Questions
for Obama's first U.S. mosque visit
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 You'll have to forgive our
skepticism, but we cannot imagine that President Obama randomly selected
the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) mosque for the first such visit in
his official capacity as head of state.
Perhaps we are being overly generous, but his national security team
must have spent considerable time and energy reviewing its leadership,
relationships and history prior to the announcement over the weekend.
In the process of due diligence, they should have learned that ISB
leaders financially and ideologically support radical Islamist terrorists
and hate
homosexuals. It is a controversial choice of venue for a roundtable
focused on tolerance, rejecting bigotry and celebrating religious
freedom.
If the White House truly believes that the ISB represents the acceptable
mainstream practice of Islam in America, it suggests a much larger issue
with radicalism in the U.S.
In 2014, two ISB officials — President
Muhammad Jameel and General Secretary Abid Husain — joined with the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in a news
conference where they denounced Israeli for committing "genocide
in the name of self-defense" in Gaza, when it was in fact the
murderous Hamas terror organization launching rockets at Israel from heavily populated civilian areas.
CAIR was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land
Foundation trial, which resulted in the largest terrorist money-laundering
conviction in U.S. history. The FBI terminated its formal relationship with CAIR in 2008
over its ongoing status as a front for Hamas.
Why would Obama confer legitimacy on a mosque that joins forces with a
terrorist front group? Would he visit a church that welcomed the KKK as a
political partner?
Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood and lmam of the
ISB for 18 years, endorsed Palestinian suicide bombings in a 2004 Washington Post interview. El-Sheikh also served as
regional representative for the Islamic African Relief Agency — which the
U.S. Treasury Department shut down for funding Osama bin Laden and other
terrorists — while serving as ISB Imam and director.
Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, the ISB hosted American-born al Qaeda cleric
Anwar al-Awlaki, whose inflammatory sermons are among the most effective
online recruiting tools for jihad.
Does Obama condone advocating violence against the Jewish people? Does
he think that it presents less of a complication than "Islamophobia," a fabricated term designed to
portray murderous Islamist extremists as victims and to silence their
critics?
The president famously "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage during
his 2012 re-election campaign. Did he now evolve to where he can accept
resident ISB scholar Yaseen Shaikh's 2013 description of homosexuality as a
psychological disorder?
Does Obama even believe that radical Islam is a problem?
The administration at its highest levels regularly engages with groups
connected to the most menacing elements of Islam, including domestic and
international representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood. It recently invited a CAIR official
who accused the FBI of killing two men in cold blood in
separate incidents to the White House to participate in a forum on
religious discrimination.
His White House banned the words "radical Islam" from
administration dialogue and deleted any text that might offend Muslims from
the FBI training manual. Obama refused to discuss Islamist terror following
the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., despite all
evidence indicating it as the motivating factor. The words "radical
Islam" were also absent in his statement soon after the mass murder in Paris.
Recognizing radical Islam as a
problem would start with acknowledging that it exists.
The president endorses the ISB
and Muslim groups with radical Islamist connections at the expense of
welcoming moderates who recognize the difficulties of American Islamism,
such as Dr. Zuhdi Jasser,
into the conversation.
Jasser, who is the president of
the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy,
on Fox News Channel said that "as an American-Muslim, I am just insulted"
by the venue.
Obama's actions will speak much
more loudly than his carefully scripted words on Wednesday.
Religious tolerance will always
remain a pillar of America's founding principles. Political violence as
espoused by the ISB and mosques trafficking in similar extremist ideology
never will be. It is unfortunate that the president cannot seem to distinguish
between the two.
Steven Emerson is the Executive
Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Pete Hoekstra is the
Shillman Senior Fellow at the Investigative Project on Terrorism and former
Chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. Thinking of submitting
an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
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