Muslim Americans for Obama running illegal get out the vote drives at swingstate mosques this week — including Noor Center

UPDATE: For those who has asked about lawful voter registration drives at religious institutions, that is only legal IF the organization is non-partisan. “Muslim Americans for Obama”, the sponsor of these events, is unquestionably a partisan organization, and thus, any participation by these mosques is illegal and violates their tax exempt status. Additionally, since the Muslim Americans for Obama announcement says that these voter registration drives are intended to “get out the vote for Sen. Obama”, they are considered partisan (i.e. intended to benefit a specific candidate) under the law and illegal on that basis as well — in addition to the fact that these events are sponsored by a partisan organization.

UPDATE #2: In just the past few hours, Muslim Americans for Obama has added a “clarification” to their announcement with this howler:

Muslim Americans for Obama has made clear to all its volunteers that all voter registration activity is strictly non-partisan (no advocacy on behalf of any candidate or party, whether written or verbal).

The simple fact that this is “Muslim Americans for Obama” makes this partisan political activity, their “clarification” notwithstanding. No amount of instructions to their Muslim Americans for Obama volunteers can change that fact.

They also claim that they are only doing activities on “adjoining property”, but that is belied by the fact that event postings on their own Muslim Americans for Obama website indicate that some of the voter registration/get out the vote booths are located inside the mosque. How exactly is that not sponsorship by the mosque? Can't keep their lies straight, it seems. (And, yes, we have saved screen shots of the evidence before they pull it down. Hello, IRS?)

Update #3: A quick aside, I would point out that one of the mosques targeted by Muslim Americans for Obama, Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, VA, is the mosque that hosted two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Mihdhar. Their former imam, Anwar al-Aulaqi, is wanted by the FBI for questioning about his role in helping these two terrorists while he was serving mosques in both San Diego and Northern VA. Read this Washington Post article, “Imam from VA mosque now thought to have aided Al-Qaeda” for more background on al-Aulaqi (who now lives in Yemen), and this previous COAT post discussing al-Aulaqi’s Central Ohio ties.

Original post: The group, Muslim Americans for Obama, has announced a series of “get out the vote” events at mosques in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Ohio this week during Ramadan celebrations. As can be seen in the announcement reprinted below, the organization admits these are “get out the vote” events masquerading as “voter registration”:

Muslim Americans for Obama will be working to get out the vote for Sen. Obama, and they need help registering voters! Volunteers need not be Muslim, though appropriate attire is advised (no sleeveless tops; long pants and ankle-length skirts recommended).

These get out the vote events, of course, flagrantly violate the tax exempt status of these participating mosques, including our own local Noor Islamic Cultural Center, which are strictly prohibited from supporting or endorsing any kind of partisan political activity — even when they claim it is only “voter registration”. In fact, it was these kinds of activities that eventually sunk the Christian Coalition's tax exempt status with the IRS.

Here's the entire announcement posted on Sunday at the Asian-Americans for Obama 08 website (no doubt it will disappear from there shortly), as well as the Muslim Americans for Obama website:

September 28th, 2008

National Muslim Voter Registration Day 2008 on 9/29-10/1
Posted by Eugenia Beh

Muslim Americans for Obama will be working to get out the vote for Sen. Obama, and they need help registering voters! Volunteers need not be Muslim, though appropriate attire is advised (no sleeveless tops; long pants and ankle-length skirts recommended).

—–

National Muslim Voter Registration Day 2008
EID VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVES
Volunteer Opportunities

MICHIGAN

Multiple volunteer opportunities are available on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning (Sep 30/Oct 1) in the greater Detroit area. Contact Abdelnasser at arashid@fas.harvard.edu

PENNSYLVANIA

1. Islamic Society of Chester County
1001 Pottstown Pike, West, PA 19380
2 VOLUNTEERS NEEDED - 7:30AM
(will decide Mon evening if celebrating on Tues or Wed)
Contact: salimub@yahoo.com

2. North Penn Mosque
600 Maple Avenue, Lansdale, PA 19446
Contact: Umar Abdur-Rahman
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

