Cleveland’s New Terror Imam

Sayed Abouabdalla (right), the new imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland and current Islamic American University instructor, with IAU chairman and HAMAS spiritual leader (and designated terrorist), Yousef Al-Qaradawi (left)
In my Pajamas Media article yesterday, “Cleveland’s New Terror Imam”, I introduce the new imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Sayed Abouabdalla, the third such successor since Fawaz Damra was deported in January 2007 after being convicted of lying about his association with three terrorist groups on his US citizenship application. Abouabdalla’s most immediate predecessor was Ahmad Alzaree, who resigned his position three days before he was scheduled to start (an issue I recount in my article). Abouabdalla’s hiring fills a long leadership vacuum for Ohio’s largest Islamic mosque.

But considering the kid glove treatment that Abouabdalla has thus far received from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I discuss some of his troubling connections to international Islamic terrorism that they have quite clearly missed:

Since Damra’s forced departure, two potential successors have rapidly come and gone. The first intended successor, Mohamad Altabaa, who was hired from another area mosque, was quickly given the heave-ho for being too moderate. Now, however, the Cleveland mosque has settled on a permanent replacement, Egyptian cleric Sayed Ahmed Abouabdalla, who seems qualified to pick up where Damra left off.

Just weeks into his new position, Abouabdalla is already being hailed as a great interfaith leader by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, even though by its own admission Abouabdalla barely speaks English (a translator was needed for his interview with Plain Dealer reporter David Briggs) and has a short track record as a religious leader in the U.S. (his most recent position was as part-time imam for the Islamic Cultural Institute in St. Clair Shores, Michigan).

But considering what happened with Abouabdalla’s most immediate predecessor, Ahmad Alzaree, last October (more on that episode below) you might think that the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the rest of the media would be more cautious, or at least more diligent in researching the background of its newfound interfaith paragon, who, it should be noted, is replacing its old interfaith paragon, Fawaz “Jews are sons of pigs and apes” Damra.

In fact, there is much in Abouabdalla’s résumé that ought to give his media cheerleaders considerable pause.

One element in the Plain Dealer’s recent coverage of Abouabdalla’s background that passes without the slightest bit of apparent investigation is the fact that he continues to serve as a faculty member of the Islamic American University (IAU) in Dearborn, Michigan. Of the 19 courses offered by IAU this summer term, Abouabdalla teaches 14 of them.

IAU is a project of the Muslim American Society (MAS), an organization federal prosecutors just recently identified in a federal appeals court brief as being “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.” The Muslim Brotherhood has been the breeding ground for virtually every single Islamic terrorist group in the world, and the vast majority of al-Qaeda’s leadership has come through its ranks.

The MAS/Muslim Brotherhood association is just the beginning of IAU’s ties to terror. The honorary chairman of the IAU board of trustees is none other than Hamas spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi — a fact acknowledged on the MAS website — who has been banned from the U.S. since 1999 for his open support of terrorist activities.

Not only has Qaradawi repeatedly issued fatwas defending the use of suicide bombings, but in August 2004 he co-signed a letter with the leaders of both Hezbollah and Hamas calling for al-Qaeda-backed insurgents in Iraq to “purify the land of Islam from the filth of occupation,” meaning U.S. military forces. He has said that “those who die fighting U.S. occupation forces are martyrs,” and he also recently defended the use of women as suicide bombers. Rightly so, the Anti-Defamation League has described Qaradawi as the “theologian of terror.”

Abouabdalla has also served on the Fiqh Council of North America as recently as last summer — an association that the Plain Dealer makes absolutely no mention of. For good reason, it seems, as the Fiqh Council is a “Who’s Who” of convicted terrorist leaders, terrorist fundraisers, unindicted co-conspirators, and terrorist associates. One former member, Abdurahman Alamoudi, is serving a 23-year prison sentence on terrorism charges for working with Libyan intelligence to assassinate the Saudi crown prince. Another former Fiqh Council member? Fawaz Damra.

The Fiqh Council issued a fatwa in 2005 that was much ballyhooed by the media for allegedly denouncing terrorism, though it never defined terrorism or condemned any terrorist group by name. And as I have reported elsewhere, notwithstanding their own terrorism fatwa forbidding any association with terrorists, three members of the Fiqh Council appeared at an event in Qatar in July 2007 honoring Yousef al-Qaradawi and featuring Hamas leader Khaled Mishal — a specially designated terrorist by the U.S. government. The trio’s appearance at the event was noted on Qaradawi’s personal website. Video of the event that originally aired on al-Jazeera shows Fiqh Council member Salah Sultan sitting on the speaker dais right beside Qaradawi and Mishal.

