by Benjamin Baird
MAS was founded in 1993 as the "overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America"
Fresh from its lobbying activities at the National Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, where a coalition of Islamist groups scored personal face time with nearly 200 members of Congress, the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Milwaukee chapter just completed its 13th annual conference, called "Jannah: the Ultimate Prize" — a reference to the rewards of the hereafter.
As part of the United States Coalition of Muslim Organizations
(USCMO) visiting Washington on April 1st and 2nd, MAS delegates
speciously presented themselves as the moderate representatives of
American Muslims. However, the veil was once again lifted last week when
MAS invited a hardline coterie of Islamist clerics, professors, and
polemicists to address its annual Milwaukee convention.
MAS was founded
in 1993 as the "overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America," a
transnational Sunni Islamist organization that is the progenitor of
terrorist outfits such as Hamas. Nonetheless, MAS lobbyists such as national director Ayman Hammous were welcomed with open arms in Washington by a bipartisan range of unsuspecting lawmakers.
The
most senior MAS official to speak at the Milwaukee convention on April
26th and 27th, Hammous was photographed just two weeks earlier rubbing
elbows with recidivist anti-Semite
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) during Muslim Advocacy Day. Hammous was also
spotted with USCMO Director Oussama Jammal, a longtime Islamist and
fundraiser for terrorism financier Sami al-Arian, as well as Zahid Bukhari and Nakibur Rahman,
two Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) affiliates who openly
support Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent South Asian Islamist movement to
which ICNA belongs.
Early
MAS leaders have been implicated in their own terrorism financing
schemes and recruiting efforts. MAS co-founder Jamal Balawi was listed
as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial for
providing material support to Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist
entity. Additionally, former MAS spokesman Randall Royer, a member of
the infamous Virginia Jihad Network, was arrested in 2003 for recruiting
jihadists to train at Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in Pakistan.
However, speaking at Milwaukee's Crowne Plaza on April 26th, Yaqeen Institute founder and keynote speaker Omar Suleiman dismissed complaints
that these early Muslim leaders "who came to this country and
established Islamic organizations" were too "regressive" and "weren't
thinking straight."
"We
are on their shoulders," Suleiman said. "I never allow anyone from my
students, from my group, to insult the efforts of our predecessors. You
don't get to do that. They were imperfect, because they're not perfect
people. But they were committed. They were dedicated," he added.
As it happens, Suleiman was only parroting statements
he made as recently as 2016, when he lamented before a Muslim youth
conference that America "used to have serious ulema [clerics] coming
from all over the world to this country, having major conferences ...
I'm not even going to say their names," he said, "because they're banned
now."
Fortunately
for Suleiman, "serious" Islamist scholars like Ragheb Elsergany still
slip through the cracks every now and again. Unapologetically
anti-Semitic and militantly pro-jihad, Elsergany has twice prompted
MAS-ICNA convention organizers to apologize for his extremist speeches
and pledge to ban him
from future conferences. And yet, at its April conference,
MAS-Milwaukee ignored this moratorium and invited Elsergany to its
stage.
Speaking at a 2009 MAS conference, Elsergany glorified jihad
and beseeched the audience to earn Allah's favor by "supporting the
fighters, and the mujahideen [Islamic warriors] and the besieged, and
those in need there in Palestine." He solicited donations and shamed his
listeners for abandoning the Palestinians. "They are the ones who face
the Zionists with their chests, their nerves, their lives, their
children, their holy places and their sacred places," Elsergany said.
Despite
receiving complaints, Elsergany was invited back to the annual MAS-ICNA
convention in 2011, where he relished the rise of Islamist regimes
across the Middle East and North Africa, which would cause "the Zionist
entity" to "vanish absolutely." Inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's
political ascension in Cairo, Elsergany predicted that "all the lands
usurped from the Muslims," would be reclaimed.
No
Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated convention featuring anti-Semitic
speakers would be complete without a speech from University of
California-Berkeley professor and Zaytuna College co-founder Hatem
Bazian. In 2004, Bazian was filmed at a Berkeley anti-war rally calling for an "Intifada," or violent uprising, in the U.S. An ethnic studies professor who pioneered Berkeley's Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, Bazian has been rebuked
by university administrators for twice retweeting anti-Semitic images
that accuse "Ashke-Nazis" – a derogatory term for Jews -- of rape,
murder and organ trafficking.
Besides founding the first Islamic college in the U.S., criticized as a center for Islamist "indoctrination," Bazian is credited with starting Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), two closely coordinated groups accused of being part of a "U.S.-based Hamas support network."
In fact, Bazian told his Islamist colleagues in a Yahoo messaging group
in 2006 that an upcoming MAS-Milwaukee convention would be an ideal
location "to meet for AMP business." In recent court documents linking
AMP to the terror-tied Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), the
Milwaukee conference was described as an "IAP reunion."
In this regard, Milwaukee's annual convention hasn't changed. Bazian shared the stage with AMP National Policy Director Osama Abu Irshaid, who previously served as the editor of Al Zaytounah, IAP's official newspaper. Abu Irshaid is an outspoken cheerleader for Hamas, praising the Palestinian terrorist entity's "steadfastness and sacrifice" and calling its fighters "an army for liberation" who "rise up for the blood of martyrs."
If publicly sympathizing with a genocidal terrorist faction isn't alarming enough, MAS chapters have been exposed
conferring those same appalling convictions upon impressionable young
minds within their congregations. At a MAS-sponsored "Ummah Day"
celebration in Philadelphia on April 17th, adolescent boys were recorded
lip-syncing a pro-jihadist song which promised to "crush the traitor"
Israel. In a separate performance, a pre-teen Muslim girl read from a script: "We will chop off their heads ... and we will subject them to eternal torture," she recited, referring to Israeli Jews.
On
the national stage, MAS affiliates present a carefully curated public
image, co-opting mainstream progressive principles when it is
politically expedient. Once they are a safe distance from Washington,
however, MAS officials revert to their Islamist roots, and chapter
conferences function as de facto Muslim Brotherhood reunions. Rather
than courting its representatives, U.S. lawmakers should permanently
close the door on this social club for radical Islam.
Benjamin Baird is a Fellow of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum
Source: https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/58434/the-real-face-of-the-muslim-american-society
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