3. Coatesville Masjid
723 Merchant Street, Coatesville, PA
1 VOLUNTEER NEEDED - 7:30 AM on Wednesday
Contact: mohammedjamaluddin@yahoo.com

4. Devon Masjid
EID Prayers held at Villanova at the following address:
1860 Montgomery Ave. Villanova, PA 19085
2 VOLUNTEERS NEEDED - 7:30 AM on Wednesday
Contact: alhuda@comcast.net
and Br Iqbal Zaman - iqbal_zaman@yahoo.com

5. Foundation for Islamic Education
1860 Montgomery Ave, Villanova, PA
Eid is on Wed - Salah is at 8 AM
Contact: Mahmood Siddique
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

6. Masjid Al- Furqan
7252 Roosevelt Blvd, Philadelphia, PA,
Eid is on Wed - salah is at 8 AM
Contact: Mahmood Siddique
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

NEW YORK

1. Jamaica Muslim Center
85-37 168th Street, Jamaica, NY 11432
Eid Jamaats- 8, 9 and 10 am.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Contact: shabbir.chaudhury@gmail.com

2. Islamic Center of Long Island (ICLI)
835 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, NY 11590
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Contact: sajjadi@yahoo.com

3. Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center
89-89 Van Wyck Expressway, Jamaica, NY 11435
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Contact: kiran.siddiqi@gmail.com

4. Islamic Center of Rochester
727 Westfall Road, Rochester, NY 14620
Contact: Umaira Khan
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

5. 96th Street Mosque
Islamic Cultural Center of New York
1711 3rd Avenue, New York, NY 10029-7303
Contact: fatimashraf@gmail.com
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

NEW JERSEY

1. Masjid Al-Amman - Prayer at Brookdale Community College
Middletown, New Jersey
Contact: engy.abdelkader@gmail.com
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

2. Masjid-Al-Islah
320 Fabry Terrace, Teaneck, NJ 07666
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

3. Islamic Education Center of Bergen County
78 Trinity Place, Hackensack, NJ 07601
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Contact: hesham@technochief.com

4. Islamic Center of South Jersey
612 Garfield Avenue, Palmyra, NJ 08065
Contact: Nasreen Badat
No additional volunteers needed at this time.

5. Great Adventures Muslim Family Day
537 Jackson Mills Road, Jackson, NJ
OCT 1ST & 2ND (shifts available - 10AM -9PM)
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED & FREE ADMISSION PASSES AVAILABLE
Contact: engy.abdelkader@gmail.com

VIRGINIA

1. Dar Al Hijrah’s Eid Prayers
Date: Wednesday, October 1
Location: Marriot Fairview Park, 3111 Fairview Park, Falls Church, VA 22042
Prayer Times: 8:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., and 12 noon.
Please meet at the prayer site, outside the main prayer hall
(we will have signs) starting at 8 a.m.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Contact person: Lubna Alam, 314-369-1981, lubnalam@gmail.com

2. ADAMS Center Eid Prayers in Fairfax
Date: Wednesday, October 1
Location: Hilton Garden Inn, 3950 Fair Ridge Dr. Fairfax, Va. 22033
Prayer Times: 7.30 8:30, 9:45, 11:00 a.m., 12:15 p.m.
Please meet at the prayer site, outside the main prayer hall
(we will have signs) starting at 7:30 a.m.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Contact person: Zeenat Iqbal, 703-798-4205, zeenat.iqbal@gmail.com

3. ADAMS Center Lansdowne prayer
Date: Wednesday, Oct 1
Location: National Conference Center, Sports Center (formerly
Xerox Center) - Lansdowne, VA (Btwn Sterling and Leesburg) Off
of Rt 7 and Belmont Ridge Rd.
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Contact person: Saba Baig Salaam - saba_baig@yahoo.com

4. Imam Ali Center Eid Prayers
Date: Wednesday, October 1
7900 Backlick Rd Springfield, VA 22150 (703) 455-5599
Prayer Times: 8:30 a.m
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Please meet directly at the mosque at 8am to volunteer
Contact person: Zahir Janmohamed; (202) 368 8914; zahirj@gmail.com