Now all of this information concerning IAU and the Fiqh Council would have been easily accessible for any reporter going through the motions of journalism. If the two glowing Cleveland Plain Dealer articles welcoming Abouabdalla to the area in recent weeks are any indication, however, none of that background investigation was ever done.

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I also review the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s colossal blowing of the Ahmad Alzaree story last October. I observe in conclusion that the contrast between the PD’s coverage of the Fawaz Damra scandal and the kid glove treatment given to both Ahmad Alzaree, and now Sayed Abouabdalla, couldn’t be more stark.

Cleveland imam quits before he starts

The saga of Ahmed Alzaree has come to a close, at least as far as the Buckeye State is concerned. He was scheduled to assume his position with the Islamic Center of Cleveland — Ohio’s largest mosque — in just days. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that Alzaree has thrown in the towel [a larger article appeared later on Monday afternoon]:

Imam Ahmed Alzaree announced Monday, three days before he was to start work as the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, that he was resigning.

Alzaree said allegations by bloggers that he was anti-Semitic and was associated with individuals suspected of having terrorist ties so poisoned the atmosphere in Northeast Ohio that he and his wife, Marwa, decided to look elsewhere.

What Alzaree couldn’t stand is the public scrutiny. Having to answer hard questions. And he had three separate articles by the Plain Dealer in his defense (in addition to the original PD puff piece).

Just a few days ago I posted some new information about Alzaree’s tenure at the Islamic Center of Omaha, and the questionable website material that appeared immediately upon his arrival. Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog also weighed in (Tom was the first to discover some of the questionable sermons by Alzaree) with new info. That prompted a sturdy defense of Alzaree in Saturday’s edition of the Plain Dealer, explaining away all of the new info without actually addressing it (oh, he didn’t know about that webpage preaching jihad that magically appeared when he took his position in Omaha, and he didn’t know who fellow Egyptian extremist preacher Wagdi Ghoneim was when he was invited to Alzaree’s mosque, even though Ghoneim is one of the most famous preachers in the Islamic world).

But Alzaree was aware that new questions about his resume and his past tenure in Omaha were about to emerge (courtesy of Blumer and yours truly), so he’s calling it quits. In the end it was too many questions, and not enough real answers.

Good luck on your new endeavors, Ahmed!

Update #1: Here are my previous Alzaree-related posts:

Sept. 25 — Ohio’s largest mosque hires Egyptian hate sheikh to replace deported terror cleric Fawaz Damra
Oct. 2 — Establishment media dhimmis ignore new Cleveland imam’s terror ties
Oct. 25 — Cleveland’s new imam: an “interfaith” moderate or two-faced jihadist?

And here are Tom Blumer’s posts:

Sept. 25 — Meet the New Imam, Same as the Old Imam?
Sept. 29 — Ahmed Alzaree Follow-up: Who WAS That Cleveland.com Blogger? (at the Plain Dealer’s Wide Open blog)
Oct. 2 — COAT’s Imam Ahmed Alzaree Follow-up
Oct. 25 — Imam Ahmed Alzaree and the Islamic Center of Cleveland Follow-up: Part 1
Oct. 25 — Imam Ahmed Alzaree and the Islamic Center of Cleveland Follow-up: Part 2
Oct. 29 — Imam Ahmed Alzaree resigns from Islamic Center of Cleveland

Update #2: Here are some links to the Associated Press article (courtesy of BizzyBlog):

Ohio.com, MSNBC, Jerusalem Post, International Herald Tribune

Cleveland’s new imam: an “interfaith” moderate or two-faced jihadist?

UPDATE #1: Be sure to read Tom Blumer’s update on BizzyBlog, “Imam Ahmed Alzaree and the Islamic Center of Cleveland Follow-Up, Part 2” with more information that not all the radicals left Ohio’s largest mosque with the deportation of Fawaz Damra. He also has a good overview in Part 1 of his post concering the Plain Dealer‘s non-coverage of this story even after two separate reporters wrote two consecutive stories.

Last month, Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog and the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Wide Open Blog followed up on a PD story by David Briggs on the replacement imam at the Islamic Center of Cleveland following the deportation earlier this year of Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Fawaz Damra. After some research, Blumer discovered that the replacement imam, Ahmed Alzaree, had made some rather disturbing remarks, specifically a sermon in which he makes the following statement:

Dear brothers and sisters, the talk about the Day of Judgment is long and full of things that will confuse the human mind and put fear in the hearts of the faithful. Every day that comes is much more Worse than the day before it as we get closer to the hour. Among the signs of the approach of Day of Judgment is what the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “The hour of judgment shall not happen until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Muslims shall kill the Jews to the point that the Jew shall hide behind a big rock or a tree and the rock or tree shall call on the Muslim saying: hey, O Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except the Gharqad tree which will not say, for it is the tree of Jews.” Agreed upon. This is seemed to be very soon and close now. We ask Allah SWT not to test us so hardly if we live till this horrible moment insha’allah.

