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The Wahabi lobby in America
The article is too long to post in full here, edited for relevence
On Aug. 20, 2001, Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a man who would soon be named a minister of the Saudi government and put in charge of its two holy mosques, arrived in the United States to meet with some of this countryâs most influential fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders. His journey here was to include meetings and contacts with officials of several Saudi-sponsored charities that have since been accused of links to terrorist groups, including the Illinois-based Global Relief Foundation, which was shut down by U.S. authorities last year. He met with the creators of Islamic Web sites that U.S. authorities contend promote the views of radical Saudi clerics tied to Osama bin Laden. On the night of Sept. 10, 2001, Hussayen stayed at a Herndon hotel that also housed three of the Saudi hijackers who would slam an aircraft into the Pentagon the next day, though there is no evidence that he had contact with them.
| On the other hand, there are quite a few hotels in Herndon. Quite a coincidence, isn't it? |
In recent months, authorities have begun to focus on the role of radical Wahhabi clerics and organizations, including some that Hussayen came to see here, in exhorting followers to violence.
| Why not make that all of them he came to see? |
Backed by money from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabis have built or taken over hundreds of mosques in North America and opened branches of Saudi universities here for the training of imams as part of the effort to spread their beliefs, which are intolerant of Christianity, Judaism and even other strains of Islam. What began as discrete investigations in Idaho, Michigan, New York and Northern Virginia has coalesced in recent months into a cluster of interrelated probes.
| All threads in the same closely-woven fabric... |
Prosecutors and FBI agents are trying to determine whether links among the groups suggest a network whose purpose is to incite violent jihad, or holy war, and recruit people to fight it, according to sources familiar with aspects of the investigation. To date, a variety of charges have been brought against 19 people associated with the groups, and seven have pleaded guilty.
| That magick number again... |
Authorities also are investigating the use of Internet sites, mosques, charities and Islamic conferences as possible venues for recruitment, the sources said.
| I think the funnel organizations hadn't been set up completely. The "Islamic solidarity" groups, like AMC and ISNA, are for the masses. The actual funnel organizations, like al-Fuqra, haven't gotten a real toehold yet, because the Feds are watching so closely â viva Patriot Act! The solidarity groups would be responsible for propagandizing (dawa) and filtering the potential bad boyz to the funnel groups. The funnel groups would be supplying further doses of more virulent propaganda along with as much training as they could get away with. The cream of that crop would be passed off to the actual jihadi groups. So far everything we've seen involving funnel groups has been disorganized (Lackawanna) or so lacking in subtlty that they're almost laughable â al-Fuqra. |
U.S. prisons, where several of the groups have mounted efforts to spread their brand of Islam with outreach programs that include distribution of Korans and other literature, have also come under scrutiny.
| That's where al-Fuqra gets a lot of its membership. They're not looking for the solid citizen type... |
One of the principal organizations under investigation in the United States is a group the Saudi Embassy has branded as Muslim extremists.
| If the Soddies brand them as extremists, they're probably affiliated with or influenced by the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform, which sez Soddy Arabia isn't Islamic enough... |
It is the Michigan-based Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), whose webmaster is Saleh Hussayenâs nephew: Sami Omar Hussayen, a computer scientist jailed in Idaho on charges he failed to disclose his work for IANA on immigration forms. IANA, U.S. authorities have contended in Idaho court proceedings, is a powerful engine for groups that promote teachings and religious fatwas â orders that advocate violence against the United States â issued by two radical Saudi clerics. The clerics, Safar Hawali and Salman Ouda, were identified in the first World Trade Center bombing trial as spiritual advisers to bin Laden. Both were jailed for radicalism during the 1990s in Saudi Arabia.
Both are also part of the âSupreme Council of Global Jihadâ. Hawali is the Security General of it, in fact.
