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?

Ohio terror sheikh, Fiqh Council of North America member Salah Sultan: Jews killed President Kennedy, advocates Islamic theocracy in US elections

Welcome Investigative Project and RoP visitors!

It has been a while since we heard last from our local terror sheikh and former Hilliard resident, Salah Sultan. Despite having fled to Bahrain last year, Sultan still sits on the Fiqh Council of North America. That’s why I was so interested to see an interview with Sultan published by IslamOnline earlier this year addressing the upcoming elections, “Politicking US Muslims — How Can US Muslims Change Realities: Interview with Dr. Salah Soltan”.

Those who have been following Sultan’s activities and statements might recall that he gave an interview to the official Muslim Brotherhood website, Ikhwanonline, immediately following the 2006 elections, "US Islamic Center: Democrats More Tolerant Towards Muslims".

The entire IslamOnline interview is definitely worth the read, and it is reprinted below in its entirety. There are a few curious statements I would like to point out. The most glaring is his statements about the political activity of the Jewish community in the US. Claiming that the number of Muslims in the US is greater than the Jews (a fact not supported by most polls, which finds the number of Muslims at no more than 3 million), he clearly wants Islamic political power to rival that of the Jewish community:

Jews are certainly less in numbers than Muslims now in the US. Our number is between 8 to 10 millions, yet although American Jews are no more than 6 million they have vision, plan, determination of whom to vote for and whom to ignore, and in some cases they support two candidates at the same time so that whomever wins becomes accountable to them. This is done in the Congress or the presidential elections. Jews in the US spend massive amount of money on elections’ publicity campaign. . .

Such exorbitant expenditure on US elections by Jewish-owned mega-businesses and organizations is not done in philanthropy.

Ah, but he’s not done yet. In fact, he relates a fictional account about how a Jewish community leader approached President Kennedy to help finance his reelection if only he would turn over foreign policy decision-making to the Jews. When Kennedy refused, they had him assassinated:

I will mention an example that Muslims in the US and Europe should be well aware of. Mr. Paul Findley’s book “Silent No More” says that President Kennedy in his second elections had a shaky stand, and accordingly a man responsible for 300 Jewish organizations proposing to fund all his campaign on one condition which was to place the keys of foreign policy in his hands, and Kennedy refused such proposal. The result was the assassination of John Kennedy.

So Salah Sultan claims that the Jews in America killed President Kennedy because he wouldn’t let the Jews control American foreign policy. Wonder how our interfaith leaders, like Sultan’s friend and Interfaith Association of Central Ohio board member, Abukar Arman, would respond to Sultan’s views on this topic?

Two other topics covered by Sultan in his IslamOnline interview should be noted:

• He states that if Muslims would participate in elections, they could then leverage their political power to show that homosexuality is a “perversion”, and ensure that their views would be taught in American schools.
• He also advocated US elections done by Islamic “shura councils”, i.e. theocracy.

Just as reminder, here are some of the organizations that Sultan worked with in Central Ohio:

• Sultan was brought to the area by the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus, who hired him as their fiqh research director.
• Sultan also served as religious director for the Hilliard-based Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, where he also conducted teacher training.
• Sultan later served as the resident scholar at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Hilliard, working directly with his Muslim Brotherhood buddy, Hany Saqr.

Oh, and let’s not forget that one our local Muslim columnists Mahmoud El-Yousseph proclaimed Sultan "one of America’s most-noted Muslim scholars", and Sultan was defended as a moderate in a lengthy article by Columbus Dispatch reporter Felix Hoover.

Sultan was the focus of this CBN News report, "Jihad in Central Ohio":


Sultan also gave an interview to Al-Risala TV (translated by MEMRI) in May 2005, just days after the Dispatch article defending Sultan appeared, where he claimed that the 9/11 attacks were done by the US government, and defending Yemeni Al-Qaeda cleric and designated terrorist, Abdulmajid Al-Zindani:


Here’s the entire IslamOnline interview with Salah Sultan:

Politicking US Muslims

How Can US Muslims Change Realities
Interview with Dr. Salah Soltan

By Abdelrahman Rashdan

Staff Writer — IslamOnline.net

US Muslims: Interview with Dr. Salah Soltan

Dr. Salah El-Deen Soltan has been described as “one of America’s most-noted Muslim scholars.” Scrolling through his eight-page CV, one would be astonished at the amount of positions, publications, activities, researches, and workshops he held, led, or was part of.

As the founder of several US Muslim organizations, including the American Center for Islamic Research, the Sultan Publishing Company, and the Islamic American University, Dr. Soltan has proved that his insight of the American Muslim community is worth digging into.

It is obvious that the American-Muslim community needs change, needs to be more active in the US politics, and needs to change the policies of its country that has changed and continues to change the lives of a lot of Muslims all around the world. And it appears that Dr. Soltan is well-suited for the talk about this arduous mission.

“To achieve Allah’s consent and Paradise through the reformation of the soul, the family, the society, and the nation according to the methodology of the Qur’an and the Sunnah,” this is how he sees his mission in life, and it shows in this interview.

IslamOnline.net (IOL): Why should Muslims participate in the US elections?

Salah Soltan: I believe that such participation is not only permissible, but obligatory as well when it comes to the US elections; and the Islamic text proves that.

Allah — Subhanahu Wattaala (“Glorious and exalted is He”) — says: [Hide not testimony] (Al-Baqarah 2: 283) and elections is a witness according to the agreement of many of the Ummah scholars. [Hide not testimony. He who hideth it, verily his heart is sinful] (Al-Baqarah 2:283) such scripture, along with many others, signifies that nonparticipation leads to the sinning of the heart.

Through research, collecting opinions of credible Sheikhs and Fatwa councils, arguing the doubts that some of the respectable brothers and Sheikhs rouse about the participation in elections, all of that made me end up with a firm believe that participation in the US elections from the juridical angle is an obligation.

Circumstantially, it is an obligation too. According to the constitution, the American system makes everything goes through elections. I believe that for every Muslim who lives there commanding what is right and forbidding what is wrong goes through elections.

The participation of Muslims in the US elections is a judicial obligation and a circumstantial necessity.

The last elections before I left America was about smoking in public places in Ohio. Voters went to vote and Muslims were mobilized to vote against smoking in public, especially in restaurants.