This is taken from a Friday khutbah dated March 7, 2003 (the original article has since been removed, but it is still available through the Internet Archive). Building on Blumer’s discovery, I also found additional statements by Alzaree in that same khutbah expressing his lament that the compulsory Quranic jizya payments for dhimmi Christians and Jews had gone by the wayside. COAT contributor Sun Tzu also revealed that deported extremist cleric Wagdi Ghoneim had paid a visit to Alzaree’s Islamic Center of Omaha in August 2004, just before Ghoneim was taken into custody by immigration officials.

Embarrassed from getting scooped by one of their own bloggers, the PD quickly rushed out another story in response by reporter Robert Smith covering their tracks. As I noted at the time, Smith couldn’t even bring himself to admit that it had been one of their own bloggers (Blumer) that had scooped them (Blumer also noted that fact). But in the end, Smith put up a mediocre defense of Alzaree, allowing the Islamic Center of Cleveland’s president Jalal Abu-Shaweesh to explain away Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rant about how rocks will cry out for Muslims to kill hiding Jews by saying that Alzaree “was just being thorough”. What can you expect from the establishment media?

But since the PD has been mum on the matter for almost an entire month and Alzaree’s tenure at the Islamic Center of Cleveland about to begin, it bears worth mentioning some additional information I’ve uncovered concerning Alzaree’s previous tenure in Omaha.

Alzaree came to Omaha in mid-2002 after an apparent mosque coup in which an extremist element had taken control and began looking for an imam that more met their tastes (at one point, there were two competing “amirs” for the center). Around the time that Alzaree assumed his new position as imam, some very curious information began to appear on the Omaha center’s website.

In particular, a page dedicated to the “Palestinian issue” appeared, including links to such articles as “The New Nazis” (i.e. the Israelis), “Intifada (Uprising)”, and “The Israeli Myths about Palestine and Palestinians Exposed”.


And then there is a link to “Pictures of the Holocaust”, which bears the following comment:

We always hear about the Jewish Holocaust 60 years ago. These are picture of the Arab (Muslims and Christians) Palestinian Holocaust this year by the hands of the victims of the the first Holocaust. They learned well from their Nazi masters and executioners.

Nice. A real interfaith leader.

Then on the Omaha center’s “World Links” section we see links to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV and the Islamic American Relief Association, a terror financing front closed by the Feds. Another section dated as recently as May 2006 entitled “Palestinian Live Reports” features information supporting the “Jenin massacre” hoax.

And then there is the section dedicated to “Hot Spots”, where it lists Iraq, Afghanistan, and India. Notwithstanding the link at the bottom of the page, “What is Jihad”, it’s highly unlikely that they were identifying these countries as spots of "internal self-struggle".


In fact, on this page by Alzaree (he lists his email for suggestions on additional links) he states:

Remember that in Islam, the struggle of a nation to free itself from tyranny and oppression is also considered Jihad. Unfortunately, the world now considers such movements as terrorism and the people who try to free themselves as terrorists. Islam believes that people have the right to defend themselves even from oppressors like Israel, Russia and India.

Additionally, a page on Iraq features articles taken mostly from the Revolutionary Worker.

Again, virtually all of this material began to appear around the time that Alzaree took his position with the Islamic Center of Omaha, and these sources continued up until recently. Since Blumer first broke the story of Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rants, the Omaha website has undergone a thorough scrubbing, but there’s no avoiding the archive bots!

The challenge to the Plain Dealer is this: you’ve had two shots at covering this story. Thus far, you have been completely waxed by a couple of bloggers sitting at home in their pajamas (and yes, I’m literally sitting here in my pajamas). Are you guys actually going to get off your lazy media establishment asses and actually do some research, or must the new media do it all for you, thus confirming your irrelevancy? And when you use our research, are you willing to cite us as sources, since we’re the ones who have actually done the footwork on this story?

We’ll see, PD.

Establishment media dhimmis ignore new Cleveland imam’s terror ties

Following up on last week’s blockbuster news about Egyptian hate sheikh Ahmed Alzaree’s hiring to replace the Islamic Center of Cleveland’s convicted and deported former imam, Fawaz Damra, the coverage of this growing story (fueled entirely by the work of bloggers, especially the initial work done by Tom Blumer of the Plain Dealer’s Wide Open blog and BizzyBlog) by the establishment media has aptly demonstrated the sorry condition of the supposed Fourth Estate in Ohio.

