Exposing the real Imam Rauf

Visit our News page Exposing the real Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf This past Friday, President Obama waded into the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, asserting it was a religious freedom issue. Memo to President Obama and the politically correct elites in media, politics, academia and elsewhere: We’re not disputing First Amendment rights here. We are not opposed to the first amendment right to build a mosque. We are opposed to the erection of a mosque on the sacred ground of Ground Zero, because this will be viewed by tens of millions in the Muslim world as a victory shrine. This will embolden those committed to jihad against America and swell their ranks. We are opposed to the stunning insensitivity toward the 9/11 victims by Imam Rauf and those supporting him in this endeavor. And we are concerned about the real agenda for this mosque, an agenda that includes the advance of sharia law, which is why we bring you this email today. In this extensive expose’ below learn for yourself who the real Imam Rauf is—hardly the “moderate” he and his apologists claim he is. If you haven’t yet done so, please sign our petition opposing the Ground Zero Mosque. One national poll now shows that 54% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, and 82% of Republicans are opposed to the Ground Zero Mosque. Feisal Abdul Rauf By Alyssa Lappen An investigative report prepared for ACT! for America Feisal Abdul Rauf, born in Kuwait in 1948, boasts of his issue from an “Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship.” 1 He presents himself as a Muslim moderate.2 Yet Feisal Rauf's Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets. Evidence of family, and direct Rauf Muslim Brotherhood connections Rauf's father Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf (1917-2004), was an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) founder Hassan al-Banna. Rauf's father studied and taught at Islam's closest equivalent to the Vatican --- Al-Azhar University --- beside Hassan al-Banna, perpetuating the pious family tradition of radicalism. In 1948, Rauf's father fled Egypt, during its first MB crackdown; Feisal was born in Kuwait. 3 In 1965, Feisal's father left Malaysia for New York City to stealthily buy two thirds of an E. 96th Street block for an Islamic “personal trust,” revealing its $1.3 million Islamic money from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya only after construction of the MB mosque began in 1984. 4 Likewise, 46 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) nations funded the $17 million Islamic Cultural Center, only after its 1992 opening did Rauf's father reveal that funding source or admit his long-term plans for discriminatory Muslim-only housing for the Islamic complex. 5 Rauf's father named Feisal as a permanent trustee of the MB mosque. Under Feisal's permanent trusteeship, ICC employed Al-Azhar imam Muhammad Gemeaha. A week after fleeing the U.S. on Sept. 28, 2001 he stated, “only the Jews” could have perpetrated 9/11; Allah says Jews “disseminate corruption in the land,” spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs.” Americans would exterminate Jews like “Hitler did” if they knew. ICC then hired Al-Azhar envoy Omar Saleem Abu-Namous. He too saw no “conclusive evidence” that Muslims committed the atrocities, but rather saw Muslims as innocent victims. 6 At Perdana Global Peace Organization, an MB, Hamas and al-Qaeda affiliate, Rauf is second in command to antisemitic former Malaysian P.M. and Islamic law advocate Mahathir Mohamad,7 who in Nov. 2002, incited global anti-West financial war as a “jihad worth fighting for.”8 On May 7, 2010, Rauf himself stated, “Some people say ... Muslims ... attacked on 9/11 … ”9 In 2001 on 60 Minutes, Rauf called U.S. policies “an accessory to the crime that happened,” and said, “In … the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.” 10 Rauf wants to impose sharia in the U.S. His 2004 book, What's Right with Islam, is translated into Malay as the Call from the WTC Rubble. 11 In Dec. 2007 Rauf promoted the book at a Kuala Lumpur Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) meeting. 12 Banned in Germany since 2003 and outlawed in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, among other places --- the organization is ideologically akin to the MB. In the fiscal year ended Jun. 30, 2009, Feisal's ASMA accepted at least $1.3 million, including $576,312 from Qatar,13 whose government stands accused of funding international terrorism, has long harbored terror financiers, and for decades hosted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Rauf is quite friendly with Qaradawi, a large, founding shareholder in terror-funding al-Taqwa Bank who champions sharia law, wife beating and suicide bombing. 