Even the police has a board that is elected by cities’ citizens. Mayors, governors, board electricity companies, and educational councils are all elected.

Another example there is a fierce debate between the elected educational councils in different parts of America on whether to consider homosexual boys and girls pervert or not. If people vote that they are normal not pervert, they would assign big number of social counselors, not to guide those boys and girls, but to guide their parents and teach them to accept their homosexual children and that it is normal, as statistics show that 70% of those who leave school and home are homosexual, who are not accepted by their parents and tend to leave their parents which makes them drop out of school in order to work to earn their living. If Muslims were present in such debate, and demonstrate both logically and religiously that such homosexuality is prohibited pervert in all religions not just in Islam, the results would be very satisfactory.

I have an issue with brothers’ nonparticipation in elections, the duty of participation in election is put forth only when there is a presidential elections. But presidential elections are part of a long chain in the structure of the American society. Thus, I would like our brothers who have Fiqh of reality to give attention to every elections that occurs in any state not just to the presidential ones; I think this issue is really important.

The American congress is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives and these are the most supreme powers after the president, and they give the needed legitimacy for the latter. The Congress can litigate the President and dismiss him.

Thus, nonparticipation means the continuation of their crimes in our countries.

Jews are certainly less in numbers than Muslims now in the US. Our number is between 8 to 10 millions, yet although American Jews are no more than 6 million they have vision, plan, determination of whom to vote for and whom to ignore, and in some cases they support two candidates at the same time so that whomever wins becomes accountable to them. This is done in the Congress or the presidential elections. Jews in the US spend massive amount of money on elections’ publicity campaign.

The average sum of money spent on publicity for a Senate candidate is $5 million and for the House of Representatives candidate is $1 million, yet the US presidential candidate exceeds by far this amount. The most expensive presidential campaign was that of President Bush in year 2004; it reached billions of US dollars.

If it was a presidential election, such as that coming up at the end of 2008, then there has to be formed a Shura council from all US states that will assemble and take one decision.

Such exorbitant expenditure on US elections by Jewish-owned mega-businesses and organizations is not done in philanthropy.

I will mention an example that Muslims in the US and Europe should be well aware of. Mr. Paul Findley’s book “Silent No More” says that President Kennedy in his second elections had a shaky stand, and accordingly a man responsible for 300 Jewish organizations proposing to fund all his campaign on one condition which was to place the keys of foreign policy in his hands, and Kennedy refused such proposal. The result was the assassination of John Kennedy.

These facts, supported with incidents and numbers, prove that the participation of Muslims in the US elections is a judicial obligation and a circumstantial necessity. I hope that Muslims stop yelling at the Islamic centers and Masjids justifying not participating in elections with claims of widespread scandals in the US, especially in the municipality elections.

IOL: Put between two choices of personal benefits — related to candidates’ internal agenda — and the US foreign policy that affects the Muslims world, which choice do you think the US Muslims should ideally go for?

Soltan:In this case I would put methodology instead of a solution. The methodology in such case would be the presence of a Shura council according to the nature of the elections. If it was a local election, then the Shura council would be a local one that would decide which candidate is more appropriate. If it was a presidential election, such as that coming up at the end of 2008, then there has to be formed a Shura council from all US states that will assemble and take one decision. But for one US Muslim to sit alone and start making a judgment of who fits and who does not that is not correct.

Two conditions have to be satisfied in a good candidate: does not be notorious for attacking Islam and to be qualified enough to the positions he is running for.

This Shura council has three levels of choice. The first, is that it chooses the best out of two good candidates incase both had no drawbacks, which does not happen. The second involves choosing between goods and evils, the lesser harm should be warded off for the greater benefit; if the harm is greater, then the benefit should be left. The third point, and which happens a lot in the US, is to choose the lesser of two evils; in the third case, both candidates will do harm to Muslims internally or externally, thus the choice will go to that who will do less harm to Muslims.

Thus, I propose two methodologies, one about decision making through the Muslim Shura councils that will work according to the municipality, state, or the US levels. The second is to value issues according to the best out of two goods, and then judging among the goods and evils, or judging the lesser of two evils concerning Muslims.

This is the methodology and US Muslims can solve problems accordingly.

IOL: What should the US Muslims look for in a presidential candidate?

Soltan:In my book "Muslims Participation in the American Elections: Its Obligation and its Islamic Guidelines," Sultan Publishing, 2005, I said that such conditions that determines an acceptable candidate should include that he does not be notorious for attacking Islam and to be qualified enough to the positions he is running for. If such candidate was not against Islam yet was not qualified enough, then he should not be chosen. If the two mentioned conditions were satisfied a Muslim can accordingly vote for such candidate.

IOL: How do you see the future of the Muslim community in the US? Is it going for a better or worse one?

Soltan:I imagine that the future of the US Muslims is tied up to a number of factors. First is giving more attention to the internal development more than moving and extending outwards in the Da’wah activity. Muslims in the US need much more internal treatment than external one; US and European Muslim communities need to bring up leaders and calibers much more than it is in the rest of the Muslim world.

Secondly, those Muslims must have the abilities to unite themselves behind one cause and say. The Muslim influence is conditioned with unity. As an example, in Birmingham, UK, where there is a high Muslim density, six Muslims ran into elections against each others and the other non-Muslim candidate won the elections because votes were wasted in the competition among the six Muslim candidates. Thus, the nomination of more than one Muslim candidate stood against the success of Muslims. We are facing an actual crisis because we are exerting some real efforts yet such efforts are wasted by disunity.

We do not want to get into a competition and end up with a weak politician that would do more harm than benefit to Muslims.

The third factor that will act towards a better future for the Muslim community is to foster political figures. Most Muslims in the US want to bring up their children to be either a medical doctor or an engineer; there are no Muslim Congressman except for only one who is a doctor and the others are lawyers. We have to direct Muslim youth since high school towards the study of law, but the mentality and culture of the immigrant Muslim community tend to put the study of medicine and engineering ahead of any other field.

Youth have to be directed to the study of political science and law, Allah Almighty said [If they had intended to come out, they would certainly have made some preparation therefore] (At-Tawbah 9:46). We do not want to get into a competition and end up with a weak politician that would do more harm than benefit to Muslims. The Muslim politician should have strength, distinction, ability to deliver strong speeches, and good argumentative powers so that he can command what is right and forbid what is wrong in the correct way.

