The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) put on a hatefest during its annual convention in Washington over the Fourth of July weekend. The popular American Muslim speaker Hamza Yusuf of California’s Zaytuna Institute illustrated this when he declared July 4th a Muslim Day -- because on that day, Muslims defeated the crusaders.
One featured speaker was the Imam Warith Deen Umar, the former head of New York prisons’ Muslim chaplain program. He spoke about his books, Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace, and Judaiology. Umar repeatedly described Jewish conspiracies to control the world, saying:
“You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli -- Rahm Emanuel -- his number one man. His number two man -- [David] Axelrod -- another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world…There’s some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah.”
These rants are not surprising. Robert Spencer reminds us: “ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terror funding case. The Holy Land Foundation, once the nation’s largest Islamic charity, was ultimately found guilty of funneling millions of dollars in charitable contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas.”
What is surprising is that the Justice Department and the White House are sanctioning this un-indicted co-conspirator. Senior Adviser to the President Valerie Jarrett and officials of the Department of Justice were present at the ISNA convention, where Umar engaged in this hatred of Jews. What does that say?
“In her remarks,” reported Hammad Hammad at the White House website, “Jarrett spoke of the importance of President Obama’s Cairo speech, where he emphasized that the United States and Muslim communities share fundamental values, such as justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of human beings.”
Dave Gaubatz, a counterterrorism researcher, got a taste of that tolerance when he tried to enter the ISNA convention. Gaubatz says he “spent 20 years as an active duty USAF (Special Agent/OSI), 3.5 years as a civilian 1811 Federal Agent, trained by the U.S. State Department in Arabic, and was the first U.S. Federal Agent to enter Iraq in 2003.”
He registered for the ISNA convention and paid his fee, but when he went to check in, ISNA personnel surrounded him and ordered him to leave. One said, “CAIR wants you out” – ISNA’s fellow un-indicted co-conspirator, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They began crowding me,” Gaubatz said. “I was professional and told them to step away from me, tell me who they are, and why was I being illegally detained.” He got no answers, and was led out of the convention. But when he got into his car, he was surrounded by police. “I asked what was the problem. Finally one officer showed me a picture CAIR had given them and told them I was a threat.” Three featured him holding guns in Iraq. In the fourth, “CAIR had cropped my head shot onto a Nazi uniform (which was obvious). The lead cop said this is all CAIR had given them.”
What happened to Mr. Gaubatz is an outrage, and calls for a full investigation. But an investigation from a compromised Justice Department is unlikely. Meanwhile, the FBI leadership, over the professional objections of its agents based on facts and evidence, is pursuing outreach with CAIR, ISNA, and allied groups.
And now a new position has been created at the State Department: “Special Representative to Muslim Communities overseas and domestic,” reporting directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In late June Obama appointed a Kashmiri Muslim who immigrated to the U.S. as a baby with her parents in 1969, Farah Pandith, as this “Special Representative,” but made no public announcement of the appointment. Why not? Will Pandith pursue ties with Islamic supremacists? With the White House, DOJ, and FBI track record as it stands, what would stop her?