Obama Switches From One Terror Group (CAIR) to Another (ISNA)

Good news/bad news.  The Good part, because the FBI has concluded that CAIR is a terrorist funding organization, the administration has stopped doing its outreach to Muslims through this group.  The bad news is that Obama is now doing its Muslim outreach through a different organization with terrorist connections, ISNA.

The ISNA is an umbrella organization of Mosques and other Muslim groups. It was established by the Muslim Students Association with the help of one of' Palestinian Islamic Jihad's founding students, Sami Al-Arian. Around the same time, Al-Arian was involved in the creation (with future Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook) of another organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was incorporated in the state of Illinois, in November of 1981. [Note the similarity in the two groups’ names with those of Hamas’s predecessor.] The IAP went on to become Hamas’s American propaganda arm. And the ISNA has tried to project itself as a friendly "family-type" organization.

You may remember that the ISNA and its financial wing the NAIT were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial. Last May the ACLU filed a lawsuit on their behalf to have them removed from the co-conspirator list. To respond to the law suit the Holy Land prosecutors have released all of the evidence of the ISNA/NAIT relationship with Muslim Brotherhood. And now the cat is officially out of the bag. According to the FBI Files released:

Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being a part of a covert network of revolutionaries who have clearly indicated there (sic) support for the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI and his government as well as other fanatical Islamic Shiite fundamentalist leaders in the Middle East. This faction of Muslims have declared war on the United States, Israel and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam. The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war (Islamic Jihad).

Just to translate that from FBI-speak to normal English, THEY WANT US TO CONVERT, SUBMIT OR DIE !" So why is the Government Dealing with them?

ISNA Becomes the New Belle of the Islamist Ball

by David J. Rusin
June 26, 2009 at 12:17 pm

With the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) weighed down by legal problems, it was just a matter of time before the government found a fresh partner for its Muslim outreach efforts. Now we know who it is: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet rather than representing some moderate alternative to CAIR, ISNA's ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood may be even more pronounced.

The Obama administration's courtship of the Islamic Society started early, as ISNA president Ingrid Mattson was invited to participate in the inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral on January 21. This honor came despite her disturbing views of Wahhabism as a simple "reform movement" and the West being at the root of the Muslim world's decline.

The initial flirtation has now blossomed into a full-blown relationship, as demonstrated by a pair of insider emails disseminated over the past week. The first message indicates that FBI Executive Assistant Director Tom Harrington met at agency headquarters with Imam Magid (Mohamed Hagmagid Ali), the vice president of ISNA. It also references FBI leaders' "decision" to "use ISNA as their official point of contact with the American Muslim community." How does the FBI square this approach with its mission "to protect and defend the United States," when a Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies ISNA as one of the "organizations of our friends" that could help advance the Brotherhood's "grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within"?

A second email, leaked to Pajamas Media, indicates that the Department of Justice will run an information booth at ISNA's convention over the July 4 weekend. "Volunteers needed for unique opportunity," the message begins — and no doubt the opportunity is unique. It is not every day that Justice Department staffers have the chance to attend the convention of a group named by their own agency's prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror financing trial. Robert Spencer reminds us of the rebuke that ISNA and its sister organization, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), earned after they protested their designation:


During last year's trial, numerous exhibits were entered into evidence establishing both ISNA's and NAIT's intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case. They were intimately connected with the HLF and its assigned task of providing financial support to Hamas.

The mainstream's embrace of ISNA will only grow warmer from here, as seen in the news that "purpose-driven" pastor Rick Warren plans to speak at the group's upcoming shindig. Interfaith gurus such as Warren are all about brotherhood. However, he, like the Obama administration, one day may regret promoting ISNA's "purpose-driven" Islamists — and their Brotherhood of a very different kind.