On the bright side, there is a sister who studied Shari’ah in Zaitouna University and then travelled to Stockholm, Sweden to study the Swedish language and post-graduate degrees. She ran in elections as a member of the municipal council and won; she is an excellent example that should be followed.

Forth, we have to teach the native American people and not only Muslims that acquired the nationality. Till now there are many Americans that have a negative look to non-native immigrants; Native American, white, and African American Muslims have to be taught and trained well to become distinguished lawyers political activists, and I confirm that they can be trained from the Zakah money.

Not only training and education is needed, there have to be leadership positions that such Muslims must be placed in.

Not only training and education is needed, there have to be leadership positions that such Muslims must be placed in. Such practical experience is extremely important so that they can be lively, effective, and powerful leaders that would impress other Americans making them feel that Muslim Americans are also caring for the common interests and not only that of the Muslim community. In my book, I mentioned as the first condition for the participation in the US elections is that the Muslim candidates should observe the welfare of the US society first and then the US Muslims community. When the American common person finds that the Muslim candidate keen on his security, economic wellbeing, cleanliness of streets, the quality of education, the absence of drugs, raping crimes, and violence, this will be the best way to convince Americans that Muslims are different from what Zionists and Islam-enemies are spreading and accusing them of being.

These are the factors that I see determining the future of Muslims in the US. Always I am optimist and I see the future of US Muslims to be more pleasant than now by Allah’s willing.

Abdelrahman Rashdan is a staff writer for the Muslim Affairs section of IslamOnline.net. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, he holds a BA in political science with a specialization in political economy and international relations. Click here to reach him.

The Central Ohio connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — 15 Years Ago Today

On February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center, announcing that war had come to America.

Seven people were murdered that day by Islamic extremists:

John DiGiovanni, 45 (Valley Stream, New York)
Robert Kirkpatrick, 61 (Suffern, New York)
Steven Knapp, 47 (Manhattan, New York City)
William Macko, 57 (Bayonne, New Jersey)
Wilfred Mercado, 37 (Brooklyn, New York City)
Monica Rodriguez Smith and her unborn child (Seaford, New York)

Memorial to the souls lost on 2/26/1993 (destroyed on 9/11)

Another 1,042 people were injured, some severely. The Islamic terrorists who committed this act had intended to kill tens of thousands, if not more.

This day should be important to us in Central Ohio, in that one of the unindicted co-conspirators in this terrorist act, Siraj Wahhaj, named as such by US Attorney Mary Jo White, is a regular speaker in our area. In just the past two years, Wahhaj has been the keynote speaker at fundraising events for Sunrise Academy, Masjid Abubakar Al Siddique, CAIR-Ohio, the Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio, and most recently, the Noor Islamic Cultural Center.

On March 10, 2006, he was the keynote speaker at the Sunrise Academy (the area’s full-time Islamic school) sports complex fundraiser at the Makoy Center in Hilliard. I discussed the event in my article, “Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built”. Here’s the announcement (click to enlarge):



Then on February 16, 2007, Wahhaj again appeared in Central Ohio for a fundraiser for Masjid Abubaker Al Siddique on Sullivant Ave held at Sunrise Academy. This mosque is part of the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus (ISGC). Here is that announcement (click to enlarge):



On June 6, 2006, Siraj Wahhaj was back again in Columbus for a fundraiser for CAIR-OH. I wrote about this event previously, “CAIR’s Blood Money”. CAIR-OH later bragged how the Wahhaj fundraiser had netted them more than $100,000 in one evening to help spread their hate speech and terror apologies. Here is the CAIR press release following the event (click to enlarge):



This past September 9th, Wahhaj was the keynote speaker for the Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio (IFCO), appearing on behalf of his friend Ahmad Al-Akhras, CAIR national vice chairman and president of IFCO. (See our post here, “Mayor Coleman advisor brings hate shiekh to town”, which discusses in detail Wahhaj’s virulent hate speech and violent rhetoric.)

And most recently, Wahhaj was the featured speaker at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Hilliard on December 19, 2007 for their Eid celebration.

Very few Muslims in our area agree with the extremist ideology of Siraj Wahhaj and his local allies. In fact, these events were attended by only a very tiny minority of supporters from the Muslim community. But these same supporters are not only very vocal, but are well-funded, control several of the prominent Islamic institutions in town, and have the ear of our local and state political establishment (as has been observed, Wahhaj’s 2006 CAIR-OH fundraiser was followed in 2007 by an appearance by Governor Strickland, “Not in our name, Gov. Strickland”). As we remember what happened on February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001, it would do us well to remember all those who have been murdered and vow to be vigilant in confronting the hate and extremism that is alive and well in Central Ohio.

Andrew McCarthy, the Assistant US Attorney in charge of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing prosecutions, published an article about the attacks today that is worth reading in its entirety. As you read the excerpt below and the rest of the article, remember that the violence at work on that day 15 years ago is still with us:

On the morning of February 26, 1993, Islamic militants steered a nondescript Ryder van through the winding darkness of the parking garage under the World Trade Center. They had spent years planning this moment in secret meetings at mosques and jailhouses, in rural outposts that served as paramilitary camps, and in safehouses where explosive compounds were mixed in makeshift labs.

Loaded into the van’s rear compartment was a 1,400-pound chemical bomb.

The explosive detonated at a few minutes after noon. The hyper-intensive shockwave bored a six-story canyon into the bowels of the complex. Seven people were killed (one of the six officially listed murder victims having been well along in her pregnancy), over a thousand were injured, and the structural damage would cost nearly a billion dollars to repair.

Amid the terror, the dark cloud that envelops us still 15 years later, was a silver lining. This time, the “battalion of Islam” — as the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, liked to refer to the cells in his emerging jihad army — had failed.

It had been the intention of the World Trade Center bombers to annihilate tens of thousands of Americans, in addition to rendering the world’s most significant financial district uninhabitable. Detonation was consciously timed for maximum carnage: high noon on a Friday, when as many as 120,000 business professionals, laborers, diners, tourists, and area residents typically swarmed the Twin Towers and their immediate Wall Street environs.

