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Sheesh, this moderate Muslim thing in the United States has taken on additional wings of disgust and Hillary’s name continues to be in the equation….often.
DailyCaller: A mysterious Turkish Islamic cleric — whose followers have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s family foundation and to her presidential campaign — is being accused of ordering the false imprisonment of three followers of a competing religious sect, according to documents filed in federal court earlier this week.
The cleric, Fethullah Gulen, has lived in Pennsylvania’s Pocono mountains since 1998, when he went into exile from Turkey amid accusations that he plotted to undermine the secular regime that was in place at the time.
But the 74-year-old has been able to wield control from that that secluded compound over his worldwide network of media organizations and charter schools — some 120 of which are in the U.S.
Gulen also maintains enormous power in Turkey, where he uses his strong following to quash political opponents, according to Robert Amsterdam, an attorney hired by the Turkish government to investigate Gulen.
Gulen and Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were once allies against the nation’s secular regime. But the pair fell out publicly after a 2013 corruption investigation targeting Erdogan’s inner circle. The politician accused the cleric of coordinating the campaign. In turn, he’s reportedly asked President Obama to extradite Gulen to face charges back home.
It was against that backdrop that Amsterdam laid out during a press conference on Wednesday the claims made in a lawsuit against Gulen.
In the suit, three followers of the Dogan movement, which follows the interpretations of Mehmet Dogan and Said Nursi, claim Gulen ordered their arrest because they criticized the Gulen movement, also known as Hizmet. They also claimed that Gulenists planted false evidence to build the case against them.
According to the suit, Gulen’s alleged “targeted campaign of persecution” violates U.S. law.
But Amsterdam also laid out evidence against Gulen that lies closer to home, claiming that whistleblowers have come forward to shed light on how taxpayer-funded Gulen charter schools in the U.S. are operated.
He said that the whistleblowers have claimed that teachers proselytize to American students about the Gulen movement, which is considered to espouse a moderate form of Islam. He also said that teachers in those schools have claimed that Turkish teachers are given bonuses based on their indoctrination efforts. The ultimate reward is a trip to Gulen’s Pocono compound, Amsterdam claimed.
He also pointed to investigations conducted in several states and by the FBI which have found that the Gulen movement relies heavily on the H-1B visa system to fill its schools with Turkish teachers.
As Amsterdam noted Wednesday, in 2009, Gulen charter schools received more H-1B visas than Google, the massive tech company. He also pointed to audits conducted in some locales which showed that some of the taxpayer-funded Gulen schools have paid more for immigration attorneys for their Turkish teachers than they have for books.
“This is where American taxpayer money is going,” Amsterdam asserted, adding that “clearly, the United States didn’t need anything like that level of teachers.”
In turn, the teachers — largely males who often know little English — donate a large portion of their taxpayer-funded salaries to the Gulen movement.
And those funds are used, in part, to make the U.S. arm of the Gulen movement one of the “largest foreign interveners in American political activity,” Amsterdam claimed.
And perhaps the biggest beneficiary of those political funds is Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner.
Recep Ozkan, a businessman who has served as president of the Gulen-affiliated Turkish Cultural Center, contributed as much as $1 million to Clinton’s global charity in the third quarter of 2015. The Gulenist leader also contributed the maximum amount allowed under federal law to Clinton’s presidential campaign. He and another Gulen leader, Gokhan Ozkok, served as national finance co-chairs for Ready PAC, a political action committee created last year to support Clinton, TheDC found.
As a senator from New York, Clinton attended at least two functions at the Turkish Cultural Center.
The suspicious sourcing of the Gulenists’ contributions should compel Clinton to return them, Amsterdam told TheDC.
“Mr. Gulen has used his religious movement and network of charter schools to support political donations to Secretary Clinton and other politicians to build political support in the U.S. — support he uses to expand his massive charter school operation and attack the elected Government of Turkey,” Amsterdam said, adding that the donations are, “in part, taken from the salaries of teachers on H-1B visas.”
“The Clinton campaign and any other recipient of Gulen-linked donations should consider returning these funds as Senator Ayotte did.”
Last month, Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, returned more than $43,000 in contributions given to her campaign by Gulenists in April 2014. As USA Today reported at the time, many of the contributors appeared not to have known who was receiving their contributions. Others could not be tracked down, raising suspicion over whether the payouts were legitimate.
Ayotte called on Clinton to follow her lead in returning contributions her campaign has received from Gulenists. The Clinton campaign has not responded to requests for comment.
Politico: The State Department has told Senate investigators it cannot find backup copies of emails sent by Bryan Pagliano, the top Hillary Clinton IT staffer who maintained her email server but has asserted his Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions on the matter.
State officials told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a recent closed-door meeting that they could not locate what’s known as a “.pst file” for Pagliano’s work during Clinton’s tenure, which would have included copies of the tech expert’s emails, according to a letter Chairman Chuck Grassley sent to Secretary of State John Kerry that was obtained by POLITICO.
The department also told the committee the FBI has taken possession of Pagliano’s government computer system, where traces of the messages are most likely to be found, according to the letter.