5. Idara-e-Jafaria Eid Prayers in Burtonsville, Maryland
Date: Wednesday, October 1
3140 Spencerville Road, Burtonsville, MD 20866
Prayer Times: 8:30am
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Please meet directly at the mosque at 8am
Contact person: Khizer Husain, (202) 276 6080, khizer101@yahoo.com

OHIO

1. Noor Islamic Cultural Center
5001 Wilcox Road, Dublin, Ohio 43016
8:30AM to 11:30AM
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
10-15 volunteers needed for each of three sites
Contact: engy.abdelkader@gmail.com

2. Islamic Society of Greater Youngstown
535 Harmon Avenue, Youngstown, OH 44502
OCT. 3RD Friday afternoon prayer - 12 noon
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!
Contact: Zeina Saymeh, zsaymeh@hotmail.com

Illegal electioneering by Obama campaign at ISNA convention?

UPDATE (9/5/08): Dave Gaubatz is reporting that ISNA made an illegal official endorsement of Barack Hussein Obama at last week's convention and has a video recording of such. We will link to it as soon as it is online. [HT: Northeast Intelligence Network]

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is a 501c3 tax exempt organization. As is true for any 501c3 entity, especially a religious organization, ISNA is prohibited from hosting or supporting any partisan political activity. And yet at their national convention here in Columbus last week, ISNA hosted an Obama campaign booth in their exhibitors’ area as this picture taken on Friday night shows:


[PS — Yes, you might think that is actually Barack Obama at the booth, but it is just a life-sized cardboard cutout. As thin and vapid as Obama’s policies and experience are, it is an easy mistake to make.]

You might recall that in January 2006, a local organization of liberal religious figures in Central Ohio demanded that the IRS investigate alleged political activity at two area churches — World Harvest Church in Columbus and Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster.

A Columbus Dispatch article at the time, “Churches Could Face IRS Probe”, quoted one of these “pastors”:

“For me, it’s church and state, not church in state and I really feel there are some churches in central Ohio crossing that line,” said Eric Williams, senior pastor of the [North Congregational United Church of Christ]. “The law allows church involvement in issues. This goes beyond issue-involvement to partisan politics and we’re simply asking the IRS to uphold the law.”

Did ISNA and the Obama campaign violate tax and election laws in this instance? That is clearly an issue for the IRS and the FEC to decide. So based on their previous outrage at alleged partisan political activity by religious organizations, will Eric Williams and his friends now join Central Ohioans Against Terrorism in demanding that the IRS investigate whether the Islamic Society of North America violated their tax-exempt status by hosting the Obama campaign?

Not holding my breath.

Confessed Al-Qaeda terrorist still registered to vote in Ohio — and may be able to legally cast an absentee ballot!!

“That’s not the Christopher Paul I know!”
In 2004, the Columbus Dispatch reported just days before the Bush/Kerry presidential election that two local Al-Qaeda terrorists, Iyman Faris and Nuradin Abdi, were still registered to vote in the state of Ohio.

Following that revelation, Democrats and moonbats nationwide pointed to this as conclusive proof that then-Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican, and his office were hopelessly corrupt and trying to rig the election for George W. Bush.

What will those same Democrats and moonbats have to say now that one of Faris and Abdi’s partners in terror, Christopher Paul, who pled guilty this past June to conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction against targets in the Europe and the US, is still registered to vote? (See the Statement of Facts Paul agreed to in the case.)

Will the fact that the present Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, is a Democrat now temper their outrage?

And will the fact that Christopher Paul has yet to be sentenced mean that he may still legally get to pull the lever (or more likely, submit his absentee ballot) for his man, Barack Hussein Obama, for President, and his lady, Mary Jo Kilroy, for Congress?

(Psst — you might also want to check out our previous post, “Toledo Terrorist Fundraisers 4 Obama”)

A quick check with the Franklin County Board of Elections finds that Paul is still registered to vote as of today (click below to enlarge screen capture or go directly to Paul’s registration on the BOE website).


A search of the Ohio Secretary of State website also shows Paul still registered to vote.