14 Rauf concluded in the Washington Post, shortly after President Obama's June 2009 Cairo speech, that he'd challenged Muslims to “Live up to the tenets of our religion, embrace Shariah law as conceived by the Prophet, and see what happens.” 15 Rauf seeks more U.S. legal “leeway” for sharia --- to put Muslims above the law --- by “[Inviting] voices of all religions to join the dialogue in shaping the nation’s practical life, [and allowing] religious communities ... to judge ...according to their own laws.16 On Dec. 9, 2007, Rauf said in Arabic to Sa’da Abdul Maksoud of the Hadi-el-Islam website, that current, unjust governments, “do not follow Islamic laws.” He advocates establishing sharia “in more [ways than one] ... through a kingdom or a democracy, [so long as the] fundamentals of Shariah [exist, with standards of Muslim scholars] required to govern. ...to organize ... relationships between government ... and the governed.” 17 In March 2010, also in Arabic, Rauf stridently denounced interfaith discussions. “I don't believe in interfaith dialogue,” he said in an article that highlighted his statement in its headline. 18 Rauf's Manhattan ASMA offices at 475 Riverside Drive occupy the suite next door to Council of American-Islamic-Relations (CAIR) of NY; its national parent is the U.S. arm of the MB terrorist group, Hamas, and an unindicted coconspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror financing case in which the organization and five officers were convicted.19 At the Jul. 13, 2010 New York Landmarks hearing on the fate a 152-year-old wrought-iron era building where a piece of jet fuselage fell through its roof on 9/11 --- CAIR-NY executive director Zaed Ramadan supported destroying the structure opposite Ground Zero to build Rauf's 15 story mosque, a monument to Muslim victory to tower above the memorial site. 20 Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan in 2009 both refused to sign a Freedom Pledge to protect former Muslims from the death sentence sought by most sharia interpretations for Muslim apostates. On Oct. 20, 2009, Former Muslims United asked ASMA's executives to pledge to “renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates ..., [however] that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the [apostate's] family, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.”21 Rauf's 2000 and 2004 books both laud sharia and envision implementing it in the U.S. – and “rejuvenating” the Islamic spirit of 14th century jurist Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah and his 18th century heir Muhammad bin Abdul al-Wahhab. Rauf also lauds purported “modernists” Jamal al-Dinal-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) who revered Wahhabis, Ibn Taymiyyah and like Rauf pretended sharia – with perennial jihad and countless strictures on non-Muslims and women – complements Western ideas like those in the U.S. Bill of Rights. 22 Rauf also authorized two mainstay MB organizations, the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to produce “a special non-commercial edition” of his 2004 book to promote “proper [Western] understanding of Islam...”23 Rauf's ASMA in 2004 established the purportedly liberal Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow.24 Its liberal faces are largely overwhelmed by sharia devotees like al Qaeda supporter Yasir Qadhi,25 CAIR-NY community affairs director Faiza N. Ali --- who co-authored CAIR's fallacious “denunciation” of a superb 2008 NYPD report on homegrown jihadists --- and CAIR-NY community organizer Debbie Almontaser, who once ran the city's Khalil Gibran Academy.26 Since at least 2006, Rauf's U.S.-based Cordoba Initiative has partnered with Gallup Organization and “Sunni and Shi'a scholars from Morocco to Indonesia” to create “an Islamic legal benchmark for measuring 'Islamicity' of a state”---sharia index---for official, state, public and press use in the “Muslim and Western worlds.” He initiated the project, funded by Malaysia and many other nations in the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). 27 A key sharia index board member, Jasser Auda, doubles on the academic council at the U.K. the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) office and in summer 2010 taught with Muslim Brotherhood heavies---e.g. former ISNA leadership development head Louay Safi, IIIT v.p. and NAIT founding general manager Jamal Barzinji and Minaret of Freedom head Imad Ad Deen Ahmad, present at the Beirut terrorist convention in January 2001. No mistaking their intent. Click here to continue reading this report. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACT for America P.O. Box 12765 Pensacola, FL 32591 www.actforamerica.org ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure. 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