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has been considering whether to grant Pagliano immunity in exchange for testimony on who approved Clinton’s private email setup and whether anyone raised any objections to the system. The controversy over her decision to bypass a government email address, which would have made her messages easier for reporters and the public to obtain, has dogged the presidential hopeful for much of the year, though it has subsided in recent weeks.
Pagliano — who worked for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, then followed her to the State Department — has refused to discuss Clinton’s email arrangement or his role in it, invoking his right against self-incrimination before the House Benghazi Committee earlier this fall.
Clinton had personally paid Pagliano to maintain her home-made server, which is also currently in the FBI’s possession. The agency has been investigating whether classified material was ever put at risk because she used her own server instead of the standard State email system. The State Department has designated about 1,000 of her emails as classified documents, which would never have been allowed on such a private system. Clinton’s representatives maintain that the emails were not classified at the time they were sent.
Pagliano’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.
Grassley had requested Pagliano’s emails to help inform his decision whether to grant Pagliano immunity.
“Given that the committee is unable to obtain [Pagliano’s] testimony at this time, I am seeking copies of his official State Department emails relevant to the Committee’s inquiry before proceeding to consider whether it might be appropriate to grant him immunity and compel his testimony,” Grassley’s letter states. It notes that such emails are a “top priority” in a list of several outstanding Clinton-related inquiries the panel has sent to the department.
The State Department said that while it has located a backup for emails Pagliano sent after Clinton left State, officials cannot find the file for the backup covering work he did while she was still there.
“The Department has located a .pst from Mr. Pagliano’s recent work at the Department as a contractor, but the files are from after Secretary Clinton left the State Department. We have not yet located a .pst that covers the time period of Secretary Clinton’s tenure,” said Alec Gerlach, a State Department spokesman. “We are continuing to search for Mr. Pagliano’s emails which the Department may have otherwise retained. We will, of course, share emails responsive to Senator Grassley’s requests if we locate them.”
State, like many federal agencies, did not have a systematic email archiving system for years. When the server issue first arose in the spring, State acknowledged that it did not automatically archive the email traffic of senior employees — relying on them to make their own backups, or “.pst,” if needed. Under current rules, federal employees are responsible for ensuring their official emails are saved.
State has not asked Pagliano whether he has any official emails in his possession, as it has with other top Clinton staffers who used personal email for work. It is unclear if Pagliano’s Fifth Amendment rights would protect him from turning over such messages.
Grassley encouraged State to continue searching for Pagliano’s emails by looking at the back-up email files of other State employees he may have emailed about the Clinton server. He letter seeks “a full and detailed written explanation of why it failed to maintain an archive, copy, or backup of Mr. Pagliano’s email file,” among other requests related to the IT staffer’s emails.
While State hasn’t been able to meet Grassley’s requests so far, his letter did offer some rare praise for the department, commending Kerry and State for what Grassley called a “recent increase in cooperation and focus on the committee’s request.” The letter says Judiciary has prioritized 22 requests for information and received seven “fully complete responses” and nine “partially complete responses.”
And State, which has been bombarded by inquiries about Clinton’s email setup, seems to appreciate the recognition: “As Senator Grassley noted, the State Department has been working very closely with his staff to get him the requested information and documents, and we are making progress,” Gerlach added.
Grassley had been blocking the confirmation of about 20 of State’s Foreign Service nominees because the department hadn’t fulfilled various document requests, including those for another probe he’s conducting on the dual-employment status of top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. Abedin advised Clinton while she was also working for a consulting company; Grassley has been asking for information about the arrangement since 2013.
Given State’s recent responsiveness, however, he recently dropped the 20 holds but maintained a block on two more high-level nominees: Brian James Egan to be a State legal adviser and David Malcolm Robinson to be assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations and coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization. In November, Grassley also added a third hold on another top-level Obama State Department nominee, Thomas Shannon Jr., to be undersecretary of state for political affairs.
Grassley in his recent letter, however, hinted that if State continues working with his committee at the current pace, he could be amenable to releasing his holds.
“Assuming the committee receives the additional items promised by your staff in yesterday’s meeting, I intend to take action to recognize this progress before Senators leave town for the holiday break,” he said, nodding specifically to any copies of Pagliano emails they could discover by searching other employee’s emails.
In part from FNC: Intelligence agencies have already flagged some 3,800 counterfeit Syrian passports, and will add data on another 10,000 fake Syrian passports recently intercepted in Bulgaria on the way to Germany. The sheer volume of fake passports flooding the market as refugees – or terrorists posing as refugees – pour into Europe has investigators on edge. The fake Syrian passports will add to an already challenging problem of vetting Syrian refugees, said Claude Arnold, a former DHS Investigations special agent in charge for Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
“In absence of specific intelligence that identifies the refugee as a member ISIS, we are not going to know they are a member of ISIS,” Arnold said. “We don’t have those boots on the ground in Syria, no one is really gathering that information, it’s a no mans land. So their application is based solely on story that person tells. It is dangerous, it is idiotic.”