I spoke with Ben Piscitelli at the Franklin County Board of Elections this afternoon and asked about the process of removing felons from the voter rolls. Piscitelli responded:

In such instances, a court will notify us of a felony conviction about one month after sentencing. We will remove the name of the voter in question immediately thereafter.

But no sentencing date has been announced yet for Christopher Paul, and because of the time it takes to compile the sentencing report it is unlikely that such will occur before the November 4th election. Unless the court suddenly sentences Paul in the next few weeks, it appears he will be legally eligible to vote in the upcoming election by absentee ballot (whether he will, of course, is unknown).

As noted above, the problem of having some of our local Al-Qaeda terrorists on the voting roles is nothing new for the State of Ohio. In late October 2004, Jon Craig of the Dispatch reported:

A dirty tale of duplications, even terrorists, on voter lists

Ohio’s voter-registration rolls are dirty, containing more than 122,000 apparent duplicates as well as the names of people who moved out of state in the 1990s, a local murder victim and even a pair of accused terrorists.

Among supposedly eligible voters in Franklin County are suspected terrorists arrested for alleged plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and a local shopping mall. As an imprisoned felon, one is ineligible to vote. The other, from Somalia, is not a U.S. citizen and thus broke state and federal laws when he registered in 1999, officials said. . .

“That’s really disturbing,” said Ohio State University law professor Terri Enns. “There certainly are potential problems, but there are a lot of (Election Day) safeguards to keep it from swaying the election.”

Accused terrorists Nuradin Abdi, 32, and Iyman Faris, 35, are registered to vote in Ohio. An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in June said Somali immigrant Abdi and admitted al-Qaida member Faris plotted with a third Columbus man to attack a mall.

Fred Alverson, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, said Abdi’s false registration may violate state and federal law. In fact, the application he signed — swearing he is a U.S. citizen — notes that election falsification is punishable by up to six months in prison, a fine of $1,000 or both.

Faris, a Columbus truck driver, is serving a 20-year sentence after admitting that he scouted the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and other potential targets for al-Qaida as recently as March 2003. As an incarcerated felon, he will not be allowed to vote. Faris, from Kashmir, became a naturalized citizen in 1999. (“Long Gone But Still Registered”, Columbus Dispatch, October 24, 2004)

Faris and Abdi were not eligible to vote in the 2004 election because Faris had already been sentenced (though was still on the rolls); and even though Abdi had only been indicted at that time, he had falsely claimed to be a US citizen when he registered and thus was ineligible (though he too was on the voter rolls). But in Christopher Paul’s case, he’s a natural born US citizen; and even though he has admitted his role in the local Al-Qaeda cell (of which only three members have been charged and at least 10 others are known to have been involved), since he hasn’t been sentenced he may not lose his voting rights until after the election.

Some of our local Islamic leaders will have no problem with Christopher Paul voting since they have publicly declared him innocent notwithstanding his guilty plea. But since Obama is desperate for every vote in the State of Ohio, and Mary Jo Kilroy lost by just over 1,000 votes in 2006, how quickly do you think that Secretary Brunner and fellow Ohio Democrats will move to address this issue? In the absence of sentencing by the court he may be legally eligible to vote in the upcoming election. Will Obama or Kilroy supporters care?

Mary Jo Kilroy locks up Ohio 15th female HAMAS vote

HAMAS ladies ♥ Mary Jo Kilroy!
Yesterday we saw Ahmad Al-Akhras, national vice chairman of the HAMAS front organization Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), stepped up to help his pal Mary Jo Kilroy’s congressional campaign after not many questions were asked at the Franklin County Commission concerning Al-Akhras business partner Abukar Arman after I disclosed that he was illegally serving on the Franklin County Criminal Justice Planning Board, which oversees area homeland security.

But apparently the gratitude for Kilroy’s efforts didn’t end with Al-Akhras. In fact, CAIR-Ohio “president” Asma Mobin-Uddin tossed a $250 donation to Kilroy’s congressional campaign last August at the same time as her ameer, Ahmad Al-Akhras. Again, these donations from CAIR officials occurred AFTER federal prosecutors had identified CAIR as an integral part of the HAMAS terrorist support infrastructure last year.