More diabolically, not content with their sophisticated, powerfully combustible urea-nitrate mixture, the jihadists laced the compound with deadly sodium cyanide and attempted to boost the explosion with hydrogen tanks. The aim was a horror virtually unimaginable back then (though it is, today, an omnipresent fear): wide dispersal of a lethal, aerated chemical, killing the thousands too distant to be obliterated by the sheer force of the blast.

May God bless the souls of those lost that awful day. And may we never forget.

Hate sheikh featured speaker at upcoming Sunrise Academy fundraiser

Apparently stung by my revealing their past fundraisers featuring hate sheikh Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see, “Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built”), our local fulltime Islamic school in Hilliard, Sunrise Academy, is bringing in the next best thing — Siraj Wahhaj’s running buddy, fellow hate sheikh Abdalla Idris Ali. Sunrise is a program of the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus.

The fundraising event this coming Sunday, December 9th, is scheduled to be held at the University Plaza Hotel (flyer below). Abdalla Idris Ali is best known as the former President of the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and his virulently anti-Jewish and anti-Christian website, Islamicity.com. The website also features videos of extremist speakers, including multiple videos by a US government designated global terrorist and al-Qaeda cleric, in addition to promoting violent interpretations of jihad.

Ali’s presidential tenure of ISNA from 1992–1997 marked one of the most radical periods of the organization’s existence. In 1995 under Ali’s oversight ISNA established a defense fund for HAMAS terrorist leader Musa abu Marzook. Reporters for the St. Petersburg Times examining the organization have described ISNA as “the main clearinghouse for Wahhabism in the US” and say that the group is funded by the Saudi government.

Professor J. Michael Waller testifying before the US Senate Judiciary Committee described ISNA as a group that seeks to marginalize moderate Muslim voices:

The Islamic Society of North America is an influential front for the promotion of the Wahhabi political, ideological and theological infrastructure in the United States and Canada. Established by the Muslim Students Association, ISNA seeks to marginalize leaders of the Muslim faith who do not support its ideological goals. Through sponsorship of propaganda, doctrinal material and mosques, is pursuing a strategic objective of dominating Islam in North America.

Then there is Ali’s founding and continued leadership of Islamicity, a subscription website that openly advocates writings denouncing Jews and Christians as “disbelievers” and advances an extremist view of jihad. Here is a video of Idris Ali fundraising for the Islamicity website. Among the writings promoted at the Islamicity online library is an article entitled “The Corruption of the Torah” saying about Jews that “Allah has told us of the hatred they hide in their hearts”. Another article is entitled, “Confirmation That Judaism And Christianity Are Forms Of Disbelief”.

Then under its definition of jihad, it calls violent jihad against the “enemies of Islam” as the highest and most noble form (so much for the “lesser jihad”!):

Q308: Jihad: Basic definition of A308 : Jihad could be a simple action, such as standing firm in defense of the cause of Islam. This may require speaking out in public, against ignoring Islamic principles, and writing articles or publishing books. It may also take the form of reminding people of their Islamic duties and motivating them to conduct their lives according to Islam. Its top and most noble form is to fight the enemies of Islam in battle in order to foil their attempts to smother the call of Islam.

Perhaps even more troubling is Islamicity’s video channel dedicated exclusively to al-Qaeda cleric and Specially Designated Global Terrorist Abdul-Majeed Al-Zindani (see John Devon’s article, “Yemeni Shiekh of Hate”). Al-Zindani is considered one of Osama bin Laden’s mentor. Another video channel of Islamic conferences feature some of the most extreme Islamic leaders in the US, including our own former Hilliard HAMAS cleric, Salah Sultan (who fled the country for Bahrain earlier this year). We should also remember that Sultan was a regular fixture at Sunrise Academy during his years of residence in Central Ohio, and he used Sunrise Academy as a base of operations.

Another Sunrise Academy fundraiser, another hate sheikh. Go figure.

CBN News: Jihad in Central Ohio

(Sorry, I’m a couple of weeks late getting this up.)

Ohio No Stranger to Radical Islam
By Erick Stakelbeck
CBN News Terror Analyst
October 27, 2007
CBNNews.com — COLUMBUS, Ohio — One traditional Middle Eastern grocery is painted to match the distinctive red, white, black and green of the Palestinian flag. Over the meat counter hangs a flag often flown at rallies for the terrorist group Hamas.

But this grocery store isn’t located in Gaza or the West Bank. It’s in Hilliard, Ohio: a sleepy suburb of Columbus. It seems an unlikely battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but support for the Palestinian cause runs deep.

“We are critical of our government policy in the Middle East, and its blind support of Israel,” Mahmoud El-Yousseph, a local columnist said.

A Palestinian native, El-Yousseph writes about Muslim issues. He says many Muslims in Columbus feel the U.S. has neglected the Palestinians.

He said, “Our foreign policy in the Middle East, it stinks. It needs a tune up, and we’re going to speak about it, whether people like it or not.”

El-Yousseph served 20 years in the U.S. military. His son is serving in Iraq now. He says patriotism isn’t an issue for this Muslim community.

“We are God fearing, law abiding American citizens,” El-Yousseph said. “We love this country. We want to work together for the common good of our national defense.”

A Jihad Hotbed?
Patrick Poole isn’t so sure. A writer and consultant on terrorism-related issues, he returned to the Columbus area recently after a ten year absence.

“After a decade away, to come back and see all the changes that Hilliard had gone through and then to find out that we are essentially a center of jihad — one of the hottest centers of jihad in the country — was just mind blowing,” Poole said.

Columbus is no stranger to Islamic radicalism. Members of an al-Qaeda cell attended a local mosque. Two of the men were convicted on federal terrorism charges. One plotted to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge. Another planned to blow up a local shopping mall.

Federal law enforcement officials say other members of the cell are still on the loose.

That al-Qaeda cell was one of the largest yet discovered in America. El-Yousseph says he and other local Muslims condemned those involved.

But Poole says support for two other terror groups is widespread among Columbus Muslims.

“Hamas and Hezbollah and everything going on in Israel are really the linchpin issues of radicalization here in Columbus,” Poole said.

According to Poole, there’s a budding Hamas support network in the area. He says much of this network leads back to one man — Dr. Salah Sultan.