In recent months, 19 individuals who have come under investigation as part of the probe have been arrested or indicted. They include Bassem K. Khafagi, a former IANA president, who pleaded guilty two weeks ago to bank fraud in federal court in Detroit. In Syracuse, five men tied to an IANA affiliate called Help the Needy are charged by federal authorities with sending money to Iraq in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. In Northern Virginia, 11 men were indicted in June, accused of training to wage jihad with a Pakistani terrorist group. The indictment also alleged that the menâs spiritual leader, Ali Timimi, who has long been associated with IANA, told group members in September 2001 that the time had come for them "to . . . join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Indonesia" and that "American troops were legitimate targets of the jihad." When Timimiâs Fairfax house was searched by the FBI this spring, items seized included Khafagiâs personal papers, which Timimi was holding for safekeeping. The two had been IANAâs representatives to the 1995 international womenâs conference in Beijing, where IANA argued against Western feminism and defended female circumcision, which is practiced in some Islamic societies.
| Lopping off the fun part of the coozinart relegates the women to permanent breeding stock status. Making whoopee becomes a chore, like skinning the sheep for dinner... |
Investigators at multiple federal agencies are trying to sort out the networkâs seemingly innumerable links, some of which lead back to the same nondescript office building at 360 S. Washington St. in Falls Church. It is there that Timimi used to lecture at Dar al Arqam, the same religious center frequented by another internationally known Salafi imam, Jaafar Idris. His lectures, like Timimiâs, are posted on extremist Web sites around the world, including IANAâs. The Muslim World League office was raided in March 2002 by Treasury Department agents as part of an investigation into a Herndon-based network of Saudi-financed charities and companies suspected of ties to al Qaeda, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Muslim World League and its offshoot, the International Islamic Relief Organization, have been the subjects of terrorism financing inquiries in the United States and several other countries.
IANA conferences in the United States began drawing the scrutiny of terrorism researchers a decade ago because of their heavy Wahhabi and Salafi bent. According to the Investigative Project, a terrorism research group that has monitored Islamic extremists, a senior al Qaeda recruiter, Abdelrahman Dosari, spoke at three IANA conferences in the early 1990s. FBI and Treasury officials said they believe some Islamic conferences, as well as Web sites that extol radical Islam, are vehicles in the United States for recruitment and fundraising by terrorist groups. Until it was modified this year, for example, IANAâs Islamway.com Web site offered Arabic-language videos with graphic scenes of jihadist combat. "Martyrs of Bosnia" contains footage of al Qaeda members, and suspected al Qaeda members are featured in a second such film called "Operation Badr." The Idaho visa fraud indictment against Sami Hussayen contends that he administered a Web site associated with IANA that expressly advocated suicide attacks and using airliners as weapons. Hussayen has a background in Saudi-backed charities. Virginia incorporation records show that during the 1990s, he was a director of the SAAR Foundation, a charitable organization that was at the center of a sprawling conglomerate of Muslim institutes, companies and religious groups that are under federal investigation for alleged ties to terrorist organizations.
SAARâs offices in Northern Virginia were raided in 2002, kicking off the governmentâs most wide-ranging probe to date into suspected terrorist financing. This week, Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim activist affiliated with the SAAR network, was charged with illegally doing business with Libya.
The SAAR network was founded by a core group of wealthy Egyptians and Pakistanis who had a background in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamaat-e-Islami. People with a similar background also founded the World Muslim League, with the help of Saudi money.
The most intriguing aspect of Hussayenâs journey may be entirely coincidental: his brief proximity in a hotel near Dulles International Airport to three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers the night before they crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon. On the night of Sept. 10, Hani Hanjour, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi checked into the same hotel, a Marriott Residence Inn. After the attack, an FBI agent interviewed hotel guests, including Hussayen and his wife, but did not get very far. According to court testimony from FBI agent Gneckow earlier this year, the interview was cut short when Hussayen "feigned a seizure, prompting the agents to take him to a hospital, where the attending physicians found nothing wrong with him." The agent recommended that Hussayen "should not be allowed to leave until a follow-up interview could occur," Gneckow told the court. But "her recommendation, for whatever reason, was not complied with," he said. On Sept. 19, the day air travel resumed, Hussayen and his wife took off for Saudi Arabia.
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-10-02 |
