Muslim Mafia (29 page)

An FBI investigator in Washington says Ellison and Awad are “tight.” Their relationship goes back to the 1980s when they attended the University of Minnesota together.

FEC records show Awad is normally stingy with his money when it comes to donating to elected officials. But he shelled out $2,000 for Ellison’s historic 2006 campaign.

(Curiously, he made the donation under the alias “Nehad Hammad.” He made another donation under that name, one he no doubt regrets making now. In 2000, when George W. Bush was courting the pre-9/11 Muslim vote, Awad gave the future president $1,000.)

Saylor kicked in another $1,000 for Ellison in 2006, records show, and former CAIR chairman Parvez Ahmed has given a total of $1,250 to his campaigns.

Ellison in recent years converted to orthodox Sunni Islam after following Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. He is serious about his newfound faith. The nation’s first Muslim congressman insisted on taking the oath on the Quran. And last year he made the pilgrimage to Mecca with the sponsorship of the Muslim American Society, another Muslim Brotherhood front.

He and CAIR have worked together to protect terrorists. After winning reelection on the strength of the Somali vote in Minneapolis, Ellison defended a local pro-jihad mosque where more than twenty Somali men have been radicalized. One young worshipper became the first U.S. citizen to blow himself up in a suicide strike. At a recent gathering at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Ellison urged Somalis to organize themselves into a powerful political and economic coalition to help fend off FBI investigations.
³²

(The local Somali community has also been the subject of federal investigations into terrorist money laundering. Agents suspect Somali refugees have funneled millions of dollars from food stamp fraud and drug sales through Somali grocery stores into overseas bank accounts used by al-Qaida. CAIR has defended the Somali store owners against the allegations, even meeting with the head of the civil rights unit of the USDA to complain about the agency’s food stamp investigations, which it argues are “causing enormous harm to the owners and the Somali community,” a confidential CAIR memo reveals.
³³
CAIR’s Minnesota chapter, meanwhile, has launched a campaign against the FBI, accusing it of operating a witch hunt for young Muslim jihadists there and advising local Muslims not to speak to agents.)

Ellison is also very useful to CAIR and the Muslim mafia in their goal to Islamize America.

“Muslims in elected and appointed government positions have little value for the rest of the community if their presence does not translate into Muslim-friendly public policies,” CAIR asserts in internal papers. “On the other hand, Muslim personalities in power can provide access for the community to institutions of power and make their voices heard.”

Ellison certainly fits that bill. Not only is he pushing for Muslim-friendly policies, he’s trying to clone himself. He helped get Carson elected, and is working closely with his pal Akhter of the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association to get other Muslims elected. Akhter himself wishes to run for office one day.

(It’s worth noting that members of Congress are not required to undergo FBI background checks before gaining access to classified information.)

At a 2008 Capitol
juma
, or Friday prayer, Ellison prophesied that Muslims will soon see many more Muslims in Congress. “
Insha’Allah
,” he said, “we will have fifteen next election.” Ellison envisions a Congressional Muslim Caucus to rival the Black Caucus.
³⁴

Ellison and Akhter, along with other young Muslim activists, hope to see in their lifetimes fellow Muslims as U.S. senators and U.S. Supreme Court justices. They sense that with the footholds they have gained already in Washington there is no American institution they cannot penetrate—including one day the Oval Office.

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN CONYERS
: CAIR and the terrorists it supports would be hard-pressed to find a better friend in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee chairman wants to kill the Patriot Act, prevent the FBI from profiling Muslim suspects in terror probes, and even criminalize the “disrespect” of Islam.

For that matter, CAIR has worked with Conyers on legislation to ban all private—not just government—entities from profiling Muslims based on security threats and suspicious activity.

Conyers has reintroduced his End Racial Profiling Act, which he co-sponsored in 2005. In 2006, after the “Flying Imams” controversy involving U.S. Airways, CAIR had several meetings with Conyers to push the measure.

“We are arranging meetings in DC and Michigan with Representative John Conyers, incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and his appropriate staff to discuss the incident and the need for hearings on the broader issue of racial and religious profiling,” Saylor reported to CAIR’s board, according to minutes of one national meeting held at the time.

He added that CAIR’s lawyers were trying to help Conyers “find a legislative fix” to prevent airlines from profiling potential Islamic hijackers.

“We are researching an appropriate legislative fix for non-government entities, such as airlines,” Saylor said.
³⁵

Conyers represents the largest Arab population in the U.S. His district includes Dearborn, Michigan—nicknamed “Dearbornistan” because of its large influx of Middle Eastern immigrants and its constant focus of counterterror investigations.

Last decade, Conyers fought FBI outreach efforts in the Arab and Muslim community there, even though they were designed to gather intelligence on potential terror cells and protect homeland security.

Conyers and other Detroit-area Democrats threatened to hold hearings unless the FBI stopped counterterror interviews. Bureau officials tried to explain the national security benefits of the program, but Conyers would have none of it. In the end, they backed off. Today Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood are all active in the area.

As one of the top recipients of donations from the Arab-American Leadership PAC, Conyers not surprisingly has a long history of pandering to Arab and Muslim voters. According to FEC records, Conyers has raked in at least $13,500 from the Arab-American Leadership PAC since 2000.

Little wonder that CAIR turned to the lawmaker for help in pressuring the Justice Department to change the group’s status as a co-conspirator in the Hamas terror-funding case. CAIR officials met with Conyers and wrote a letter asking him to lobby the attorney general on behalf of the group.
³⁶

REPRESENTATIVE GERRY CONNOLLY
: The freshman Democratic congressman from Virginia first began nurturing an alliance with CAIR when he was chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.