Refugees undergo more rigorous screening than anyone else we allow into the United States. Here’s what the screening process looks like for them:
The Full Text of the Graphic:
The Screening Process for Refugee Entry Into the United States
Recurrent vetting: Throughout this process, pending applications continue to be checked against terrorist databases, to ensure new, relevant terrorism information has not come to light. If a match is found, that case is paused for further review. Applicants who continue to have no flags continue the process. If there is doubt about whether an applicant poses a security risk, they will not be admitted.
Many refugee applicants identify themselves to the U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR. UNHCR, then:
Collects identifying documents
Performs initial assessment
Collects biodata: name, address, birthday, place of birth, etc.
Collects biometrics: iris scans (for Syrians, and other refugee populations in the Middle East)
Interviews applicants to confirm refugee status and the need for resettlement
Initial information checked again
Only applicants who are strong candidates for resettlement move forward (less than 1% of global refugee population).
Applicants are received by a federally-funded Resettlement Support Center (RSC):
Collects identifying documents
Creates an applicant file
Compiles information to conduct biographic security checks
Biographic security checks start with enhanced interagency security checks
Refugees are subject to the highest level of security checks of any category of traveler to the United States.
U.S. security agencies screen the candidate, including:
National Counterterrorism Center/Intelligence Community
FBI
Department of Homeland Security
State Department
The screening looks for indicators, like:
Information that the individual is a security risk
Connections to known bad actors
Outstanding warrants/immigration or criminal violations
DHS conducts an enhanced review of Syrian cases, which may be referred to USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate for review. Research that is used by the interviewing officer informs lines of question related to the applicant’s eligibility and credibility.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/USCIS interview:
Interviews are conducted by USCIS Officers specially trained for interviews
Fingerprints are collected and submitted (biometric check)
Re-interviews can be conducted if fingerprint results or new information raises questions. If new biographic information is identified by USCIS at an interview, additional security checks on the information are conducted. USCIS may place a case on hold to do additional research or investigation. Otherwise, the process continues.
Biometric security checks:
Applicant’s fingerprints are taken by U.S. government employees
Fingerprints are screened against the FBI’s biometric database.
Fingerprints are screened against the DHS biometric database, containing watch-list information and previous immigration encounters in the U.S. and overseas.
Fingerprints are screened against the U.S. Department of Defense biometric database, which includes fingerprint records captured in Iraq and other locations.
If not already halted, this is the end point for cases with security concerns. Otherwise, the process continues.
Medical check:
The need for medical screening is determined
This is the end point for cases denied due to medical reasons. Refugees may be provided medical treatment for communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.
Cultural orientation and assignment to domestic resettlement locations:
Applicants complete cultural orientation classes.
An assessment is made by a U.S.-based non-governmental organization to determine the best resettlement location for the candidate(s). Considerations include:
Family; candidates with family in a certain area may be placed in that area.
Health; a candidate with asthma may be matched to certain regions.
A location is chosen.
Travel:
International Organization for Migration books travel
Prior to entry in the United States, applicants are subject to:
Screening from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center-Passenger
The Transportation Security Administration’s Secure Flight Program
This is the end point for some applicants. Applicants who have no flags continue the process.
U.S. Arrival:
All refugees are required to apply for a green card within a year of their arrival to the United States, which triggers:
Another set of security procedures with the U.S. government.
Refugees are woven into the rich fabric of American society!
Amy Pope is Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama’s new “ISIL czar,” Robert Malley, has a long and sometimes controversial history at the center of U.S. policymaking in the Middle East. He’s now taking on one of the toughest jobs in Washington: getting the struggling campaign against Islamic State militants on track while Obama refuses to entertain any wholesale strategy change.
Nearly 25 years after they were students together at Harvard Law School, these days Obama and Malley cross paths mostly in the Situation Room, where Malley’s role is to ensure the countless U.S. agencies fighting IS work in tandem despite differing time zones, capabilities, even views about the conflict. At stake is an extremist threat that has started exporting violence from Syria and Iraq deep into the West, raising fears that the U.S. is losing a battle that Obama concedes will still be raging when he leaves office.
Elevated to the role with little fanfare in late November, Malley’s appointment reflected an attempt to show that when it comes to IS, Obama wasn’t leaving anything to chance. The White House said Malley will serve as counterpart to Brett McGurk, the State Department official tasked with outreach to some five-dozen countries contributing to Obama’s coalition.
For Malley, the promotion completed an unusual return to the highest echelon of government, seven years after a political stir over revelations he’d met with the militant group Hamas.
At the time, Malley was working for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that studies violent conflicts like the one that has divided Israelis and Palestinians for generations. The U.S. considers Hamas a terrorist group, and amid the dust-up, Malley terminated his role as an informal adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign.
Malley said then that he’d never hidden the meetings, which he argued were appropriate for a researcher in his capacity. Still, the incident was one of many in Malley’s career that pointed to a willingness to engage with less-than-savory characters who — like it or not — are key players in conflicts the U.S. hopes to resolve.