Poole said, “I discovered that Dr. Salah Sultan — a very prominent international cleric who’s closely associated with Yusuf Qaradawi — was living right around the corner from my own home.”

Sultan’s relationship with Qaradawi is the first thing that caught Poole’s attention. Qaradawi is listed by the U.S. as a specially designated global terrorist. He’s openly advocated suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. He’s also called on Muslims to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.

A Closer Look
Terrorism expert Steven Emerson has followed Sultan and Qaradawi’s activities closely.

“Sultan is an acolyte of Qaradawi,” said Steven Emerson, of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “And Qaradawi is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who has called for killing Americans and killing Jews”

Their relationship is so close that Sultan joined in honoring Qaradawi at a reception this summer.

Emerson said, “The fact that Sultan is hanging out with these men indicates exactly where he stands.”

Qaradawi is a leader of The Muslim Brotherhood, a jihadist movement that seeks to establish worldwide Islamic law. An exclusive interview with Sultan was featured on the Brotherhood’s Web site last year.

El-Yousseph told CBN News that Sultan is a Muslim scholar. He says Sultan’s views aren’t extreme, and that he even supports women’s rights in countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Sultan’s views on 9/11 are more problematic. He told Saudi TV the attacks were planned by the U.S. government.

“The entire thing was of a large scale and was planned within the U.S., in order to enable the U.S. to control and terrorize the entire world,” Sultan said.

Sultan recently left his home in an affluent Columbus suburb and now lives in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain.

His application for U.S. citizenship was denied after he appeared at a Hamas rally in Turkey last summer. But he’s still allowed to enter the U.S. and move around freely.

Sultan agreed to a phone interview with CBN News, but later cancelled.

Poole says Sultan continues to be influential in the Columbus area’s Muslim community.

“Dr. Sultan was insulated into all of the major Islamic institutions here in Columbus,” Poole said. “The Islamic Society of Greater Columbus, Sunrise Academy — the private islamic school — the Al Noor Center, he was preaching at several other mosques. He was all over the place and integrated into all those institutions.”

For example, one site that used to be Hilliard’s public library is now home home to Sunrise Academy, a K–8 Islamic school. Sultan lectured there on a regular basis. Siraj Wahhaj also appeared there recently. He’s an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

El-Yousseph says Sultan and other Muslims in Columbus have been singled out unfairly since 9/11.

He said, “Most Muslims I know are professional here. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, grocers, schoolteachers who love this country, who left overseas because of religious persecution. They want to be here for a better life. They’re not here to betray America and stab it in the back.”

Emerson says that’s exactly the case with Sultan.

“Salah Sultan has made incredibly incendiary comments about Jews, about jihad.” he said. “This is not someone we want in the United States.”

CAIR-Ohio official: Palestinian terrorists are “guerrilla groups”

A few days ago I posted a comment by Norma Tarazi (“ISGC official Norma Tarazi comments on the ‘Jewish lobby’ in Columbus”), a CAIR-Ohio board member, an official for the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus (ISGC), as well as a teacher at the Sunrise Academy Islamic school in Hilliard, where she pondered on the activities of the “Jewish lobby” and “Jewish community activists” in response to an August 20th letter to the editor by Ahmad Al-Akhras published in the Columbus Dispatch. I noted that someone had responded to that letter in Sunday’s Dispatch, and wondered what her response would be. I didn’t have to wait long.

On Sunday, Tarazi circulated her thoughts on this most recent exchange, engaging in even more moral equivalence between accepted methods of warfare between nation-states and terrorist activities by Palestinians. She responds by stating that these terrorist organizations are “guerrilla groups” and are engaged in legitimate resistance. The letter to the editor she is responding to, “Israel within rights to protect itself”, said:

I respond to the Aug. 20 letter “Authorities should not advocate violence,” from [CAIR national vice chairman] Ahmad Al-Akhras. He seems to have a double standard: It’s OK for Hamas to throw rockets into Israel at civilian targets, but not OK for Israel to retaliate against that terrorist group, whose aim is to destroy the Jewish state. . .

In his authoritative book on guerrilla warfare, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, Bard O’Neill distinguishes guerrilla campaigns from terrorist activity in that “its primary targets are the government’s armed forces, police, or their superior units, and in some cases, key economic targets, rather than unarmed civilians.” (p. 26)

When HAMAS and Palestinian Islamic Jihad sends suicide bombers into a crowded pizza parlor or a city bus; or as we saw this past weekend, fires a missile into a day care center compound; they are not engaging in guerrilla tactics but terrorism. It is profoundly troubling that CAIR officials continue to miss this crucial difference and attempt to paint terrorism as legitimate resistance. Isn’t this unqualified equivalence between warfare and terrorism that CAIR officials desperately profess they don’t make, and yet resort to almost constantly when pressed on this point?

Tarazi also fails to acknowledge that Palestinians have repeatedly tried to unsuccessfully use military means to destroy Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, which is slightly more than the “ethnic group” conflict she describes. In her message reprinted below she leaves open the question of whether Israel is a nation-state at all, and also characterizes Palestinian terror attacks as “minuscule”:

Asalaam alaikum to all,

We now have a response to Ahmad’s article two weeks ago, Monday letter. Points to note: Ahmad was using facts to demonstrate that there are extremists advocating violence against civilians on both sides of the Palestine/Isreal [sic] conflict. The writer of this response does not see that he had a balanced article. The concern is not which region has a better government, Ghaza or Isreal [sic], or that Isreal [sic] has the right to protect itself. I will make a few points. I hope someone can write effectively to respond to this letter.

If Isreal [sic] is a sovereign state, for almost 60 years it has not been accepted or recognized by the people it surplanted [sic], no matter how harshly it has implimented [sic] ethnic intimidation, ethnic cleansing of areas, and massive retaliation against civilians in response to the attacks by guerrilla groups. Shock and awe campaigns like Hiroshima and Dresden are only good as war tactics for the immediate psychological impact and, if they do not create quick capitulation of the enemy, they are worthless. (I’m ignoring the whole argument of the morality of these campaigns.) Though they could theoretically be repeated over and over, if the enemy refuses to give in, they would eventually result in genocide, an unacceptable outcome.

