EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: Qaradawi calls for the genocide of the Jews — his friends in Central Ohio

Last Friday, HAMAS spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi went on his weekly TV program on al-Jazeera to pray for the genocide of the Jews:

Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.

MEMRI has the video and the transcript of Qaradawi’s comments. This tirade and his calls for the genocide of the Jews is nothing new, of course. You can read more from this post at JihadWatch.

However, what should be of concern to residents of Central Ohio is that Qaradawi has close associates in our area. Don’t believe me?


Yes, that’s our local terror sheikh, Hilliard resident Salah Sultan (right) hamming it up with Qaradawi (center) and Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood leader Faisal al-Malawi (left). Sultan serves on the board for two of Qaradawi’s organizations along with al-Malawi, the International Association of Muslim Scholars and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Qaradawi and Malawi are both banned from the US for their open support of HAMAS and other terrorist organizations, as well as for issuing fatwas allowing for suicide bombings against civilians. In 2004, Qaradawi, Malawi and Sultan issued a fatwa in the name of IAMS calling for jihad against American troops in Iraq.

Sultan is also a member of the Fiqh Council of North America, which bills itself as the top Islamic ruling body in the US.

Here’s another shot of them laughing it up:


These photos of Qaradawi and Sultan have never been released before and are provided here exclusively by COAT. We have about a half-dozen more we are not releasing at this time.

Let’s not forget Sultan’s appearance in July 2007 with Qaradawi and HAMAS head (and designated terrorist) Khaled Mish’al sitting together on the speaker’s dais at a conference in Qatar honoring Qaradawi:


So impressed was Qaradawi with the two speeches that Sultan delivered in his honor that he posted them on his own personal website:



For those just joining us, Sultan appeared on Egyptian Al-Nas TV just two weeks ago (which we reported here) preaching Jew hatred and predicting death and destruction for America:


Let’s not forget that Sultan was the religious director for the Islamic school in Hilliard, Sunrise Academy, as seen in this 2005 announcement for a seminar taught by Sultan (seen teaching below) held at Sunrise sponsored by the school and the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus (click to enlarge):


And let’s not forget about his friends at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Hilliard/Dublin, where Sultan served as scholar-in-residence for his best friend, Noor president Hany Saqr:


And here’s a shot of Sultan at one of the Noor Center’s intifada-fests:


Hmmm . . . where did all that money go they raised that night? And will the Noor Center's de facto press agent, Columbus Dispatch religion reporter Meredith Heagney, quickly move to explain this all away?

Terror-linked Islamofascist, wife-beating advocate speaks at Ohio State

Jamal Badawi: Friend to global terrorists, outspoken advocate of wife-beating, and “multi-cultural” “interfaith” speaker at Ohio State last month.

You have to hand it to CAIR-Ohio and the Muslim Student Association at Ohio State. When they decided to recognize Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week last month, they pulled no punches. What they did was bring in one of the most prominent North American Islamofascists to town, Jamal Badawi, as I discuss in my FrontPage article this morning, “Ohio State Does Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week Right!”. The event was billed by the OSU Multicultural Center as “Interfaith Relations — the Muslim Perspective”.

As I discussed in a Family Security Matters article back in September, Badawi was a featured speaker and honored guest at a conference in Doha, Qatar honoring HAMAS spiritual leader and Specially Designated Global Terrorist Yousef Al-Qaradawi. Badawi is even listed as such in an article posted on Qaradawi’s personal website.

He is also on the Board of Directors of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organization founded and run by terrorist leader Qaradawi, which in 2004 issued a fatwa calling on all able-bodied Muslims both inside and outside Iraq to wage jihad against the American military as a religious “duty”.

A press release issued by CAIR-OH following Badawi’s October 15th appearance at OSU quoted CAIR-OH President Asma Mobin-Uddin as saying, “The opportunity to listen to Islamic scholars like Dr. Badawi was a great opportunity for the community to become educated, and it gave people the change to ask questions about things they may have heard about Islamic teachings.”

