month is a tale of an organization that readily demonstrates its extremist roots when it believes no one is looking, and its officials, who are prepared to flagrantly lie to conceal the true nature of their covert agenda. The plans for the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in North America were also revealed this past summer when a document was made public outlining their goals to wage a “grand jihad” to undermine our systems and values to replace them with a strict fundamentalist version of Islam. The document outlines the true agenda of the MAS and its allied organizations:
The Ikhwan [the Muslim Brotherhood’s name for itself] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
The people of Toledo, however, cannot afford to ignore what’s at work in their community, especially in light of Mahdi Bray’s appearance in town just a few months ago. With three Toledo area residents already facing terrorism charges, can the citizens of the Glass City afford to remain ignorant about the Muslim American Society, Esam Omeish, Mahdi Bray and their intent to wage their “grand jihad” in Northwestern Ohio? As evidenced by the recent MAS conference, the grand jihad is already well underway.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) is an organization that published an official position paper in 1999 claiming that the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks, which killed 241 US military servicemen, by Hezbollah terrorists was not a terrorist attack, but a legitimate military operation (Salam al-Marayati, “A Position Paper on U.S. Counterterrorism Policy.” Page 58. Multi Media Vera International. June 1999). Just hours after the 9/11 attacks, MPAC executive director and co-founder Salam Al-Marayati declared that “we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list”. In 2005, MPAC national director Ahmed Younis reasoned “that Adolf Eichmann was himself a Jew, so in fact Jews killed themselves in the Holocaust.”
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a moderate Muslim leader and retired USN Lt. Cdr, has written about the danger of MPAC and other extremist organizations who claim moderation, but their message is radically different when they’re out of the spotlight.
And just last May, MPAC communications director Edina Lekovic was confronted on MSNBC’s Kudlow & Co. program (link is to YouTube video of the exchange) about her prior role as managing editor of a magazine, Al-Talib, that published a special issue during her tenure dedicated to “The Spirit of Jihad” that praised Osama bin Laden as a “great Mujahid (someone who struggles in Allah’s cause),” instructing Muslim readers to “defend our brother” Osama bin Laden, and “refer to him as a freedom fighter, someone who has forsaken wealth and power to fight in Allah’s cause and speak out against oppressors. We take these stances only to please Allah.” This special issue appeared a year after Al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. While Lekovic initially claimed to have no involvement at all with Al-Talib, claiming that the accusation was based on “sloppy research, she retracted her denial two days later and admitted that she had been briefly involved with the magazine only after documentary evidence was made public proving her editorial position. But her admission was also an obfuscation, because it was found that she was involved with the magazine for several years afterwards she claimed her involvement ceased, and she even listed her editorship on her own official bio.
This coming Saturday evening, an official from MPAC, Haris Tarin, has been invited by the Noor Islamic Cultural Center (NICC) in Dublin/Hilliard to speak on “Election 08 and the American Muslim Narrative”.
Here’s the announcement for Saturday’s event:
Election 08 and the American Muslim Narrative NMCN (Noor Monthly Coomunity Meeting) with Potluck Dinner Saturday, February 23, 2008, 6:00pm – 9:00pm NICC 5001 Wilcox Rd Dublin, OH 614.527.7777
Description
Haris Tarin Director of Community Development, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Haris Tarin has been active in the Muslim community for the past 10 years. He has directed MAS Youth and Community organizations in Southern California and has worked as a youth counselor and facilitator at many camps, conferences and programs. Haris has spoken at various conferences, media outlets and symposiums on the topic of Islam and the role of Muslim American community. Haris has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Europe. Haris was a first responder to the disaster zone in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for Islamic Relief an organization that Haris has volunteered with for the past 10 years.
Of additional note is Tarin’s involvement in the Muslim American Society (MAS), which was named by the Department of Justice this past summer as un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial and a front organization for the international Muslim Brotherhood (in fact, it’s ideological training arm).
MPAC has issued numerous statements denouncing terrorism, yet when President Bush denounced the “Islamic fascists” behind the 7/7 suicide bombings in London, Edina Lekovic said, “When the people we need most in the fight against terrorism, American Muslims, feel alienated by the President’s characterization of these supposed terrorists, that does more damage than good.” Lekovic did not explain how American Muslims would feel alienated by the president’s denouncing the “Islamic fascists” behind the terror attacks. (Read Rachel Neuwirth’s takedown of MPAC’s two faces on terrorism, “With Friends Like These”.)
We’ll have more on MPAC later this week. But be sure to RSVP for Saturday’s potluck dinner (527-7777)!
The Investigative Project on Terrorism reports from the Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror financing trial in Dallas that during testimony yesterday an FBI agent was questioned regarding a Muslim Brotherhood phone directory showing the terror organization’s US leadership (“Muslim Brotherhood Phonebook Confirms that MAS is Brotherhood’s Baby”).
A quick look at the Muslim Brotherhood directory shows that one member of their board of directors at the time (1992) was located right here in Columbus (in the 614 area code):
The office number for Hani Saker/Shaker is an Ohio State University phone number that currently goes to the OSU Department of Orthopedics, but additional information on Saker’s past/present relationship to OSU will need to be the subject of further research.
For those not familiar with the Muslim Brotherhood, its credo is: “Allah is our objective, the Koran is our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our way, and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations”, and it has spawned virtually every single Islamic terror organization in the world today. It’s chief theorist, Sayyid Qutb, articulated the jihadist ideology that undergirds the present global jihad, and the graduates of the Muslim Brotherhood include Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, 1993 WTC bomber Ramzi Youssef, 9/11 leader Mohammad Atta, et al.
The MAS-Columbus affiliate has been one of the more important groups in the national organization. So important, in fact, that Muslim Brotherhood operative Salah Sultan made Central Ohio (specifically, Hilliard) his home. Sultan was a MAS board member from 2000-2004, he worked for the group at the head of their Tarbiyah department in the late 1990s, and was the founder of the Islamic American University in Michigan, where he installed his mentor and Specially Designated Global Terrorist Yousef al-Qaradawi as honorary chairman. So important was this major Muslim Brotherhood figure’s move to Columbus, that MAS-Columbus posted a major annoucement heralding Sultan’s arrival on their website (archived copy).
Another prominent member of the MAS-Columbus group is none other than my good friend, Ahmad Al-Akhras. When he was appointed to the Leadership Columbus Hall of Fame, MAS-Columbus again posted the announcement on their website, crowing that a MAS member had been chosen for such an honor.
Ahmad Al-Akhras, vice chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and close advisor to Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood? Say it isn’t so, Joe!
The day before MAS-Columbus posted that announcement regarding Al-Akhras, it published an article entitled, “Palestine: Is it the Jews’ Promised Land?”. Believe it or not, it concludes that it isn’t. I know you are staggered in disbelief. In conclusion, it states:
Though, seizing the chance of Muslims’ lapsing in weakness and deviating from Allah’s teachings, the Jews have occupied Palestine, they will never remain there forever, for the evil within themselves is beyond description. They will suffer another defeat and sever blow; we hope this will be at the hands of Muslims once they return back to their Lord and be unified again.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Central Ohio? The documents don’t lie, even though its members do.
The office number for Hani Saker/Shaker is an Ohio State University phone number that currently goes to the OSU Department of Orthopedics, but additional information on Saker’s past/present relationship to OSU will need to be the subject of further research.