If Isreal [sic] has the right to self defense, so do the Palestinians. They do not have the weapons of Isreal [sic], but there is no peace treaty or agreement. It is a double standard to claim that Israel has the right to conduct war and cite Hiroshima as justification for killing civilians among the enemy fighters, and cry foul when Palestinians attack in what ever miniscule [sic] way they find available.

World War II was a large conflict involving nation states and armies in uniform. The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is about two ethnic groups fighting over the same land. The Israelis have created a state and army but the Palestinians have yet to truely [sic] do so. Palestinian fighters are guerrilla groups. This is a different kind of warfare and takes different methods.

While in history we can find examples where ethnic cleansing and genocide took place, the modern world does not accept these methods of warfare any more. Where populations were willing to accept any sacrifice and not give up their fight, these are the only tools available to the military to end the conflict permanently. Examples are Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kurdistan, and others.

Since these two tools are no longer available to civilized countries, the only true means of achieving peace is through diplomacy. With entrenched positions on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflicts, the moderates of both sides need to come together. Each side must work to silence or ignore its own extremist elements if peace is to be achieved, and a win/win compromise must be reached, where each side feels it is giving up the crown jewels perhaps, but where the solution to the conflict is finally seen as worth the sacrifice.

Since Palestinians have been suffering the most throughout the 60 years, they will have the most to gain in a peace settlement, if it gives them enough to ensure that the majority will accept it, and may be seen as “the winners” because of this, but Israelis will have to look at the long term challenges of water shortages, increasing Arab-Israeli population and the long term gains to be made by coming to peace with its neighbors.

The psychological scaring of people that has already occured [sic] will take a few generations to overcome. We have only to see the psychological scaring [sic] of African Americans and Native Americans that still exists because of the history of oppression these groups have undergone in history. It is inevitable that both Jews, with the scars of oppression brought from Europe, and Palestinians, with the scars of oppression from Israeli occupation, will have a hard road to learn to live together in peace.

Norma Tarazi

We are seeing a pattern develop amongst these extremists: what they say publicly (e.g. peddling themselves as “interfaith” or “human rights” activists”) is entirely different from what they say amongst themselves privately.

Again, my continued thanks to members of the local Muslim community who are willing to pass along these messages in concern for the extremist elements that have falsely claimed leadership as spokesmen for all Muslims in our area. It is only through the cooperation of Muslims and non-Muslims alike that we will be able to confront Islamist extremism in Central Ohio.

ISGC official Norma Tarazi comments on the “Jewish Lobby” in Columbus

A concerned member of the Central Ohio Muslim community forwarded me the email below from an official of the Islamic Society of Greater Columbus (ISGC), Norma Tarazi, commenting on the “Jewish lobby” in Columbus in demonstraton of the virulent anti-Jewish propaganda being advanced by ISGC leaders. The individual who sent this was clearly disturbed by the anti-Jewish sentiments expressed in the email reprinted below. This goes to show that there are sane voices in the Columbus Muslim community — they just aren’t the voices that are being heard.

What we see here below is that Norma Tarazi, the editor of the ISGC’s newsletter and a teacher at the ISGC’s Sunrise Academy Islamic school in Hilliard, is sure that there is some hidden meaning in that “Jewish community activists” haven’t responded to Ahmad Al-Akhras’ recent Dispatch letter to the editor, i.e., “They are up to something because they aren’t doing anything.”

Note in Tarazi’s email she isn’t criticizing Israel; she doesn’t say “Israel lobby”, but her suspicion is cast on the “Jewish community activists” and the "Jewish lobby” in Columbus. And this from someone who represents herself to be a “bridge builder” in the community. Is this the kind of open racial and religious hatred that is being taught at Sunrise Academy and in ISGC facilities?

Absolutely outrageous.

Asalaam alaikum,

Some things should be noticed for their absence. Until now, no one has responded to Ahmad’s article of last Monday. His article is strong, with solid facts and balanced, not making any sweeping generalizations against a whole group.

A few years ago the local Jewish community activists would respond immediately and forcefully, calling any criticism of any Jew “antisemetic”, as leaders in the national community have criticised former President Jimmy Carter.

The criticism last week from Larry Pollack about another article was noteworthy because he is an older contributer, repeating the same old argument he has written for years. I thought he had been sidelined in recent years as a writer because he was seen as ineffective.

I’m uncertain what this portends for the Jewish lobby in Columbus, but it is worth noting.

Norma Tarazi

You have to wonder what new “Jewish lobby” conspiracy Tarazi will spy in the Columbus after the Dispatch published this morning a letter from Barbara Soloway responding to Al-Akhras, “Israel within rights to protect itself”:

I respond to the Aug. 20 letter “Authorities should not advocate violence,” from Ahmad Al-Akhras. He seems to have a double standard: It’s OK for Hamas to throw rockets into Israel at civilian targets, but not OK for Israel to retaliate against that terrorist group, whose aim is to destroy the Jewish state. . .

In light of the Susan Purtee incident publicized last week, it is important to recognize and address the anti-Jewish sub-currents in our community, which means that the religious and ethnic hatred expressed by Norma Tarazi ought to also be condemned as vigorously as Purtee’s. And as Soloway expresses in her letter, the moral equivalency engaged in by her buddy and Mayor Coleman advisor, Ahmad Al-Akhras, in equating terrorism by HAMAS with the legitimate military response by Israel to terror attacks ought to be equally condemned as well.

My thanks to the members of the Muslim community who reject the extremism of local organizations like the ISGC and who are tired of having such notorious hatemongers and apologists for terror as Ahmad Al-Akhras and Norma Tarazi falsely claiming to represent all Muslims in Central Ohio. We welcome your continued input and cooperation in exposing the fringe elements that have tried to poison the discourse and derail interfaith relations in our community.

Mayor Coleman advisor brings hate sheikh to town

Guess who Mayor Michael Coleman advisor Ahmad Al-Akhras is bringing to town? None other than hate sheikh extraordinaire, Siraj Wahhaj. Two peas in a pod.

On February 2, 1995, Siraj Wahhaj was named by US Attorney Mary Jo White as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people, injured 1,042 others, and foreshadowed the horror of 9/11.