So what did Badawi talk about? Well, I was not in attendance, however some of Badawi’s favorite past topics include:

• Polygamy (it’s consistent with “Islam’s realistic view of the nature of man and women and of the various social needs, problems, and cultural variations”);
• Wife-beating (It’s OK as long as it’s never on the face);
• Acceptable conditions for suicide bombings (permitted as long as its for “repelling unprovoked aggression or resisting severe oppression);
• Justification for executing Muslim apostates (as long as it’s qualified as treason against the Islamic state).

Then there is Badawi’s famous 2004 fatwa for Islamonline (a website run by Qaradawi) outlining six different conditions in which a wife may properly be beaten according to his understanding of “Islamic teaching”, because, as he states, “there are cases, however, in which a wife persists in bad habits”.

If anyone had doubts about the existence of Islamofascism, listening to Jamal Badawi for an hour would undoubtedly put those concerns to rest. Both CAIR-OH and MSA have done the Ohio State community a tremendous favor by allowing an up-close and personal look at an actual Islamofascist in action. Those same organizations, however, presumably consider Jamal Badawi to be some great interfaith leader and an outstanding Muslim teacher, thus vindicating David Horowitz and the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week effort.

Oh, the irony!

Former Hilliard HAMAS cleric pictured with two global terrorists

Two months ago I reported on our former Hilliard resident, Salah Sultan (Soltan), who spoke at a conference in July honoring Specially Designated Global Terrorist and HAMAS spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi (see “Hilliard man roasts global terrorist Qaradawi at conference in Qatar”), an event in which Sultan was photographed with the terrorist leader (see "Hilliard man shares a moment with Global Terrorist Qaradawi"). Sultan’s speech and a paper he delivered at the conference are posted on Qaradawi’s own personal website. Qaradawi was listed by the U.S. government as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 1999.

But new photographic evidence of Sultan’s appearance at the Qaradawi conference in July has emerged showing Sultan sitting on the speakers dais with HAMAS leader Khaled Mash’al and Qaradawi while Mash’al praised the terror cleric for his fatwa endorsing HAMAS suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Mash’al’s comments were broadcast live by Al-Jazeera, and recorded and translated by MEMRI.

In the video of their remarks, Sultan can be clearly seen seated on the dais with the two terrorist leaders, as seen in the screen captures below.

Salah Sultan (far left) seated at the conference speaker dais (taken at 2:40 in the MEMRI video).

Sultan (third from right), Khaled Mash’al (third from left), and Yousef Al-Qaradawi (middle in white turban — 4:13).

Mash’al (left) and Qaradawi (right) justifying suicide bombings (3:43).

Mash’al praises Qaradawi for his suicide bombing fatwa (1:07).

Qaradawi expressing his support for HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah (3:29).

It’s important to note that even though Sultan fled the country earlier this year for Bahrain after having his US citizenship application denied (thanks to yours truly, see my multiple FrontPage “Hometown Jihad” reports in the right-hand links column), he is still able to re-enter the country. He is still a member of the Fiqh Council of North America and has appeared at recent meetings, notwithstanding his continued association with designated global terrorists.

Why is Sultan still allowed to travel in and out of the US despite his openly associating with terrorist leaders, even being repeatedly photographed with them?

As a member of the Fiqh Council, Sultan was a signatory of their much-heralded 2005 “Fatwa against Terrorism”, which specifically prohibits any cooperation “with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.” And yet Sultan and another Fiqh Council member and “Fatwa against Terror” signatory, Jamal Badawi, were both in attendance and actively participated in the conference honoring HAMAS terror cleric Qaradawi, as well as openly associating with HAMAS political head Mash’al (see my previous Family Security Matters article, “CAIR Terror Fatwa Signatories Attend Conference Honoring HAMAS Terror Cleric Qaradawi”).

Since Sultan has moved to Bahrain and obtained citizenship there (much to the displeasure of many Bahrainis), and he is directly flaunting the anti-terror fatwa he signed, why is he still a member of the Fiqh Council of North America?