“Today the U.S. does not talk to Iran, Syria, Hamas, the elected Palestinian government or Hezbollah,” Malley wrote in Time Magazine in 2006. “The result has been a policy with all the appeal of a moral principle and all the effectiveness of a tired harangue.”
Whether Malley’s stance on engaging with questionable entities will influence Obama’s anti-IS campaign remains to be seen. Obama has steadfastly insisted that Syrian President Bashar Assad be excluded from any future Syrian government, even though many coalition partners say eliminating IS, not Assad, must be the priority. Another key issue in diplomatic talks to end Syria’s war is which opposition groups should be deemed extremists and barred from negotiations.
“Rob has an appreciation for the need, if you’re going to make diplomacy succeed, to deal with the most important actors,” said Philip Gordon, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow who worked with Malley in the Obama White House.
Malley also raised eyebrows in 2001 with an article alleging that peace talks at Camp David failed not only because of then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but also Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Malley had been part of President Bill Clinton’s negotiating team, and his article challenged the prevailing opinion at the time that Arafat had spoiled the opportunity for peace.
Malley, 52, was born in New York but grew up partially in France, where his father — an Egyptian journalist born to a Jewish family — ran a magazine. He returned to the White House last year to oversee Mideast policy.
Critics continue to claim the U.S. lacks a coherent strategy to defeat IS, and the White House hopes that designating a point-man will reinforce the notion that Obama does, in fact, have a plan. To that end, the White House planned on Friday to launch a Twitter account, @RobMalley44, through which Malley can update the public on the campaign.
Although Malley doesn’t officially hold the title of czar — the White House prefers the wonkier “senior adviser” — the title has informally stuck. Like the Ebola, drug and health care “czars” before him, his job description entails coordinating the various U.S. agencies playing a role.
“Rob’s not somebody who’s consumed with turf-battling, but he’s a very capable defender of his points of view,” said former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who worked with Malley in the Clinton administration. “He’s not somebody who gets easily pushed around.”
While the Pentagon bombs targets in Iraq and Syria, the Treasury is working to cut off terrorist financing. The State Department is trying to broker a cease-fire in Syria’s civil war as a special envoy manages a 65-country coalition and the White House seeks to reassure an increasingly anxious American public.
When it comes to getting everyone on the same page, Obama’s administration has thus far been criticized for coming up short.
“I will tell you, am I satisfied with the level of integration? No,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week. He added: “We’re working on that.”
FreeBeacon: A U.S. taxpayer-funded aid organization has awarded $100,000 to an Islamic charity that has been banned in some countries for providing assistance to Hamas and other terrorism-linked organizations, according to grant information.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, has pledged a federal grant of $100,000 for the charity Islamic Relief Worldwide, which has been repeatedly linked to the financing of terrorism.
Under USAID’s Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas, Islamic Relief will be given $100,000 in 2016 for various foreign projects, according to grant information.
The award has generated controversy among critics of Islamic Relief’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group Hamas.
Both Israel and the United Arab Emirates have banned the Islamic charity since 2014 following investigations that determined that the organization was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and entities providing support to Hamas, according to reports.
Islamic Relief has also been caught in a financial relationship with al Qaeda and other radicalized individuals.
The charity’s “accounts show that it has partnered with a number of organizations linked to terrorism and that some of charity’s trustees are personally affiliated with extreme Islamist groups that have connections to terror,” according to research conducted by Samuel Westrop, a terrorism analyst, and published by the Gatestone Institute.
Israeli authorities determined in 2006 that the charity was providing material support to Hamas.
“The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives,” according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population.”
Israeli authorities arrested the charity’s Gaza coordinator, Ayaz Ali, in 2006 due to his work on Hamas’s behalf.
“Incriminating files were found on Ali’s computer, including documents that attested to the organization’s ties with illegal Hamas funds abroad (in the UK and in Saudi Arabia) and in Nablus,” according to Israel’s foreign affairs ministry. “Also found were photographs of swastikas superimposed on IDF symbols, of senior Nazi German officials, of Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as many photographs of Hamas military activities.
A review of Islamic Relief’s accounts have shown that it donated thousands of dollars to a charity founded by a leading al Qaeda terrorist, according to Westrop’s research.
Islamic Relief Worldwide was co-founded by a Muslim Brotherhood-linked individual who formerly worked for the Clinton Foundation. That individual, Gehad el-Haddad, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in 2013 and sentenced to serve five years for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
American law enforcement officials also have expressed concerns about the organization’s ties to Hamas.
“We know that these Muslim leaders and groups are continuing to raise money for Hamas and other terrorist organizations,” one U.S. law enforcement official told Patrick Poole, a terrorism analyst, in 2011. “Ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too.”
“Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief and Viva Palestina,” the official said. “Until we act decisively to cut off the financial pipeline to these terrorist groups by putting more of these people in prison, they are going to continue to raise money that will go into the hands of killers.”
While the charity attempted to perform an internal audit in 2014 in a bid to clear its tainted name, experts have cast doubt on the integrity of the investigation.