On September 8, 2007, Ahmad Al-Akhras, close advisor to Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman and president of the Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio (IFCO), will host Siraj Wahhaj as guest speaker at an IFCO fundraising dinner here in Columbus. Mayor Coleman has appointed Al-Akhras to numerous Columbus city government boards, commissions and committees. (UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Al-Akhras is also on the city’s Community Relations Commission. I know — the irony!)

I guess it is only appropriate that at the same time Mayor Coleman is dealing with anti-Semitism in the Columbus Police Department, that he shows his solidarity by having his friend and advisor Al-Akhras bring to Columbus one of the most notorious hate sheikhs in America. How’s that for sympathy?

Siraj Wahhaj says that he isn’t sure that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11; he calls for the return of the global Islamic caliphate and the imposition of Islamic shari’a law, including punishment by amputations and stoning; and he calls for the violent overthrow of American government.

Wahhaj even served as a defense character witness in the trial of blind hate sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who was a regular feature in Wahhaj’s mosque until he was convicted for seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prision for his leadership in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot. Rahman’s followers were responsible for the 1997 attack on European tourists in Luxor, Egypt, which killed 58.

Even the Left-leaning publication, Salon, has spoken out concerning Wahhaj’s extremist views and the reluctance of CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper to address them:

Nor could he be asked about CAIR board member Siraj Wahaj. Wahaj, the imam of the Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, decried on TV the Sept. 11 attacks as “criminal” and “wrong.” But Wahaj also had invited convicted terrorist Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman to speak at his mosque, and even testified on his behalf. Before then, in 1991, speaking to the Islamic Association of North Texas, Wahaj called Operation Desert Storm “one of the most diabolical plots ever in the annals of history,” and that the war was “part of a larger plan, to destroy the greatest challenge to the Western world, and that’s Islam.” Just as the USSR fell, so too will the U.S., Wahaj said, “unless America changes its course from the new world order and accepts the Islamic agenda.” (“Islam’s Flawed Spokesman”, Salon [09/26/2001])

As the Church Lady used to say, “Well, isn’t that special?”

Thanks to Al-Akhras, Wahhaj has become a regular staple on the Columbus fundraising circuit. Earlier this year I had two articles published concerning past appearances by hate sheikh Wahhaj in town: at the June 2006 CAIR-OH fundraiser; a March 2006 Sunrise Academy fundraiser; and a February 2007 fundraiser for the Abubaker Al-Siddique mosque (see “CAIR’s Blood Money” and “Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built”).

Here’s a sampling of Wahhaj’s greatest hits taken from my two FrontPage articles linked to above:

Paul Barrett, an editor for Business Week and author of the recent book, American Islam: Struggle for the Soul of Religion, has spent considerable time with Wahhaj and made him one of the primary subjects in his book (read the introduction to Barrett’s book at the Washington Post). Barrett has previously described the transformation of America into an Islamic state that Wahhaj would like to see:

He has told his followers that a society governed by strict Islamic law, in which adulterers would be stoned to death and thieves would have their hands cut off, would be superior to American democracy. Speaking of unnamed forces in the U.S. government and media, he has preached, “These people want the destruction of Islam.” (“One Imam Traces the Path of Islam in Black America”, Wall Street Journal [October 24, 2003])

Barrett also describes how Wahhaj brushes off evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11, including dismissing bin Laden’s own video pronouncements claiming responsibility for the terror attacks, preferring to remain “neutral” on the subject:

He says the al-Qaeda leader’s videotaped boasting about the attacks may have been a media ruse: “I’m just not so sure I want to be one of the ones who say, ‘Yeah, he did it. He’s a horrible man.’” (Ibid.)

Elsewhere Wahhaj has offered a grotesque convergence of bin Laden’s calls for the revival of the Islamic caliphate with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech, envisioning an Islamic supremacist society:

“I have a vision in America, Muslims owning property all over, Muslim businesses, factories, halal meat, supermarkets, all these buildings owned by Muslims. Can you see the vision, can you see the Newark International Airport and a John Kennedy Airport and La Guardia having Muslim fleets of planes, Muslim pilots. Can you see our trucks rolling down the highways, Muslim names. Can you imagine walking down the streets of Teaneck, [New Jersey]: three Muslim high schools, five Muslim junior-high schools, fifteen public schools. Can you see the vision, can you see young women walking down the street of Newark, New Jersey, with long flowing hijab and long dresses. Can you see the vision of an area . . . controlled by the Muslims?” (quoted in Daniel Pipes, “The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America”, Commentary [Nov. 2001])

How is this Islamic supremacist society governed by an Islamic caliph supposed to come about? Wahhaj is not shy about laying out his plan for violent revolutionary action by Muslims:

“[I]f only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word if eight million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” (quoted in Jagan Kaul, “Kashmir: Kashmiri Pundit View-point,” Kashmir Telegraph [May 2002])

And what message does Sunrise Academy send to its non-Muslim neighbors by hosting Siraj Wahhaj? In an audiotape message Wahhaj speaks of his love for the kuffar (infidel):

“. . . And he [Allah] declared ‘Whoever is at war with my friends, I declare war on them.’ Who is a friend of Allah? [He chants a passage in Arabic] Allah. Your true friend is Allah, the messenger, and those who believe. Americans and Canadians. Hear it well. Hear what I’m telling you well. The Americans are not your friends, hear what I’m telling you, hear it well. The Canadians are not your friends, hear what I’m telling you, hear it well. The Europeans are not your friends. Your friend is Allah, the Messenger and those who believe. These people will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. They will never be satisfied with you. . .” (audiotape, “The Afghanistan Jihad” [September 28, 1991]; quoted in “UCLA Sponsors of Terrorism”, FrontPage Magazine [April 4, 2003])

If you think I’m exagerating about the virulent message of hate spewed by Siraj Wahhaj, following this link to the Investigative Project website where you can see a video of Wahhaj in action, where he condemns America as “a garbage can”:

Demonize Saddam Hussein. Blow them up, no one say anything about it. Demonize Libya, Qadaffi, blow them up, attack them, no one say anything. Demonize Khomeini, all of the leaders, demonize them one by one by one. Demonize all the Muslim leaders and then when they come to get us no one will open their mouth because see he is a terrorist, it says so right here in the paper.

Alhamdulilah We gotta response for them. Who are the real terrorists? It’s not the Muslims, but the real terrorists is some segments of the United States government.