This is the same Salah Sultan that the Columbus Dispatch defended in May 2006 as a "moderate" (much as they have with local terror apologist Abukar Arman, and now, local HAMAS operative Anisa Abd El Fattah). In that article, the Dispatch dismissed his connections to Qaradawi:

Soltan is a former president of the Islamic American University in suburban Detroit, and he said Al-Qaradawi served the school as “volunteer chairman of the board.” [Qaradawi was appointed after he had been designated a global terrorist by the US government — ed] The two men also belong to the European Council for Fatwa and Research, but Soltan said members of the scholars group hold divergent views.

Of course, the Dispatch’s defense of Salah Sultan appeared two weeks before he appeared on Al-Risala TV declaring that the US was behind the 9/11 terror attacks and defending al-Qaeda cleric and Specially Designated Global Terrorist Abd Al-Majid Al-Zindani (MEMRI report, video, transcript), and a month before Sultan spoke at a pro-HAMAS rally in Istanbul with HAMAS head Ismail Haniyeh.

Where’s the Columbus Dispatch now?

Hilliard Man Shares a Moment with Global Terrorist Qaradawi

Hilliard resident Salah Sultan (kneeling) sharing a private moment with Specially Designated Global Terrorist Yousef Al-Qaradawi (far right) at a conference honoring Qaradawi held last month in Doha, Qatar (image from Islamonline.net)

A little over a week ago, I posted information on Hilliard resident Salah Sultan, president of the Hilliard-based American Center for Islamic Research, speaking at a conference honoring US-designated global terrorist Yousef Al-Qaradawi in Doha, Qatar (“Hilliard man roasts global terrorist Qaradawi at conference in Qatar”). Over the weekend, I discovered the picture above of Sultan and HAMAS/Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Qaradawi together during a dinner at that same conference on the Qaradawi-owned and supervised Islamonline.net website.

In that previous post I included pictures of Sultan speaking at the conference and greeting attendees, which were included in Sultan’s speech at the conference and a paper he delivered there on Qaradawi’s intellectual contributions that are published on Qaradawi’s personal website. The conference also featured a speech by HAMAS political leader Khaled Mash’al, who praised Qaradawi for his groundbreaking fatwa authorizing HAMAS suicide bombings (remarks by Mash’al and Qaradawi have been translated by MEMRI).

What makes this situation interesting is that the Columbus Dispatch “cleared” Salah Sultan of charges I had made about his connections to Qaradawi in a May 2006 article by Felix Hoover, “Muslim Milestone”, and likened him as a moderate because he was a signatory to a bogus CAIR fatwa “against terrorism”, even though the fatwa condemned no terrorist organization, individual or any specific act of terror, nor did it even define “terrorism”. For continuing to report on Sultan’s activities for the past year and a half I have been savagely attacked by several Central Ohio Muslim writers and an advisor to Mayor Michael Coleman. In a dossier compiled by Ahmad Al-Akhras and circulated by him to various government and establishment media officials attacking FrontPage Magazine and myself, he specifically cites Hoover’s article as proof that my claims about Sultan have been debunked (more on the Al-Akhras dossier later this week!).

Will an apology from Dispatch executive and CAIR lackey Mike Curtin be forthcoming? I won’t hold my breath.

Another interesting element is that despite the multiple reports I have had published regarding Sultan’s open support for terrorist organizations, including his appearance last summer at a rally in Istanbul in support of HAMAS (see “Hometown Jihad: The HAMAS Connection”, and a COAT post by Scanderbeg, “The Hilliard-HAMAS-Muslim Brotherhood Connection”), his videotaped appearance on Al-Risala TV claiming that 9/11 was planned by the US government and praising another US-designated Al-Qaeda terrorist [video], several Central Ohioans have risen up to defend Salah Sultan.