“The information provided by [Islamic Relief] on its internal investigation is insufficient to assess the veracity of its claims,” NGO Monitor, a watchdog group, wrote in a 2015 analysis. “NGO Monitor recommends that a fully independent, transparent, and comprehensive audit of IRW’s international activities and funding mechanisms be undertaken immediately.”
Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy’s Threat Information Office, expressed shock that the U.S. government would be funding such a controversial organization, particularly in light of recent efforts to boost the fight against international terror organizations.
“The fact that the U.S. government would provide funding to an organization which two of our allies view as a terrorism finance entity is obviously highly problematic both for our domestic security, but also for foreign relations,” said Shideler, who has written extensively about the charity.
“Both Israel and the UAE consider IRW a threat to their security. And we’re funding them. The fact that this administration is aware of the role IRW plays, and yet sees fit not only to associate with, but actually funds them should be an outrage.”
The grant is particularly troubling given that Congress as Congress seeks to label the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, Shideler said.
“Given that there’s currently a bill before Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood, and Congress is currently in discussion over an Omnibus spending bill, it would seem to me that now would be an opportune time to call for a total defunding of organizations linked to terror finance or Muslim Brotherhood activity,” Shideler said. “One would think such a move wouldn’t be necessary, but unfortunately it appears that this administration will continue to do so unless restrained by Congress.”
USAID did not respond to a request for more information about the grant.
Meforum: Within the United States, the cases of American Taliban John Lindh, the “Lackawanna Six,” and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue and sought to link up with Al-Qaeda,[30] all involve Tablighi missionaries.[31] Other indicted terrorists, such as “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, and Lyman Harris, who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge, were all members of Tablighi Jamaat at one time or another.[32] According to Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI’s first Islamic counterterrorism unit, between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans left to join the jihad in the 1990s alone.[33] Pakistani intelligence sources report that 400 American Tablighi recruits received training in Pakistani or Afghan terrorist camps since 1989.[34]
The Tablighi Jamaat has made inroads among two very different segments of the American Muslim population. Because many American Muslims are immigrants, and a large subsection of these are from South Asia, Deobandi influences have been able to penetrate deeply. Many Tablighi Jamaat missionaries speak Urdu as a first language and so can communicate easily with American Muslims of South Asian origin. The Tablighi headquarters in the United States for the past decade appears to be in the Al-Falah mosque in Queens, New York. Its missionaries—predominantly from South Asia—regularly visit Sunni mosques and Islamic centers across the country.[35] The willingness of Saudi-controlled front organizations and charities, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), the Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and others, to spend large amounts of money to co-opt the religious establishment has helped catalyze recruitment. As a result Wahhabi and Deobandi influence dominate American Islam. Full reading with citations here.
Take a hard look of the U.K. what happens there comes to America under the visa waiver system.
The activities of Tablighi Jamaat are gradually increasing in United States, and according to recent statistics disclosed during last year’s largest Tablighi congregations in Bangladesh, more than four hundred Tablighi groups are actively working in various so-called community mosques or in disguise mostly targeting young Americans with the goal of converting them initially to Islam and later giving them Jihadist provocations.
Tablighi Jamaat [Conveying Group] is a Muslim missionary and revival movement. Their activities are not limited to the Deobandi community. Leaders of Tablighi Jamaat claim that the movement is strictly non-political in nature, with the main aim of the participants being to work at the grass roots level and reaching out to all Muslims of the world for spiritual development.
Tablighi Jamat seeks to revitalize Muslims around the world. It is claimed that their ideology and practices are in strict accordance with Qur’an and Sunnah. Despite its affiliation and influence of the prominent scholars of Deoband, it does not focus any particular sect or community. It gathers its members and aids in community activities such as mosque building and education.
When it comes to freely traveling into the United States a deep look at visa requests of through the visa waiver countries, those that are alleged to be scholars of Deobandi frequently appear at mosques throughout the country with particular emphasis on the Riverside Islamic Center. This is one of the mosques attended by Syed Farook and his circle of sympathizers. Further reading here.
The fundamentalist Deobandi Muslim sect, widely represented in the Indian subcontinent and among South Asian Muslims abroad, resembles its ally, the Saudi Wahhabi clergy, in many ways. Both claim to “reform” the religion. Like the Wahhabis, the Deobandis preach a distorted utopia of “pure” Islam disrespectful of other faiths and condemning Islamic interpretations with which they differ. Deobandism, like Wahhabism, is harshly restrictive of women’s rights.
There are distinctions separating Deobandis and Wahhabis, aside from those between the idiom, food, dress, and other cultural aspects of South Asia, whence the Deobandis emerged, and Nejd, the remote zone of the Arabian peninsula that produced Wahhabism. Deobandism began in the 19th century in India as a nonviolent, purificationist movement. The failure of the 1857 Indian rebellion against the British convinced the clerics who established Deobandism that peaceful revivalism would better unite the Indian Muslims for resistance against the colonial rulers.