You know what this country is? It’s a garbage can. It’s filthy, filthy and sick. This country is taking our children. We’re trying to raise them up righteous. And you with your sick, low morals grabbing them, trying to teach a man how to be respectful towards his wife. And you got perversity all over. Wicked filth everywhere.

Wahhaj’s appearance at the fundraiser was announced in an email earlier this week from Mayor Coleman advisor Ahmad Al-Akhras himself:

Salam to all

The Islamic Foundation of Central Ohio (IFCO) cordially invites you and your family to attend the “Annual Fundraising Dinner” at the Asian Cusine [sic], 8008 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43235 @ 6:00 P.M. on Sunday, September 9, 2007.

We would be honored if you and your family would join us.

Dinner Ticket Cost: $25 per ticket

Our Guest Speakers: Imam Siraj Wahhaj & Dr. Parvez Ahmed, CAIR Chairman

Please give us a call or reply back to us as soon as possible so that we could plan dinner order accordingly. We are expecting over 250 people would join us at the program. So please confirm your dinner tickets as early as possible.

Please support our fundraising effort to build a new “Community Center” on the Sunbury land and to up keep our existing facilities at the Broad Street and Cook Road. Allah will give you a reward to support this worthy cause.

If you can not attend, please send your tax deductible donations payable to “IFCO” and to be mailed at the following address:

IFCO
P.O. Box 1055
Columbus, OH 43216-1055

FOR TICKETS, PLEASE CALL:
Abdo Abdouni [ph. # removed]
Ahmad Al-Akhras [ph. # removed]
Siraj Haji [ph. # removed]
Fatimata Kamara [ph. # removed]
Sohail Khan [ph. # removed]
Abukar Osman [ph. # removed]
Mohamed Shareef [ph. # removed]
M. Rustam Ali [ph. # removed]

We appreciate your support for IFCO.

My sincere thanks to the brave soul and member of the Central Ohio Muslim community who sent this announcement to me, who obviously requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Al-Akhras crew of thugs. They said it was sent because they are gravely concerned with the long string of extremists and hate preachers that Ahmad Al-Akhras and his network of associates are regularly bringing into our area, the radicalizing influence they are having on local Muslim institutions, and the direct threat they pose to Central Ohio. This is proof of what I have been contending all along that the Al-Akhras/CAIR-OH network of extremists who are the loudest and most obnoxious members of the Muslim community here in the Columbus area are not representative of it, but instead, are only its’ most radical and extreme element. Central Ohio Muslims deserve better public representatives than CAIR, ISGC, ICFO and Ahmad Al-Akhras.

Most Central Ohio Muslims reject the extremist views of Siraj Wahhaj and Ahmad Al-Akhras. Mayor Michael Coleman, on the other hand, embraces them in his bosom.

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.

Sunrise Academy’s Fundraising Friends

An article in today’s FrontPage Magazine, “Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built”, reports that Sunrise Academy in Hilliard, the only full-time Islamic school in Central Ohio, has twice used Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and close personal friend of “Blind Shiekh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, for fundraisers for the school. Abdel-Rahman was convicted of “seditious conspiracy” and given a life sentence for his role in the 1993 WTC bombing, and Wahhaj appeared in court as a character witness for Abdel-Rahman’s defense.

In March 2006, Wahhaj was brought in to help raise funds for Sunrise Academy’s new sports complex, an event that was held at the Makoy Center in Hilliard (coincidentally, the same facility visited in November 2006 by First Lady Laura Bush for a fundraiser for Cong. Deborah Pryce). That fundraiser was apparently so successful that Wahhaj was brought in again by Sunrise Academy this past February to raise money for the school.

As the article this morning notes, this is not the first time that Wahhaj has been used by a Central Ohio organization for fundraising purposes. Back in March, it was reported (“CAIR’s Blood Money”) that CAIR-Ohio brought Wahhaj in June 2006 for another fundraiser, where he raised $100,000 for the “civil rights” organization, as noted in a CAIR press release.

Today’s article offers quotes by Wahhaj to give readers an idea of Wahhaj’s positions. In one he calls for Muslims to takeover America:

“[I]f only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we would elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word if eight million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”

In another, he outlines his vision for an Islamic supremacist society:

“I have a vision in America, Muslims owning property all over, Muslim businesses, factories, halal meat, supermarkets, all these buildings owned by Muslims. Can you see the vision, can you see the Newark International Airport and a John Kennedy Airport and La Guardia having Muslim fleets of planes, Muslim pilots. Can you see our trucks rolling down the highways, Muslim names. Can you imagine walking down the streets of Teaneck, [New Jersey]: three Muslim high schools, five Muslim junior-high schools, fifteen public schools. Can you see the vision, can you see young women walking down the street of Newark, New Jersey, with long flowing hijab and long dresses. Can you see the vision of an area . . . controlled by the Muslims?”

Paul Barrett, an editor for Business Week and author of the recent book, American Islam: Struggle for the Soul of Religion, explains the kind of justice that would be administered in Wahhaj’s Islamic America:

He has told his followers that a society governed by strict Islamic law, in which adulterers would be stoned to death and thieves would have their hands cut off, would be superior to American democracy.

And having spent significant amounts of time with Wahhaj, Barrett describes how he rises to the defense of Osama bin Laden, saying that he wants to remain neutral on bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11:

He says the al-Qaeda leader’s videotaped boasting about the attacks may have been a media ruse: “I’m just not so sure I want to be one of the ones who say, ‘Yeah, he did it. He’s a horrible man.’”

Surely Sunrise Academy will claim that this is nothing but “guilt by association”, but is their position really defensible? Wahhaj’s extremist public statements and his associations and public defense of convicted terrorists are well known. Sunrise Academy can’t claim that they weren’t aware. And yet they publicly chose not only to voluntarily associate with Wahhaj, but they brought him in to represent their organization for fundraising purposes.

Let’s not forget that Sunrise Academy was also the operational hub of Hilliard resident and Muslim Brotherhood operative Salah Sultan (see our recent post, “The Hilliard-HAMAS-Muslim Brotherhood Connection”). Sunrise Academy has many associations they should feel guilty about.

Today’s article promises more explosive revelations about the extensive network of Islamic radicalism in Central Ohio, which apparently extend into the corridors of political power. We can’t wait to see what those articles reveal.