Chief among Salah Sultan’s public defenders has been none other than Abukar Arman, who was recently “cleared” by the Columbus Dispatch for his repeated statements in support of terrorist organizations, including his characterization of Qaradawi as a “moderate”, even though he was forced to resign from the Homeland Security oversight board because he wasn’t eligible according to Ohio law to serve on the panel (see “Terrorist Sympathizer Tossed from Homeland Security Oversight Panel”). After my initial FrontPage exposé on Sultan, “Hometown Jihad”, Abukar Arman likened me to Joseph Goebbels and denouncing my “Goebbelian excercise [sic] of freedom of speech”:

Only a few days ago, one such moderate Muslim, Dr. Salah Soltan, a renown scholar and a member of the North America and the European Fiqh Council, and Sunrise Academy, a Kindergarten to Seventh Grade Islamic school which this author has been sitting on its board for the past six years, were implicated with those all too familiar innuendoes as terror-promoting individual and institution. The accusatory article was written by a gentleman who claims being a “policy researcher” . . . . and boasts to have only spent 3 hours to arrive at that conclusion. (“The Trilogy that Muffles Moderate Muslims”)

Just as a point of clarification, the “3 hours” comment about the amount of time I spent researching Salah Sultan is pure fiction by Arman. After the series of reports I published on Sultan’s activities, it would take someone less than 30 minutes to arrive at that conclusion.

Another vocal local Salah Sultan defender is Mahmoud El-Yousseph, who just this weekend had an article published, “Muslim Basher, Patrick Poole, Preys on People’s Fears”, complaining of my reports on Sultan’s terrorist support activities:

Last May he attacked Salah Sultan, a nationally noted Muslim scholars. For no reason other than his views — the very same thing he accused Abukar Arman of. [The US Constitution guarantees freedom of expression to every citizen and non-citizen living in this free country.]

This is not the first time that El-Yousseph has promoted and praised Salah Sultan in print. In an op-ed published in the Newark Advocate on June 23, 2005, El-Yousseph called him “one of America’s most noted Muslim scholars” and promoted Sultan’s website and books:

I asked doctor Salah Soltan of Central Ohio, who is one of America’s most noted Muslim scholars, about a woman’s rights to drive from an Islamic perspective. He said, “There is nowhere in the Holy Quran or the teaching of the prophet Mohammad that prohibits a woman from using any mode of transportation, even traveling by herself.”

Dr. Soltan recently wrote a book about women’s rights under Islamic law. In fact, he pointed out 25 examples where women have more right than men when it comes to inheritance. A visit to his Web site www.salahsoltan.com could be very useful for people seeking information about Islamic topics.

If observing that one of my Hilliard neighbors is regularly cavorting with known designated international terrorists makes me a “Muslim Basher”, it should give us all pause; if being concerned about it makes me an “Islamophobe”, than my accusers have all the evidence they need to find me guilty. And if self-proclaimed local Muslim leaders, such as Ahmad Al-Akhras, Abukar Arman and Mahmoud El-Yousseph, are all too eager to rise up in defense of Salah Sultan’s activities supporting terrorists (Qaradawi) and terrorist organizations (HAMAS), it should indicate that these gentlemen are not representative of moderate Muslims in Central Ohio at all. With such abundant information now available about Salah Sultan’s known terrorist associations, we can safely conclude that Ahmad Al-Akhras, Abukar Arman and Mahmoud El-Yousseph, along with their buddy Salah Sultan, are exactly the extremists I have portrayed them to be.

Hilliard man roasts global terrorist Qaradawi at conference in Qatar

(Welcome to everyone joining us from JihadWatch and Solomonia!)

This picture was taken last month of Hilliard resident and Muslim Brotherhood/HAMAS operative Salah Sultan speaking at a conference honoring Specially Designated Global Terrorist and HAMAS spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi in Doha, Qatar (see the previous post on Sultan, “The Hilliard-HAMAS-Muslim Brotherhood Connection”). The conference, “Imam Al-Qaradawi: A Forum with Students and Friends”, was broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV.

During the conference, Sultan gave a moving tribute to his mentor Qaradawi, describing himself as a “friend and pupil”. Sultan’s speech appears (in Arabic) on Qaradawi’s own personal website, “Pupils do not forget their teachers”. Interestingly, Sultan begins his speech by describing how he has been attacked for his association with Qaradawi in “Boston, Chicago, and Ohio” and the campaign to deny him US citizenship (a story I broke last year, “Hometown Jihad: Our Newest Citizen?”) and brazenly saying that “I endorse Qaradawi; especially on the position of Israel, and support of the Palestinian cause.” He also talks about his meetings with Qaradawi, specifically a meeting in 1999, Qaradawi’s last appearance in the US right before he was designated a global terrorist by the US government, and again in 2003, when he received personal advice and counsel from his mentor.

