by Joe Kaufman
If Emerge is part of Patrick Murphy’s team, then Patrick Murphy’s team is dangerous. Emerge USA is not the patriotic group its name allows it to pretend to be.
The 2013 annual fundraising banquet for Emerge USA featured a victory speech by then-newly elected US Representative Patrick Murphy, a Democrat who had recently defeated the Republican incumbent Allen West in a highly contested race.
This was indeed seen as a huge victory for Emerge, as the group considered Allen West an adversary to organizations such as itself, organizations with ties to terrorism and Islamic extremism. In its 2012 annual report, Emerge explicitly took credit for West’s loss: “EMERGE USA PAC rallied our communities to defeat the radical former Congressman Allen West.”
Murphy no doubt acknowledged Emerge’s involvement, when he stated at the banquet, “I am very proud of the diverse coalition that led me to victory. The Muslim, Arab and South Asian American communities in Florida and nationally were an instrumental part of our team for the past 18 months.”
If Emerge is part of Patrick Murphy’s team, then Patrick Murphy’s team is dangerous. Emerge USA is not the patriotic group its name allows it to pretend to be.
In December 2014, Emerge co-sponsored an event for the Muslim Students Association (MSA) with a number of organizations which have been associated with Hamas and/or al-Qaeda financing, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), ICNA Relief, and Islamic Relief (IR).
In May 2006, Israel labeled Islamic Relief a front for Hamas after arresting the group’s Gaza program manager, Ayaz Ali, for providing “funds and assistance to various Hamas institutions and organizations.” Ali admitted that he had cooperated with local Hamas operatives. In 1999, IR collected and sent more than $6 million to Chechen rebels with ties to al-Qaeda. The same year, IR received $50,000 from Human Concern International (HCI), a charity that the U.S. Department of Treasury described as a “Bin Laden front.”
During the banquet, Congressman Murphy received a “Public Service Award” from two of Emerge’s leaders, Khurrum Wahid and Saif Ishoof.
The Co-Chairman of Emerge is Khurrum Basir Wahid. Wahid, a South Florida attorney, has represented a number of high-profile terrorists. They include: Rafiq Sabir, who received a 25 year prison sentence for conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, who was given a life sentence for being a member of al-Qaeda and for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian.
According to the Miami New Times, Wahid himself was placed on a federal terrorist watch list in 2011.
None of this may trouble Congressman Murphy, as he thanked Wahid, at the banquet, for his support.
Saif Yamani Ishoof is a founding director of Emerge. Prior to getting involved with the group, Ishoof was the rally organizer and contact for the extreme anti-Israel group, March for Justice. While with March for Justice, Ishoof organized an event which labeled then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “the world’s longest standing terrorist.”
Today, Ishoof is a director of Nur-Ul-Islam Academy, a Muslim children’s school located in Cooper City, Florida whose former Vice President was Hamas fundraiser Raed Awad. According to corporation documents, Ishoof was officially named a director of the school in January 2008, at a time when the home page of the Nur-Ul-Islam website contained links to violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian material, including having a link to islamway.com, a website that encouraged its viewers to donate to Hamas.
Also speaking at the 2013 banquet, along with Congressman Murphy, was Laila Abdelaziz, then-Tampa-area Regional Field Coordinator of Emerge. In January 2010, during a town hall meeting for Barack Obama, Abdelaziz denounced Israel in a question she posed to the President. She belligerently asked, “[W]hy have we not condemned Israel and Egypt’s human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people, and yet we continue supporting them financially with billions of dollars from our tax dollars?”
While with Emerge, in November 2012, when Israel invaded Gaza in order to stop Hamas from continuing to target her citizens with rockets – over 2000 rockets in less than one year – Abdelaziz tweeted, “Don’t worry ya Gaza, we’re working hard for you in Florida.”
Apart from speaking at Emerge events, Congressman Murphy has also accepted money from representatives of the group. He took $500 from Emerge Treasurer Amin Mitha; $750 from then-Emerge Executive Director Nauman Abbasi; $500 from Emerge board member Shahid Usmani; and $4750 and $2500 from Emerge fundraisers Khalid Mirza and Ashraf Amdani.
Emerge was not the only Islamist group Murphy has taken money from. He has as well received funding from leaders of CAIR.
CAIR was established in June 1994 as being part of the American Palestine Committee, an umbrella organization acting as a terrorist enterprise run by then-global Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who was based in the U.S. at the time and who now operates out of Egypt as a spokesman for Hamas. In 2007 and 2008, amidst two federal trials, the U.S. government named CAIR a co-conspirator in the raising of millions of dollars for Hamas. Along with ISIS, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram, CAIR is listed as a terrorist organization by United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Murphy took $500 each from CAIR-Florida board member Muhammad Rashid Abbara and CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly. In June 2011, the Tampa Tribune reported that Shibly had stated that Hezbollah was “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization.” In August 2014, Shibly tweeted that “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God .”
In addition, Murphy took $500 from an individual that sits on both the board of CAIR-Michigan and Emerge-Michigan, Mohammed Saleem, and he received $250 from Ayman Osman, a Tampa-area physician whose offices were raided by the FBI, in February 2003, in connection to a federal terrorism trial dealing with the funneling of money to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
According to a report written about the 2013 Emerge banquet, after thanking Emerge and its leaders, Congressman Patrick Murphy “pointed out that his decision to be involved in Congress is to ensure that he is involved in the decision-making process.”
Question: Why did Congressman Murphy choose to say these words at an event for Emerge? Was he just providing innocent information about himself or was he signaling to the crowd that he was willing to sell his influence?
One way to prevent any notion of this is to give back all the money mentioned above.
A United States Senator selling his influence to America’s enemies is not the type of Senator America needs.
Joe Kaufman is an expert in the fields of counter-terrorism, foreign affairs and energy independence for America. He has been featured on all major cable networks, including Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and C-SPAN. Kaufman has served as a consultant to different government agencies, and he has been instrumental in getting U.S.-based terrorist charities shut down and terror-related individuals put behind bars. Exactly one month prior to the September 11 attacks, Kaufman predicted the attacks by stating that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was not an aberration and that it would happen again.
Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/joe-kaufman/patrick-murphy-and-his-radical-muslim-friends/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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