By contrast, Wahhabism emerged in Nejd three quarters of a century earlier, as a violent phenomenon. Wahhabis claimed that the Sunni Islam of the time, centered on the Ottoman caliphate, as well as Shia Islam and spiritual Sufism, represented a return to pre-Muslim polytheism and must be fought to the death.
Deobandism had no command over any government until the mid-1990s, when Deobandi students (“Taliban,” the plural form of the Arabic-Pashto word “talib,” meaning “student”) from Afghanistan took over that devastated country. Until then, many Taliban were medresa pupils in Pakistan, and Islamabad is widely acknowledged to have organized and backed the Afghan takeover by the faction. Wahhabism, however, has been the sole Saudi religion since the formation of the first, unsuccessful 18th and 19th century Saudi-Wahhabi “states” in Arabia. The official standing of Wahhabism was confirmed with the establishment of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
Their installation as rulers of Afghanistan, originally with Saudi financing, led the Taliban – i.e. the Pakistani-trained Deobandis – to abandon their nonviolent past. They imposed a brutal, repressive regime, originally in Kandahar, that claimed a basis in Islamic law. Deobandi depredations against other Muslims had a precedent in the 1971 Bangladesh independence war, when the Deobandis and their jihadist allies committed widespread human rights violations in the former “East Pakistan.” Early in February 2013, the Bangladesh High Court found one such figure, Abdul Quader Mollah, guilty of murder and rape, as crimes against humanity in that conflict. He was sentenced to life in prison. A.Q. Mollah was a member of the youth organization in the Bangladesh branch of Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), the most influential South Asian jihadist party. JEI is accused of the main responsibility for depraved actions during the Bangladesh struggle.
Some moderate Muslims perceived in this verdict a victory for non-sectarian justice in Bangladesh. But almost immediately, Bangladeshis came out in the streets in large numbers. They expressed their discontent with the outcome and called for the execution of A.Q. Mollah and a ban on JEI. In January, Abdul Kalam Azad, another Islamist charged with crimes against humanity in Bangladesh, had been sentenced to death – in absentia, since he has apparently fled to Pakistan. More radicals facing trial in Bangladesh for crimes against humanity include, as described by BBC News, Ghulam Azam, the head of the Bangladesh wing of JEI; Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, Bangladesh JEI secretary-general; Motiur Rahman Nizami, originally a Bangladesh JEI youth leader, and Delwar Hossein Sayeedi, a former Bangladesh JEI parliamentarian. [Update: On February 28, Delwar Hossein Sayeedi was sentenced to death. JEI responded with further disorders, resulting in an unconfirmed number of injuries and fatalities.] Although a minor party in Bangladesh, JEI reflects the continuing intrusion of Islamist ideology from Pakistan.
During two weeks of anti-JEI protests in Shahbag Square, Dhaka, after the A.Q. Mollah decision, an anti-JEI blogger, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was stabbed and hacked to death in his house. This intensified the demands of the Shahbag participants for suppression of the JEI.
JEI had demonstrated against the trial before it began and as it proceeded. The Islamist party reacted to the Shahbag Square protests by rioting against the government and journalists, with at least four people killed during an outburst after Friday prayers on February 22. JEI followers accused the Shahbag participants of insulting Muhammad and Islam.
In response to the anti-JEI anger of the Bangladeshi public, Dhaka adopted an amended law that permits the state to appeal the Mollah verdict and hold a new trial. Under the revised legislation, prosecutors may call for the death penalty for those previously convicted and given lesser sentences. The Bangladeshi government will now have the power to indict, try, and punish – even prohibit – political parties like JEI, for crimes against humanity in the 1971 liberation of the land.
The horrors in Bangladesh were perpetrated by Deobandis from then-“West” Pakistan. The center of the Deobandi movement remained at Darul Uloom Deoband in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Until the second recent Afghan war began in 2001, the Indian Deobandis adhered mainly to their past quietist attitude. The Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Deobandis then radicalized the Indian Deobandis, leading members of the latter element to adopt rhetoric justifying terrorism.
The impact of the Indian Deobandi transformation has been predictable: a series of atrocities in India. Deobandis also founded the preaching movement Tabligh-i-Jamaat (Call of the Community or TJ), which pledges nonviolence though holding to extremist Deobandi doctrines. TJ has had significant success in Bangladesh and in the Bengali diaspora in the West.
Both Deobandis and Wahhabis despise Shia Muslims and have been involved in or have incited violence against the Shias. Unlike the Wahhabis, the Deobandis do not denounce Sufism outright. Yet the Deobandis share Wahhabi prohibitions on some of the practices commonest and most beloved among Sufis, such as milad–an–nabi (celebration of the birthday of Muhammad) and musical performances. Deobandis have further been implicated in the devastation of Sufi shrines in Pakistan and India. Additionally, Saudi Wahhabism wiped out the four recognized schools of Sunni jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali), replacing them with an arbitrary form of Islamic law derived supposedly (and spuriously) from Hanbalism. The Deobandis disagree discreetly with this posture, alleging their loyalty to the Hanafi school, which is traditional for Sunnis in India and, paradoxically, the most open to controversy.
