Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including:
Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security Adviser
Tom Donilon and White House spokeswoman
Jennifer Palmieri. But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting.
Smith also thanked Bin Bayyah for "his efforts to bring more
understanding amongst humanity" during the meeting, the Bin Bayyah
account said.
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments between June 14 and Tuesday.
Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah posted this photo of his June 13 White House meeting.
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Bin Bayyah lobbied the White House to "take urgent action" to help
Syrian rebels. "We demand Washington take a greater role in [Syria],"
Bin Bayyah
told Al-Jazeera. President Obama later
announced plans to arm Syrian rebels.
In granting Bin Bayyah a visa, White House officials ignored his
radical statements as well as his close connection to Qaradawi. The
IUMS's hostility toward Israel, and its support of terrorists, is well
documented. Bin Bayyah falls comfortably in line with that view.
For example, in a 2011
statement on his Arabic-language website,
he criticized the West for placing Palestinian terrorist groups such as
Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others in the same category as
al-Qaida:
"[P]lacing the Palestinian resistance, which defends internationally
recognized rights, on an equal footing with intercontinental terrorist
organizations (al-Qaida) is not based on any moral principle and would
be detrimental to the cause of the fight against terrorism and mix the
cards and raises questions to the world conscience and serves
terrorists."
The IUMS
welcomed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a member in
February 2012.
The "Union will spare nothing in the service of the Palestinian people,
praising the jihad of the Palestinian people with the leadership of the
Hamas movement for resistance," Haniyeh's induction certificate said.
A 2004
fatwa,
issued while Bin Bayyah was an IUMS board member, sanctioned
"resistance," meaning attacks on American troops in Iraq as a duty on
every able Muslim in and outside Iraq."
Jamal Badawi, a longtime ISNA board member, also is listed as
a member of the IUMS Board of Trustees.
Badawi has repeatedly
defended Palestinian terrorism including
suicide bombings. His name appears on
the first page of a 1992 telephone directory of Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States, and he is
listed as a fundraiser in records from
the 2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas financing trial.
Badawi's radical views fit in well with the IUMS, which has issued
numerous statements against peace with Israel, calling for the
"liberation of Palestine" from Jewish control. Each statement has been
unyielding in calling on Muslims to destroy Israel and in forbidding
them from making peace with the Jewish state.
After a board of trustees meeting in December, the IUMS issued
a communique
calling on Hamas and Fatah to reconcile in the name of "the core
Palestinian values (including the right of return and resistance until
the liberation of Palestine and its capital Jerusalem) … Meanwhile, the
union calls on the scholars of the nation to continue their religious
role in enlightening the local and international public concerning the
dangers that this Judaization policy in Jerusalem poses for the historic
unity of the Palestinian territories which is religiously impermissible
to give up one inch of it."
Sheikh
Abdullah Bin Bayyah, circled in red, is shown at the International
Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) board meeting in Doha, Qatar in
December. The trustees issued a concluding statement at the meeting
calling for Israel's destruction and the return of Palestinians exiled
after the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. (Photo:IUMS)
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A photo on the group's website shows Bin Bayyah was present at the meeting.
In 2009, it
issued a fatwa forbidding any normalization of relations with Israel. It came on the 42
nd anniversary of the Six-Day War, and Israel's capturing of the Temple Mount.
"All political, economic, and cultural dealings and all forms of
normalization with the Zionist entity are considered to be a form of
supporting and sustaining the occupier in its occupation of land and
holy places," the fatwa said. "Moreover, such actions are considered a
form of loyalty to the enemy, which is religiously prohibited; as Allah
(Exalted and Glorified be He) says: 'And if any amongst you takes them
as Awliya' (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), then surely he is one
of them.'(Al-Ma'idah 5: 51). In conclusion, we call on all Muslims,
rulers and citizens, to undertake their role, and embark on rescuing
Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Blessed Land and freeing them from the clutches
of the Zionist occupation."
Just last month, an IUMS-affiliated Egyptian cleric blamed the United
States and Israel for driving Egyptian opposition to the Muslim
Brotherhood-dominated government. Khaled Kholif invoked the anti-Semitic
forgery,
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as evidence of his argument, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch
reported.
"America and Israel are pleased with [the Egyptian opposition]
movements, which are led by the brainless," Kholif said during an
appearance on Egypt's Al-Hafez television
flagged by
the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). "They have said so in
The Protocols. Let me tell you exactly what they said in The Protocols:
'We will strive to undermine security in the lands of the Gentiles,
through reckless revolutions, led by the brainless.' It says so in The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as translated by Khalifa Al-Tunisi.
"If you haven't read it," Kholif said of the
Protocols, "you should."
Embraced by American Islamists
Bin Bayyah previously
met with White House envoy Rashad Hussain when Bin Bayyah participated in a
July 2012 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in his native Mauritania.
His website also indicates he
spoke at the ADAMS Center, a large northern Virginia mosque, while he was in Washington June 12.
In addition to his role as IUMS vice president , Bin Bayyah also is a member of the similarly anti-Semitic Qaradawi-founded
European Council for Fatwa and Research and the
OIC's International Islamic Fiqh Academy, the latter of which issued a resolution in January 2003
sanctioning Palestinian suicide bombings.
Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah show a keen mutual admiration of each other
in their writing. Bin Bayyah notably referred to Qaradawi as "a mountain
upon whose peak there is light" and as "a great reformer" who "spreads
knowledge and wisdom" in
a 2008 article
published by Boston cleric Suhaib Webb. Qaradawi returned the favor
three days later: "The reality is that the more I have come closer to
him and got to know him better, the more I have loved him…"
That article also was
published on Webb's site.
And like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah claims Palestinian violence is
acceptable under international law. Islamic law's approval is a given.
"He who adheres to international covenants can resist. The
Palestinians. There are international conventions and there are
international resolutions which give them rights but do not provide them
with the means to obtain these rights. It is their right to resist,"
Bin Bayyah said during a 2010
Al-Jazeera
broadcast. "So, that which says resistance, says kinds of resistance,
including the use of weapons. So, international conventions do not stray
too far from the interests Islamic Sharia oversees."
Bin Bayyah
endorsed
a push by Muslim intellectuals to get the United Nations to criminalize
blasphemy against the Muslim prophet Muhammad and Islam, saying that it
causes violence.
"To people of reason and understanding: We ask everyone to ponder the
ramifications of provoking the feelings of over one billion people by a
small party of people who desires not to seek peace nor fraternity
between members of humanity," Bin Bayyah
wrote
in a post last fall. "This poses a threat to world peace with no
tangible benefit realized. Is it not necessary in today's world for the
United Nations to issue a resolution criminalizing the impingement of
religious symbols? We request all religious and political authorities,
as well as people of reason to join us in putting a stop to this
futility that benefit no one."
Considering that this information is readily available on the
Internet, it would not have been too difficult for White House officials
to uncover that both Bin Bayyah and the IUMS support Palestinian
terrorism and Israel's destruction. The White House visit also raises
questions relative to the degree the Obama administration is willing to
go to court the Muslim Brotherhood both at home and abroad.
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