Sultan delivered another paper at the conference on the “scientific and intellectual development of Qaradawi” — again, posted on Qaradawi’s own website, as the screen capture below shows:



It is interesting that Sultan mentions the “Palestinian cause”, because another important speaker at the conference, HAMAS leader Khaled Mash’al, also praised Qaradawi for his contribution to the "Palestinian cause". And what specifically was that? Here are Mash’al’s comments translated by MEMRI [video]:

“The support we got from Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi is different from the support of anybody else, because of his religious status, his status in terms of morale, and his ability to draw the attention of the nation and the world to the issues of the nation, particularly the issue of Palestine. This support was of great value to us, to the Palestinian people, in the first and second Intifadas, and in all matters pertaining to the Palestinian cause. . . One of the most notable manifestations of this support was when we relied — after Allah — on his support of martyrdom operations. He never hesitated to issue rulings in support of these operations, and there were times when we were in dire need of these rulings.”

When he talks about “martyrdom operations”, he’s talking about suicide bombings. In fact, Qaradawi was the first major Muslim Brotherhood cleric to issue a fatwa endorsing suicide bombings, which unleashed a torrent of terror in Israel (one of the most horrific incidents — the bombing of the Sbarro pizza shop — occured six years ago today). By qualifying suicide bombings as “martyrdom” instead of suicide (prohibited by Islamic law), it radically changed the dimensions of the Israel/Palestinian conflict and prompted a rapid escalation in violence.

As I have noted elsewhere, this is not the first time that Salah Sultan has been discovered speaking with officials with the terrorist group HAMAS. I reported a few months ago about his speech in Istanbul last summer at an AKP pro-HAMAS rally, where Sultan spoke, along with HAMAS head Ismail Haniyeh, “Hometown Jihad: The HAMAS Connection”. He has been involved in the following Central Ohio Islamic institutions:

• Islamic Society of Greater Columbus (where he was employed, and which owns several area mosques Sultan has preached for)
• Sunrise Academy (an affiliate of ISGC, where Sultan has regularly lectured)
• Noor Islamic Cultural Center (where he was a regular fixture, being right around the corner from his Hilliard home)

It is also worth noting that Salah Sultan was “cleared” by Columbus Dispatch reporter Felix Hoover in May 2006 (see my article, "Hometown Jihad: Blowback"), just a few days before Sultan appeared on Al-Risala TV saying that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks and praising another Specially Designated Global Terrorist and al-Qaeda cleric Abd-al-Magid Al-Zindani [video clip of Sultan’s Al-Risala interview]. The Dispatch’s “clearing” of Abukar Arman earlier this week should be considered in light of this fact. Arman also praised the terrorist leader Qaradawi as a “moderate” (“Who is the ‘moderate’ Muslim”, International Herald Tribune [November 11, 2005]), and rose to Salah Sultan’s defense (“The Trilogy that Muffles the Moderate Muslims”) after my initial article revealing Sultan’s ties to terrorist leader Qaradawi.

Sultan’s current position as fiqh advisor to the Supreme Islamic Council of the Kingdom of Bahrain was arranged by Qaradawi, and Sultan also sits on two organizations headed by Qaradawi that have endorsed terrorist acts and attacks on US troops: the European Council for Fatwa and Research and the International Association of Muslim Scholars, which in 2004 issued a fatwa to wage jihad against Americans in Iraq.

With such open associations to one of the most notorious terrorist clerics in the world, why is Salah Sultan still allowed to live and work in the US? What are our local Hilliard leaders doing about this immediate terrorist threat?

Update #1: Someone asked me about links to my previous articles on Sultan, so here they are:

Hometown Jihad (04/03/2006)

Hometown Jihad: Blowback (05/24/06)

Hometown Jihad: Our Newest Citizen? (09/08/06)

Hometown Jihad: The Return of Salah Sultan (03/29/07)

Hometown Jihad: The HAMAS Connection (05/11/2007)