Unlike Saudi Wahhabis, who reject parliamentary institutions and participation in them, and leave governance ostensibly to the monarchy, the Deobandis are involved in Islamist political parties, exemplified by JEI, from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and in Britain, the U.S., and South Africa. Indian Sufi Muslims have complained bitterly and extensively against a bias toward relations with the Deobandis, as representatives of Indian Islam, on the part of the secular Indian government.
In the UK, Deobandis are active in seeking ascendancy over Sunni believers. They pursue this aim through the establishment of Deobandi mosques, the takeover of mosques erected previously by the moderate, conservative Barelvi sect, which supports Sufism actively, and the missionary activities of TJ. In Britain, Barelvi and other conventional Muslims resist the Deobandi invasion. Statistics enumerating Deobandi vs. Barelvi and other South Asian Sunni Muslims in Britain are unreliable; they typically count the number of mosques administered by the two groups, rather than the creed of the believers. Since the Deobandis will declare any prayer space a mosque, they can exaggerate their influence.
In the United States, where people of South Asian origin form a plurality of about 35 percent among Muslims, Deobandism dominates Pakistani-American Sunni mosques. Unlike in Britain, Barelvis in the U.S., although numerous, have been unable to organize their own community institutions. As noted by Marcia Hermansen of Loyola University in Chicago, “most [South Asian Muslim] community organizations were already controlled by anti-Sufi Islamists.”
Wahhabism is more notorious for some of its retrograde and bizarre doctrines, which have produced such limitations on Saudi women’s rights as forbidding their operation of motor vehicles. Thousands of cars and trucks are owned by Saudi females, and while they cannot drive them openly in cities and on highways, it is well-known that Saudi women drive in rural areas. Wahhabism founded the infamous Saudi “morals patrols” or mutawiyin, often miscalled a religious police. The Taliban have created similar “religious enforcement” groups in Afghanistan and Pakistani Deobandis have appealed for their importation into the latter country.
Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, since he succeeded to the throne in 2005, has taken measures, small but significant, to expand women’s rights and curb the excesses of the Wahhabi clerics and the “morals patrols.” Still, the South Asian Deobandis, as noted, have grown more nihilistic in their outlook and practices.
Deobandis and Wahhabis are dissonant on other matters of little significance. Nevertheless, Wahhabi-Deobandi linkages persist. In 2011, Abdurrahman Al-Sudais, a prominent Wahhabi fanatic and Friday preacher at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, was allowed by India to visit Darul Uloom Deoband in U.P., as well as Delhi and Old Delhi. His mission was to reinforce amity between the sects and demonstrate that together, Deobandism and Wahhabism are expanding their influence in India. His journey to India was permitted although Al-Sudais is barred from Canada and has been criticized in Saudi Arabia for hateful declamations.
According to the American Muslim academic Ebrahim Moosa, who studied at Darul Ulum Nadwatul ‘Ulama, a Deobandi medresa at Lucknow, U.P., the international spread of the ideology, lacking the financial resources of the Saudi Wahhabis, depends on donations by British and South African Muslims.
If there is a single feature the Wahhabis and Deobandis have in common, it is their dedication to the gratuitous issuance of weird and illogical fatwas, or religious opinions. Some of the more ludicrous Saudi Wahhabi fatwas have held, for example, that Wahhabi strictures against gender mixing between unrelated men and women may be evaded if the man drinks the breast milk of the woman, making them, allegedly, members of the same family. A fatwa issued in February called for imposition of the face veil (niqab) on female infants as a supposed protection against sexual abuse.
The proliferation of fatwa websites in Saudi Arabia has been criticized by King Abdullah and senior Saudi clerics, who have sought to regulate such activities. The king and the religious authorities warn that many are directed by self-designated Islamic jurists without credentials, and announce their opinions on whim and a desire for publicity. Unlike Christianity, Islam – except for Wahhabism – does not encourage free-lance preaching by unschooled, “inspired” individuals usurping clerical titles. Even the Deobandis stress a rigorous Islamic education, however deviant their beliefs.
A similarly eccentric spirit of fatwa composition has, withal, overtaken Darul Uloom Deoband. The chief Deobandi medresa has recently promulgated contradictory fatwas that leave Indian Muslims confused, in the words of commentator Shuriah Niazi. In 2010, the Deobandi center released a fatwa forbidding gender mixing in the workplace, an effective bar on any female employment, preventing women from supporting their families. The fatwa against women working alongside men exceeded the bounds of Wahhabism, and was previously unknown in Islamic jurisprudence. Repudiation of the fatwa by Indian Muslim women, Islamic scholars, and media commentators led Darul Uloom Deoband to qualify it by stating that work outside the home is permissible for women if they are covered completely when interacting with men. Even this amelioration reflected a discrimination against women previously absent from Islamic law.