Additionally, HAMAS honey Mobin-Uddin previously gave $250 in 2006 for Kilroy’s first failed congressional run.

Looks like Mary Jo Kilroy has locked up not only the male, but the female HAMAS vote in the Ohio 15th!

HAMAS ♥ Mary Jo Kilroy

Mary Jo Kilroy and friends
UPDATE: Check out our new post on the topic, "Mary Jo Kilroy locks up the Ohio 15th female HAMAS vote".

It hardly seems like a year since Mary Jo Kilroy and her employees were helping Kilroy comrade and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) national vice chairman Ahmad Al-Akhras stonewall and cover-up the illegal appointment of Al-Akhras business partner Abukar Arman by the Franklin County Board of Commissioners (of which Kilroy is president) to the Franklin County Criminal Justice Planning Board, which oversees area homeland security. Kilroy claimed to have no involvement in Arman’s appointment (more on that later), which was illegal by virtue of the fact that he is not a US citizen and thereby barred from serving according to Ohio law. (Yes, they had a foreign national who had openly praised HAMAS helping overseeing our homeland security, but don’t worry — the Columbus Dispatch said it was all OK, because he wasn’t a terrorist!)

But in the weeks that followed the Arman county commission kerfuffle, Ahmad Al-Akhras saw fit to reward Mary Jo Kilroy’s never-ending congressional campaign for the Ohio 15th Congressional District with two donations totaling $750. By the end of 2007, Al-Akhras had fully doled out $1000 to Kilroy’s campaign — with the last contribution coming less than a month before Al-Akhras fled the country to take a job with the government of Dubai. FEC reports showing Al-Akhras’ 2007 contributions to Kilroy are below.

Mary Jo Kilroy accepted these donations AFTER CAIR — the very same organization that Al-Akhras heads — had been named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism finance trial. And as the Investigative Project has noted, CAIR has been identified as one of the key components of the HAMAS terrorist support infrastructure in the US. Not by me. By federal prosecutors.

In fact, around the time of Al-Akhras’ last contribution to Mary Jo Kilroy’s campaign, the Department of Justice identified CAIR as a longtime terrorist support operation in a legal brief filed in another terrorism-related case (for more see, “For the Record: Government Reminds Court of CAIR/MAS Ties to Terrorists”).

Here is what the DOJ said about Mary Jo Kilroy’s friends at CAIR:

Moreover, since its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists. (DOJ Brief No. 07-4778, USA v. Benkahla, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, p. 58)

Oh, I just happen to have an image of that statement taken from the DOJ brief:



And it was more than a decade ago that Steve Pomerantz, former FBI chief of counterterrorism, made the very same assessment about CAIR’s ties to international terrorism:

Any objective assessment of the material presented above leads to the conclusion that CAIR, its leaders, and its activities, effectively give aid to international terrorist groups. Unfortunately, CAIR is but one of a new generation of new groups in the United States that hide under a veneer of “civil rights” or “academic” status but in fact are tethered to a platform that support terrorism. The degree to which these groups are able to deceive the American public and intimidate writers and counter-terrorist officials will be a significant ingredient in whether this country will be rendered more vulnerable to terrorism in future years. (“Counterterrorism in a Free Society,” The Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International 5:1, Spring 1998, p. 26)

And what, you may ask, is Abukar Arman up to these days now that he’s not helping oversee Franklin County homeland security? That’s right. He’s now the new president of CAIR-Columbus.

Exit question: Are HAMAS, CAIR, and Ahmad Al-Akhras the kinds of friends that Democratic congressional candidate Mary Jo Kilroy wants to be associated with?

Two separate contributions by Ahmad Al-Akhras to Kilroy for Congress (8/29/07, 9/29/07) for $750 [click to enlarge; original]


Additional $250 contribution (12/03/07) by Ahmad Al-Akhras to Kilroy for Congress [click to enlarge; original]

Terrorist Fundraisers 4 Obama

They all believe in change . . .
Two years ago, Hatem El-Hady was the chairman of the Toledo, Ohio-based Islamic charity, Kindhearts, which was closed by the US government in February 2006 for terrorist fundraising and all its assets frozen. Today, El-Hady has redirected his fundraising efforts for his newest cause — Barack Obama for President.

