March 10, 2006 - Washington, DC - PipeLineNews.org - On March 8 PipeLineNews.org correspondent Beila Rabinowitz broke a story University Of Central Florida Funding Islamist Da’wa Event which detailed how this publicly funded college was promoting and hosting a Muslim Da’Wa [conversion] seminar featuring noted radical Imams.
We have been in touch with UCF officials, including Kerry P. Welch who is the Director of Student Involvement at the campus, with the intent of making clear our concern that this event should not take place as scheduled on March 17.
We were informed by Mr. Welch that the event will go forward regardless of the concerns of many organizations including the American Jewish Congress.
We have discovered that there is a reason for UCF’s intransigence in this matter.
Our research shows that the college is looking to create - through a huge endowment by the IIIT [International Institute of Islamic] a Saudi group linked to al-Qaeda - an “Islamic Studies” chair which will in actuality serve to propagate Islamist intolerance throughout the Southeast.
IIIT’s Terror Links
Anwar Ibrahim is a founder and director of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a think tank in Virginia that has alleged links to terrorism. IIIT’s 2003 tax-exempt IRS filing lists a $720 donation to the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation of Ashland, Oregon, which was designated as a terrorist funding organization by the U.S. government in 2004. Among the Treasury Department’s findings were that the Oregon branch of al-Haramain engaged in tax fraud, money laundering, supporting Chechen mujahideen affiliated with al Qaeda, and had “direct links between the U.S. branch and Usama bin Laden.” In fact, many of al-Haramain’s offices around the world were closed for supporting terrorism.
“There is more evidence of IIIT’s links to terrorism. A few examples: according to court documents, in the early 1990s IIIT donated at least $50,000 to a think tank run by Sami al-Arian, the World Islamic and Study Enterprise (WISE), that served as a front group for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. IIIT is also named as a defendant in two class-action lawsuits brought by victims of the 9/11 attacks. One alleges that IIIT received the bulk of its operating expenses from the SAAR network, whose component groups are accused in another class-action suit of being “fronts for the sponsor of al Qaeda and international terror.” The same suit lists IIIT as well as every officer of IIIT besides Anwar Ibrahim as a supporter of the SAAR network. This public information was available to SAIS, yet the school extended a fellowship to Ibrahim.” - Source Link, Campus Watch
Background:
In February noted American Islamist apologist John Esposito, ended an address at UCF in this manner:
Professor Esposito is closely linked to the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) which has been promoting the below referenced - “Al Ghazli Islam Studies Project.” Esposito’s Alwaheed Center at Georgetown University was funded by Saudi Wahhabist money - the same methodology apparently playing out at UCF.
Of this project IIIT states:
Led by Imam Tariq Rasheed, Sr. Safia Ansari and Professor Husain Kassim, Al-Ghazali Educational Foundation’s effort seeks to help establish chairs for Islamic studies at selected university campuses.”
From the IIIT website, in which announce that they are engaged in,
In his response to our request to cancel the conference, the UCF Director of Student Involvement Kerry Welch replied that, "...Obviously, we all agree that one of the things that makes the U.S. a great country is freedom of speech...” "
This is a twisted and cynical justification for holding an extremist Muslim conference. It is also transparent in that the primary consideration at this point seems to be avoiding any offense to the Wahhabis who might potentially endow UCF’s Islamic Studies chair.
If the University of Central Florida carries through with the plan to accept funding from the IIIT, it will have made the decision that the University’s “mutual interests” are with the supporters of terrorism and Islamofacism.
In that manner the University of Central Florida will be opting to become the “UCF - Ummah of Central Florida” joining the ranks of Jihad U [the University of South Florida] as a hub of terror.