When the Plain Dealer finally got around to covering the story on Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rants on Saturday, “Public scrutiny under way for Ahmed Alzaree, new imam of Islamic Center of Cleveland”, the title couldn’t have been more fitting as the scrutiny has been entirely from the “public” not the “establishment media”. As Tom Blumer noted in a subsequent Wide Open post this weekend, “Ahmed Alzaree Follow-up: Who WAS That Cleveland.com Blogger?”, the PD’s Robert Smith couldn’t even admit that one of the PD’s own bloggers (Blumer) had been the one that broke the story. The coverage by the Associated Press/Columbus Dispatch (“Comment on Jews by incoming imam draws criticism”) and the abbreviated clip by the Cincinnati Enquirer (“Spiritual Leader’s Sermon Scrutinized”) was even more non-descript.

What is shocking is how easily the PD’s Smith allows Islamic Center of Cleveland president Jalal Abu-Shaweesh to explain away Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rant about how rocks will cry out for Muslims to kill hiding Jews:

Abu-Shaweesh, who read the sermon, said Alzaree was relaying a well-known Hadith as he listed myriad signs of Judgment Day and was likely just being thorough.

“Just being thorough”? Did that warrant any follow-up whatsoever on Smith’s part? Apparently not, because it passes without any further comment.

But what all these Ohio establishment media outlets have failed to acknowledge is the updated info we provided here concerning Alzaree’s connections to yet another deported terror cleric Wagdi Ghoneim. Here’s what I wrote:

COAT contributor Sun Tzu informs me that just prior to being expelled from the United States, one of the preachers that Ahmed Alzaree brought to Omaha was his friend and fellow Egyptian terror cleric Wagdi Ghoneim, who one US immigration official explained was kicked out of the US because “our task is not to sit around and wait for people to blow up buildings”. According to an Islamic Center of Omaha newsletter, Ghoneim visited in August 2004. JihadWatch reminds us that Switzerland has also banned Ghoneim from their country in 2005. As Daniel Pipes has noted, Ghoneim called Jews “descendants of the apes” at a 1998 CAIR event (apparently a common theme in the Damra-Alzaree-Ghoneim “inter-faith” circles).

Blumer has conveniently reposted the December 2004 LA Times article and Associated Press article concerning Ghoneim’s expulsion from the US for immigration violations and to avoid further investigation into accusations of his terrorist ties and fundraising. But not one of these “media” outlets could utter a word of mention of Ghoneim’s appearance at Alzaree’s Omaha mosque just weeks before he was expelled from the US, even though the PD’s follow-up article mentions the Central Ohioans Against Terrorism blog entry by name (yes, I am presuming that Smith read the post, since he was writing an article on the “public scrutiny” of Alzaree’s hiring; perhaps that is asking too much).

Beginning with the original Plain Dealer story by David Briggs last Tuesday, it has been the “bloggers”, not the “journalists”, who have continued to break new developments on Alzaree’s hiring, questionable background and incendiary statements. The media establishment’s reluctance to say anything critical of Islamic extremists is hardly surprising in light of their past performance, but their willful ignorance and whistling past the graveyard has become so painfully obvious that it is getting hard to watch anymore.

Ohio’s largest mosque hires Egyptian hate sheikh to replace deported terror cleric Fawaz Damra

[Be sure to see the update with new info below! And read Tom Blumer’s take on this story this morning at Wide Open blog.]

[And welcome to everyone joining us from LGF!]

Tom Blumer, the economic genius behind BizzyBlog and a new contributor to the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s brand-spanking new Wide Open blog (along with Dave from NixGuy) made me aware of an article in Tuesday’s Plain Dealer by David Briggs, “Islamic Center hires new imam to replace deported cleric”, announcing that the Islamic Center of Cleveland, former home of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Fawaz Damra (before the US government stripped him of his citizenship and deported him back to Israel earlier this year), has been replaced by Ahmed Alzaree, who will assume his new position as head cleric on November 1. The Associated Press has also picked up the story. Alzaree comes to the Buckeye State from Omaha, Nebraska.

Considering Damra’s high-profile expulsion from the US, you would think that the Islamic Center of Cleveland would hire a more moderate voice to lead them than the terrorist cheerleader they had most recently. Think again.