El-Hady has his own dedicated page on Barack Obama’s official website, chronicling his fundraising on behalf of the Democratic Party presidential candidate (his Obama profile established on February 19, 2008 — two years to the day after Kindhearts was raided by the feds). Not only that, but he has none other than Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, listed as one of his friends, one of her 224 listed friends.


But his leadership of Kindhearts is not the only thing that has brought him scrutiny by federal law enforcement officials. Last summer, El-Hady was questioned by the FBI concerning his knowledge of possible conspirators in a UK-based terror plot.

Hatem El-Hady’s interest in “change” is understandable. Following the closure of Kindhearts, he said in response to the government’s closure of his organization:

“It’s dirty politics,” said Dr. Hatem Elhady, chairman of the board of KindHearts, which raised $5.1 million in 2004. “They do not like the way things are going in Palestine. They do not like the election results. But that is not our problem. Our problem is providing aid to people in desperate need of help.”

The Department of Justice had a very different version of events. According to the DOJ, Kindhearts assumed the role of lead terrorist fundraising in the US after the government had closed other such Islamic “charities”:

“KindHearts is the progeny of Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, which attempted to mask their support for terrorism behind the façade of charitable giving,” said Stuart Levey, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

Not only was Kindhearts engaged in providing funds for HAMAS in Lebanon and the West Bank, it had hired as a fundraising specialist the man identified as the designated HAMAS bag man in the US, Mohammed El-Mezain.

And as investigative reporter Joe Kaufman revealed, “The Black Hearts of Kindhearts”, a number of other Kindhearts officials were tied to terrorist fundraising and support:

• KindHearts’ Director of Domestic Programs, Khalifah Ramadan. Ramadan was a training and evaluation consultant for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), two large Muslim organizations based in the United States that have links to overseas terror groups.
• KindHearts’ Representative, Omar Shahin. Shahin was an Imam for the Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), the former home of numerous terror operatives, including Wael Jelaidan, who later helped found Al-Qaeda.
• KindHearts’ Representative, Wagdy Ghuneim. Ghuneim, an Egyptian cleric, has been featured in KindHearts fundraising dinners for 2002, 2003, and 2004. During a rally at Brooklyn College, in May of 1998, Ghuneim attempted to persuade the crowd to support violent jihad and labeled Jews as “descendants of the apes.”
• KindHearts’ Representative, Hatem Bazian. Bazian is an Islamic Studies instructor and a member of the faculty of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkley. In April of 2004, during a San Francisco anti-war rally, Bazian, a native Palestinian, called for an “intifada” against the United States. This was just two months prior to Bazian being featured in a KindHearts Fundraising Dinner, entitled ‘Palestinians in agony!’
• KindHearts’ Manager in Lebanon, Haytham Maghawri (a.k.a. Haytham Fawri). Maghawri, the past Social Services Director for HLF, according to the Treasury Department, “collected [KindHearts] funds and sent them to Hamas and other Salafi groups.” [One of the recipients of KindHearts funding was Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) Usama Hamdan, a leader of Hamas in Lebanon.]

And two months before Kindhearts closure by the US government, Beila Rabinowitz had revealed that the South Asia Division Coordinator for Kindhearts, Zulfiqar Ali Shah, had known ties to al-Qaeda, even conducting a 10-day tour with officials for the Tablighi Jamaat organization, which the New York Times had described as “a springboard for militancy” and a “recruitment” center for Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama has promised change. And as indicated by the public support that his candidacy has received by accused terrorist fundraiser Hatem El-Hady, Obama’s version of change that terrorists and their US supporters can believe in.

Does Obama campaign email indicate illegal electioneering in Ohio mosques?

In 2006, a group of local Democratic Party-aligned clergy sent a letter to IRS Commissioner demanding that World Harvest Church in Columbus be investigated for violating its tax exempt status because of their close ties to then-GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell. Thirty-one Columbus-area ministers and rabbis signed the letter to the IRS, making national news. Their attorney said that World Harvest had stepped so far over the line that it could be characterized as, “Here’s the handbook from the IRS on what to do and not do. They’ve done the ‘not do’ stuff right out of the book.”

