You might recall that as the Ground Zero Victory Mosque controversy was heating up a couple of weeks ago, President Barack Obama invited several Muslim leaders to the White House for an Islamic celebration. At that Islamic Iftar celebration, President Obama stated his support for the building of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque where Islamic terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center in the name of Allah.
Almost lost in the firestorm which came out of those comments was the guest list of attendees. I have not found a complete list of attendees, but Planet Washington has a list released from the White House before the event which lists some of the expected attendees.
Joseph Klein at FrontPageMag provides some insight on a couple of the attendees. One was s Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).
Klein points out that her group was an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation in 2008 charges of supporting terrorism. According to Wikipedia sources
Court documents at the trial indicated that ISNA is "an integral part of the [Muslim] Brotherhood's efforts to wage jihad against America through non-violent means," wrote conservative Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher.
The case ended in a November 2008 conviction of five Holy Land Foundation executives on 108 counts of supporting terrorism.
ISNA has also been connected with the extremist Muslim faction of Wahhabism, serving as a conduit for the advancement of this philosophy in the United States.
Klein notes
In a September 2002 interview with PBS, Mattson stated that she did not see "any difference" between Christian leaders criticizing Islam or al Qaeda on the one hand, and Osama bin Laden citing "Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans" on the other.
ISNA also has links to the terrorist group Hamas. Great folks to have in the White House.
Then there is Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Al-Marayati doesn't have some of the same terrorist connections Mattson has, but his agenda is probably more insidious.
Klein says Al-Marayati peddles the same kind of bunk that Feisal Abdul Rauf, architect of the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, peddles which claims Sharia Law is harmonious with American values and principles.
Al-Marayati is also an apologist for terrorists and terrorism. He defended Muhammad Hamida who killed one Israeli and injured 23 others. The Investigative Project on Terrorism has published a report which found the Muslim Public Affairs Council has "a consistent pattern of defending designated terrorist organizations and their supporters, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric."
The report says that one of MPAC's founders, Mohamed Fathi Osman
has gone beyond simply defending Islamic movements to explicitly condoning jihad. "Jihad is allowed in Islam against those who attack the faithful…the jihad of Islam is no more nor less than any legitimate struggle for justice," he argued in a 1987 article entitled, "The Anatomy of Terrorism."
MPAC spokeswoman Edina Lekovic has also been an apologist for terrorists, including the mastermind of the 911 terrorist attack Osama bin Laden:
Edina Lekovic who was an editor of Al-Talib, a Muslim student magazine, while studying at the University of California at Los Angeles in the late 1990s. She is listed as managing editor in the July 1999 issue — one that features Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden on its cover, with a headline' "The Spirit of Jihad," and describes bin Laden as a "freedom fighter and philanthropist."
By the time this paean to bin Laden ran, Al Qaida had issued a declaration of war against the United States and a fatwa declaring it to be "an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it" to kill Americans and their allies. And it had carried out the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Nonetheless, Al-Talib proposed, "When we hear someone refer to the great Mujahid Osama bin Laden as a 'terrorist,' we should defend our brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter; someone who has forsaken wealth and power to fight in Allah's cause and speaks out against oppressors."
But back to Al-Marayati. Klein's piece closes by pointing out that on the very day of the 911 terrorist attacks, Al-Marayati went on a Los Angeles radio program and said that Israel was probably behind that day's horrific terrorism.
As you will hear in the video below, Feisal Abdul Rauf plays the moral-equivalency card so often favored by the Left. He claims the United States would have been on trial for war crimes if we had lost World War II; Rauf of course equates our efforts to destroy the industrial war-making capability of the Nazi machine with the Muslim deliberate targeting of civilians for the purpose of "terrorizing" nations into capitulating to terrorist demands. Of course, there are plenty of self-loathing Leftist "useful idiots" like Robert McNamara and Madeline Albright to provide cover for these efforts.
That President Obama would invite people like this to the White House for an Islamic celebration should be a surprise to no one. Oh, sure, the "mainstream" media did it's best to cover for Obama during the 2008 election, but anyone who was awake and aware of what was going on could see the ample evidence that Obama had an obvious affinity for terrorists, both foreign and domestic. His softness on Islamic terrorism and terrorists has also been evident since his election.
Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Haven't we allowed our ignorance and apathy to go on long enough to realize his wisdom? Isn't it time we dispensed of our ignorance and set ourselves to the task of restoring our nation to the level of freedom and security that have been our heritage?
We have 68 days left, America. Let's get busy!