Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the main Democrat celebrity at a party fundraiser featuring top officials of front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist Hamas organization.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reported last week that Pelosi “headlined” the fundraiser in May. One of the guests was Nihad Awad, a founder of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a group that ostensibly fights for the rights of Muslims, but which federal prosecutors have said is connected to the financing of terrorists.
Pelosi’s message? Muslims should be Democrats because Republicans are Islamophobes.
The Fundraiser
According to IPT, Pelosi and the Democrats assembled with the suspect Muslims at an invitation-only fundraiser on May 16.
“In attendance were about 20 members of a Syrian dissident group and 10 officials representing Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front groups,” IPT reported. It continued,
Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad was perhaps the most prominent attendee and played a key role in organizing the event.
CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation Hamas money-laundering trials, was described in FBI testimony as having been created by Hamas. In a 2007 federal court filing, prosecutors described CAIR as conspiring with other branches of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.
The FBI officially severed relations with CAIR in 2008 because of its ties to Hamas.
IPT reported that Awad is an open and vociferous supporter of Hamas, a major terrorist organization in the Middle East.
Another of the more notable Muslim guests, IPT reported, was “Jamal Barzinji, a founding father of the Muslim Brotherhood in America and co-founder of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an incubator for Islamic radicalism in North America. MSA was the forerunner of Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).”
IPT continued,
Barzinji was named in a federal affidavit as being closely associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. His name appears in a global phone book of Muslim Brotherhood members recovered by Italian and Swiss authorities in Nov. 2001 from the home of Al-Taqwa Bank of Lugano founder Youssef Nada, one of the leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood.
Pelosi: Republicans are Islamophobes
Speaking to the attendees in her 10-minute address, she said the Democratic Party should become the natural home of Muslim-Americans, because Republicans fan the flames of “Islamophobia.”
She focused exclusively on Islamophobia, a term devised by radical Islamists and their apologists to silence critics, while avoiding any mention of terrorism carried out by Islamists in the United States.
Other attendees included Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim, and Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.) and Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). Carson once told fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus that congressional colleagues affiliated with the conservative tea party movement would “love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.” IPT said that the trio was among the “most vehement among the members of Congress in attendance in terms of their incendiary accusations of Republican-incited Islamophobia,” adding,
One observer said that it was striking that “there was not a scintilla of comments in defense of U.S. national security.” However, they welcomed each of the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups represented at the event into the “Democratic community” without any mention of their well-documented terror links.
New Democrat Muslim Group?
IPT also reported that another prominent Muslim at the meeting, Mazen Asbahi, announced the formation of the National Muslim Democratic Council. IPT obtained an internal memorandum from the group that said it would back Democrats in “key races where American Muslims can make a difference.” They included:
Defeating Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) in his race against Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.);
Supporting former Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) in his race against former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) in the race for Virginia’s vacant Senate seat;
Supporting Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) in her bid for re-election against former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.);
And, supporting Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) in her bid to capture the state’s 3rd congressional district.
According to IPT, Asbahi was President Obama’s Muslim outreach director in 2008, until he was forced out of his position because of his connections to a radical cleric.
“Inroads” to Democratic Party
IPT noted that radical Islamists are now connected to the Democratic Party. The fundraiser in question, sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “exemplifies the deep inroads that Islamist radicals have made in the Democratic Party over the past few years to the exclusion of more moderate elements in the American Muslim community,” IPT reported, adding,
These inroads may already be creating internal tension within the Democratic Party. This was on full display during the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., after pro-Israel language from the party platform was omitted, including expressions of support for recognition of Jerusalem as the nation’s undivided capital.
Awad told Al-Jazeera the change marked a new course for the Democratic Party and that it would likely not be the last dust-up on such issues.
“This is an indication that the Democratic Party’s political platform with regard to the Middle East is developing,” Awad said.
Just how far the Democrats will go in accommodating Muslim extremists was evident a few years ago. The party permitted Esam Omeish, a Muslim, to run for the state house of delegates in Virginia after Governor Tim Kaine removed him from a state immigration panel when his shocking anti-Israel rants surfaced on YouTube.
Omeish was head of the Muslim American Society, founded as the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to IPT.
The brotherhood is a Muslim group bent on the imposition of Sharia law through a global Islamic caliphate. A memorandum from the Brotherhood, which surfaced in the Holy Land terror funding trial, said the Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