Among other things, Connolly worked with CAIR officials to draft a county resolution condemning the Patriot Act as unconstitutional. The resolution set up a mechanism to monitor all actions taken by federal authorities in the county under the Patriot Act and at the same time directed county employees not to “assist or voluntarily cooperate with investigations.”

Furthermore, it directed Fairfax County police to “refrain from racial profiling (or) engaging in the surveillance of individuals or groups (and) from collecting or maintaining information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual or group,” unless it “directly relates” to an active terrorism investigation.

Finally, the 2003 draft resolution directed county libraries to post notices to Muslim and other patrons that the feds could be monitoring the books they check out. The notice reads:

Librarians were directed to ensure that “there is regular and immediate destruction of records that identify a book borrower after the book has been returned or that identify the name of an Internet user after use.”

Connolly also organized and attended a 2005 “community forum” in response to CAIR’s complaints regarding Fairfax County police enforcement of immigration laws. According to a CAIR press release at the time, Connolly assured local Muslims attending the forum that “Fairfax County police officers are not an arm of federal immigration enforcement agencies.” The Fairfax County police chief also attended the forum. Stressing the department’s dedication to diversity, he assured them that his department would do more to reach out to the Muslim community. Two months later, CAIR conducted “diversity and sensitivity” training at the Fairfax County courthouse.

Connolly and CAIR have also colluded on a project to save the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Virginia, from a growing grassroots movement to permanently shut its doors.

When the Saudi embassy last year asked officials to renew the lease for its radical school, local residents strenuously objected. They argued the school teaches hatred toward Jews and Christians and has become a breeding ground for terrorists.

Connolly, who at the time was head of the county government controlling the Alexandria lease, gave a full-throated defense of the Islamic Saudi Academy, even smearing protesters as anti-Islamic “bigots.”

All the while, Connolly was running for U.S. Congress and, according to FEC records, accepting thousands of dollars in donations from Saudi bagmen—including some whose homes and offices were raided after 9/11 on suspicion of terror financing (and whose donations to other Democrats have been quietly returned in shame).

Their investment appears to have paid off. The Saudi
madrassa
got its lease and is still in operation (and now even planning to expand), and Connolly is in a more powerful position on the Hill.

Critics would be forgiven for questioning Connolly’s motives for defending the Saudi
madrassa
in light of what appears to be an orchestrated outpouring of donations from CAIR and other radical Muslim Brotherhood leaders with Saudi connections.

FEC records show that on January 12, 2008, Yaqub Mirza gave Connolly $1,000, followed twelve days later by CAIR chief Nihad Awad, who chipped in $500. That same day—January 24—Hisham al-Talib donated $1,000 to Connolly’s campaign, along with Omar Ashraf, who gave $500.

Then in May, Esam Omeish donated $250 to the Fairfax County Democratic Committee, which held receptions for Connolly and helped him raise money. And in June, Mirza gave another $1,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which also helped get Connolly elected.

In addition, the Arab-American Leadership PAC, which is funded in part by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, donated $2,000 to Connolly in 2008, records show.
³⁸

Investigators say Mirza is a Saudi bagman, acting on behalf of Saudi millionaire and al-Qaida financier Yassin al-Qadi. He, along with al-Talib and Ashraf, runs a Virginia-based network of Saudi-funded fronts called the Safa group, which is still the subject of an active federal investigation into terror financing—in fact, a federal grand jury in northern Virginia has been hearing evidence in the case. All three Connolly donors’ homes and-or offices were raided by federal agents after the 9/11 attacks. Mirza, one of the ringleaders of the network, is so dirty that even Muslim Representative Carson returned his terror-tainted cash.

Omeish is an advocate of violent jihad who helps run a Saudi-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-controlled mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, that ministered to some of the Saudi hijackers before 9/11.

As first reported in the book
Infiltration
, Omeish in 2004 used his home to bond out a terrorist suspect jailed for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The suspect, Ismail Elbarasse, is also an accused Hamas money man employed by the Islamic Saudi Academy as comptroller. His college roommate, Hamas leader and fugitive Mousa Abu Marzook, sent his kids to ISA. (More on Elbarasse in a later chapter.)

Awad, meanwhile, has personally accepted large checks from Saudis on behalf of CAIR.

Point is, these Brotherhood donors and their families support the Islamic Saudi Academy, an arm of the Saudi government and a patron of Representative Connolly. This spring, ISA’s lease came up for renewal, and the Saudis knew they’d face resistance in the local community. The school had made national headlines since their last request for renewal after a former school valedictorian Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush. His ISA classmates voted him “Most Likely to Be a Martyr.” His father works for the Saudi embassy.

Also, reports had detailed numerous hateful passages from academy textbooks, including a twelfth-grade text teaching students that it is permissible for Muslims to kill adulterers and apostates who leave Islam. Other passages in the school’s texts state that Muslims are permitted to take the lives and property of Jews and those deemed “polytheists,” or Christians.

Connolly shrugged off the complaints and accused critics of “slander” before rubberstamping the school’s lease and accepting a rent check from the Saudi embassy for $2.2 million.

“I find no evidence, no grounds, to do anything but renew the lease of an institution that has been a good neighbor,” Connolly declared at the board’s meeting on the issue last year.

Thanks to Connolly, the Saudis have been allowed to maintain an incubator for jihadists in the shadow of the nation’s capital.

But wait. There’s more to the story.