These clerics later organized themselves in a campaign they called “We Believe” to promote the whole slate of predictable liberal causes (the Christian clerics apparently unconcerned about Jesus’ repeated condemnations of hypocrisy). The usual suspects (Americans United for Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way, Huffington Post, et al) all jumped on board to decry this supposed destruction of the wall of separation.

Now it is 2008, and after seven years out of the White House, Democrats are pulling out all the stops. Next week’s primary elections here in Ohio are make or break for Hillary Clinton, and a win in Ohio for Obama would probably secure his nomination. To say that this primary is important for both candidates would be an understatement.

But there are already indications that both campaigns may be skirting campaign and tax laws in their efforts to win the Buckeye State. The Columbus Dispatch reported just a few weeks ago how both the Hillary and Obama camps are targeting pastors in the area seeking their endorsements (yes, the same thing that World Harvest pastor Rod Parsley and his church were accused of) in anticipation of the Ohio primary next Tuesday. So it’s going to be interesting to see if the “We Believe” group of local ministers and rabbis who previously protested the supposed violation of church and state, and publicly called Rod Parsley and World Harvest “theocrats” and “Christocrats” for their alleged illegal political activity, will respond with the same outrage that Barack Obama’s camp is coordinating a massive primary election push this coming Friday at Columbus-area mosques.

An email is circulating from an Obama campaign official calling for volunteers to spread out to all of the area mosques in Central Ohio for afternoon prayers to bring in the vote for Barack Hussein Obama (thanks to my friend ***** who forwarded me the email):

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:37:04 -0500
From: ahmad.sean.khan81@gmail.com
To: [removed]
Subject: This is Ahmad S. Khan (Volunteering for Barack Obama)

Assalam Alaik-kum,

Thanks so much for volunteering to help Senator Barack Obama turn out the Muslim vote inshalla. On Friday March 29th we want to have Muslim volunteers pray at the Mosques during Juma at around 12:45. After prayer when people are socializing outside we want to have the volunteer pass out Obama civil rights literature, faith based literature, general literature, stickers and bumper stickers. In addition we want the volunteers to emphasize that the election is the following Tuesday and encourage them to vote. That way we can reach every Muslim that went to Mosque the Friday before the election inshalla. Attached is a list of every Mosque in Columbus, if we have missed one please let me know ASAP. In addition if there is a particular Mosque you would prefer to attend Juma at and volunteer let me know.

To accomplish this we need to have a training/meeting and have volunteers pick up the necessary materials before volunteers go to the Mosques. We will be having a training/meeting at 9:30 A.M on March 29th at the Obama campus office 2240 N. High Street Columbus Ohio 43201. I will be providing everyone with more information as we get closer to Friday. Please feel free to contact me through email, or call me at 352-874-1195. If my phone is not on please leave me a voice mail with you number and I will get back to you right away. Also please feel free to pass this on to any brothers or sisters who support Senator Obama and would not mind volunteering for just half a day. Thanks again for everything.

Sincerely
Ahmad S. Khan

[It’s not entirely clear if Khan meant to say February 29th — this Friday — instead of March 29th, or if they are planning something after the primary. My read based on follow-up emails is that he got the date wrong and this is planning a pre-primary push. I could be entirely wrong on that, but regardless of whether it is Feb. 29 or March 29, it doesn’t change the potential illegality of targeting tax exempt institutions.]

Now, there’s no way for the Obama campaign to distance themselves from this potentially illegal effort as the scheduled meeting will be taking place in the Obama OSU campus headquarters. While the mosques themselves might have plausible deniability (we didn’t know they were going to show up), it appears that the Obama campaign may be involved in illegal electioneering by deliberately targeting tax exempt institutions.

While that’s for the IRS to decide, it remains to be seen if the “We Believe” clergy are as enthusiastic in their denunciations and protests as they were in 2006. My money will be on “no”.