Not mentioned in the Plain Dealer‘s report is Ahmed Alzaree’s anti-Jewish rants. According to Blumer, in a 15-second Google search, he came across a particular sermon dated March 7, 2003 where Alzaree offers this encouragement to his followers:

Dear brothers and sisters, the talk about the Day of Judgment is long and full of things that will confuse the human mind and put fear in the hearts of the faithful. Every day that comes is much more Worse than the day before it as we get closer to the hour. Among the signs of the approach of Day of Judgment is what the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “The hour of judgment shall not happen until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Muslims shall kill the Jews to the point that the Jew shall hide behind a big rock or a tree and the rock or tree shall call on the Muslim saying: hey, O Muslim there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him, except the Gharqad tree which will not say, for it is the tree of Jews.” Agreed upon. This is seemed to be very soon and close now. We ask Allah SWT not to test us so hardly if we live till this horrible moment insha’allah.

Apparently, the Plain Dealer‘s David Briggs didn’t do the same Google search that Blumer performed, even though in his article Briggs states:

Alzaree would not confirm his hiring, at one point saying he would not come to Cleveland because a reporter was inquiring about his background.

Gee, what do you think a reporter might be looking into, Mr. Briggs (real quick wits among these establishment media dhimmis, eh?), and who could possibly be motivated do such an investigation (grin)?

Someone looking at Alzaree’s background (at least if they bothered to look) might also come across the following comment in that same sermon where he highlights the required Quranic “jizya” tax to be imposed upon non-Muslims and his lament at its disuse in the Muslim world:

Abou Hurairah RAA narrated that the messenger of Allah PBUH said: “By Allah it is about the time the son of Maryam comes down and he shall rule with justice and he shall break the cross and kill the pig and will remove the “Jezyah”; (i.e. the supposed tax paid to the Muslim government by non-Muslims who live with them against guarding and protecting them which is mentioned in the Holy Quran in Surat Al-Tawbah (9-29) as a “fard” or requirement in despite of being lost and no longer practiced nowadays by almost all Arab and Muslim Countries), (that means that only Islam shall be the only accepted faith and religion), and the wealth shall increase to the point the charity is not needed” Reported by Al-Bukharee and Muslim.

Now remember that what initially got Alzaree’s predecessor Damra into trouble was a videotape that came to light of him raising money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and convicted PIJ leader Sami Al-Arian (video and transcript available from the Investigative Project). Damra was also filmed urging his supporters to point “a rifle at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews." This is the same Fawaz Damra that was hailed as a great inter-faith leader in Cleveland.

(Oh, and did I mention that Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman’s close advisor and CAIR national vice chairman Ahmad Al-Akhras described terror leader and fundraiser Damra as a “long-time friend”?)

Now it seems that Alzaree has been hired to bring in Damra’s harvest of hate. Ahmed Alzaree encourages his flock by bringing to mind the glorious day in the future when stones will call out for hiding Jews to be killed and laments that the practice of jizya is no longer imposed on Jews and Christians in the Muslim world as a testament of their submission to Islamic imperialism.

Real nice. A real paragon of peace the Islamic Center of Cleveland has hired in Ahmed Alzaree. A real inter-faith leader like Damra, wouldn’t you agree? If you have any doubts, just listen to Alzaree’s recent sermon, “Prejudice from a spiritual perspective”, where he will no doubt tell you all about his peace and love for his fellow members of the Abrahamic tradition and his efforts to spread the love and engage in inter-faith dialogue at Creighton University.

Just don’t hide behind any rocks in Cleveland anytime soon.

UPDATE: COAT contributor Sun Tzu informs me that just prior to being expelled from the United States, one of the preachers that Ahmed Alzaree brought to Omaha was his friend and fellow Egyptian terror cleric Wagdi Ghoneim, who one US immigration official explained was kicked out of the US because “our task is not to sit around and wait for people to blow up buildings”. According to an Islamic Center of Omaha newsletter, Ghoneim visited in August 2004. JihadWatch reminds us that Switzerland has also banned Ghoneim from their country in 2005. As Daniel Pipes has noted, Ghoneim called Jews “descendants of the apes” at a 1998 CAIR event (apparently a common theme in the Damra-Alzaree-Ghoneim “inter-faith” circles).

Regular COAT readers will recall my mentioning Ghoneim recently in connection with our own Hilliard Holy War Homeboy, Salah Sultan, who the LA Times reported in July has been hanging out in Bahrain with Ghoneim, where the two had a weekly TV program until it was shut down by the government because of its extremism. My Bahraini friend and journalist Mahmoud Al-Yousif has been keeping track of Ghoneim and Sultan’s antics there. But rest assured, the Columbus Dispatch still considers Sultan a moderate.