Obama Addresses American Islamist Convention

President Obama addressed the 50th annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America via videotape, praising the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity for its partnership with his administration. A Clarion Project report showed that the convention’s roster of speakers includes many extremists.

“Over the last half-century, you’ve upheld the proud legacy of American-Muslims’ contributions to our national fabric and this gathering is a testament to that tradition,” Obama says to ISNA.

The gathering is anything but a testament to American tradition. The speaker with the most sessions (eight), Zaid Shakir, preached earlier this year that the U.S. Constitution is flawed because it grants equality to Muslims and non-Muslims.

Siraj Wahhaj, who is teaching five sessions, has a history of anti-American preaching and now advises Muslims to avoid discussion of Sharia because “we are not there yet.”

ISNA’s 50-year history is nothing to be exalted. In 1991, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo placed ISNA at the top of a secret list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The document said the organization’s “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…"

In 2007, federal prosecutors named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity housed within ISNA. The U.S. government identified ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. The designation was upheld in 2009 due to “ample” evidence linking ISNA to Hamas.

An FBI informant inside the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network identified ISNA as a Brotherhood front as early as 1987. The source was documented as being “convinced” that the Brotherhood fronts have “a secret agenda which includes the spread of the Islamic Revolution to all non-Islamic governments in the world which does include the United States.”

President Obama complimented ISNA’s engagement of non-Muslims:

“I’m especially grateful to the work that ISNA has done to advance interfaith understanding and cooperation here at home and around the world,” Obama said.

ISNA’s Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances is led by Sayyid Syeed, previously the Secretary-General of ISNA. In 2006, he was recorded saying, “Our job is to change the constitution of America.”

Syeed was also the Director of Academic Outreach for the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity, from 1984 to 1994.

The aforementioned FBI source specifically warned in 1988 that IIIT’s leadership talked about a six-phase plan to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The current objective was to “peacefully get inside the United States government and also American universities.”

Syeed, whose interfaith work is praised by President Obama, was one of IIIT’s leaders at the time that warning was written.

President Obama then acknowledged his administration’s relationship with ISNA:

“And my administration is proud to be your partner in our shared efforts to promote economic opportunity, accessible health care and affordable education in Muslim communities throughout our country,” he said.

Indeed, the U.S. government’s associate director of the Office of Public Engagement Paul Monteiro “cited ISNA as his primary means of outreach to the American Muslim community,” according to ISNA.

Previously, the Clarion Project discovered that the U.S. Air Force had paid ISNA almost $5,000 for two advertisements in its magazine to recruit chaplains. When presented with the data about ISNA, a U.S. Air Force spokesperson said ISNA meets “the ecclesiastical requirements to endorse qualified religious ministry professionals to serve as chaplains within the Military Departments.”

ISNA also advises the Department of Homeland Security and almost certainly had its hands in the re-writing of counter-terrorism training guidelines that shield the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood from scrutiny.

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