Darul Uloom Deoband emitted more fatwas in 2012, of the same kind. One attempted to bar Muslims and others from submitting to body scans. A leading anti-Wahhabi Indian Sufi, General Secretary of the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB) Maulana Syed Muhammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi, rejected the fatwa, declaring, “If a scan is necessary for security reasons or to detect or treat a disease then it is not haram [forbidden] or un-Islamic.” Soon, Darul Uloom Deoband caused a new uproar with a fatwa against Shia Muslims. The Deobandis praised Yezid Ibn Muawiya, responsible for the murder of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad and son of Imam Ali, at the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. This was among the worst insults that could be crafted against the Shias. A later fatwa from Darul Uloom Deoband banned Muslim women from working as receptionists, because the job would require them to forego total body covering.
The Deobandi center ended the year with fatwas against multimedia smartphones and the practice of showing prospective husbands photographs of girls seeking to be married.
Indian Muslims view the fatwa antics of Darul Uloom Deoband much as Saudis have come to regard the similar behavior of Wahhabi “callers to religion.” That is, sensational fatwas are created to gain media attention for the “scholars” that improvise them.
Muslims and non-Muslims in South Asia and elsewhere in the world should understand the identical motive behind the activities of Deobandi and Wahhabi “fatwa factories,” whether originating in medresas or websites. The Deobandis and Wahhabis seek absolute direction over the lives of Sunni Muslims, and, by extension, over all Muslim relations with their non-Muslim neighbors. The aim of “fatwa fanatics” is not religious; it is political and totalitarian.
In a normal world, U.S. and British law enforcement would aggressively investigate the “Wahhabi lobby” of radical Islamist organizations that, in the main English-speaking countries, provide pseudo-religious cover for the terrorist assault on civilization. U.S. and British investigators would not be deterred by the unfortunate fact that the “Wahhabi lobby” constitutes the “Muslim establishment” in both lands.
But we do not live in a normal world. We live in a perverse environment where U.S. and British law enforcement frequently appear more concerned about their reputation for political correctness and more afraid of accusations that they might violate someone’s civil liberties, than about the death and destruction they are supposed to prevent.
Thus we see the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), one of the most hypocritical and suspect Muslim organizations in America, preening itself on having met, on August 14 in Los Angeles, with the Consul General of the United Kingdom as well as with representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal Department of Homeland Security, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. The point of the meeting? Apparently, nothing more than an opportunity for Salam al-Marayati, MPAC founder, to claim credit for a decision by a Muslim individual in Britain to tip off British authorities about the alleged transatlantic airline terror conspiracy.
Al-Marayati said, “I want to acknowledge the crucial tip that came from a worried member of the British Muslim community and was the primary reason that this alleged plot was disrupted. It is that unknown hero that we want to acknowledge today as well as those Muslims in America, Europe and throughout the world who are stepping forward out of their Islamic obligation to protect their communities and their societies… These are people who are serving [sic] their patriotic duty in the United States and elsewhere.”
There are two lessons to be derived from this maudlin performance.
First, al-Marayati and those like him are so desperate to show that Muslims of their stripe will participate on the right side of the battle to defend civilization that he will try to associate himself with the action of an obscure individual living thousands of miles away.
Second, the British consul general and American law enforcement, although approaching the fifth anniversary of September 11, 2001, seem to have learned nothing about al-Marayati and his cohort.
While British diplomats, the FBI, DHS and assorted other agencies assigned to guard the peace may not be clear on what al-Marayati represents, five years ago al-Marayati himself was quite precise about such matters. Speaking on radio within hours of the 9/11 atrocities, according to The New York Times of October 22, 2001, al-Marayati told L.A. station KCRW, “If we’re going to look at suspects we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.”
The spectacle of official British and American representatives cozying up to Salam al-Marayati should be disgusting to any loyal citizen of either country, regardless of religion, and should be especially repellent to moderate Muslims, who do not want or need al-Marayati to speak for them. The more al-Marayati and Co. are permitted to represent American Islam, the fewer opportunities moderate Muslims will have to rescue their religion from the common enemy: extremism.
It appears that neither British nor American authorities, no matter their anti-terrorist will, have changed much since 9/11; but neither has Salam al-Marayati. Since then, MPAC has conducted a consistent campaign of “profiling” against anti-terrorist figures such as Steven Emerson of The Investigative Project. I documented MPAC’s hate spree against Emerson and others back in 2004.
MPAC has not changed its spots. But neither have the U.S. or British authorities changed their method of dealing publicly with those who promote defiance, exaggerated grievances, claims of victimization, and general political confrontation by Muslims in the English-speaking nations. It is past time for democratic governments to cease appeasing these domestic agitators for radical Islam; to dispense with political correctness, and to bring all such extremist activities, and those of their backers, wherever they may be, to an end.
It is also past time for Salam al-Marayati and his ilk to realize that honeyed words and photo-ops with cops will not eradicate from the public record the memory of their past incitement – exemplified by the infamous statement quoted above. MPAC and groups like it have no role to play in the struggle for democracy unless they turn over all the information they possess to law enforcement, warn American and British Muslims in no uncertain terms against radical rhetoric, and then shut down their operations. They have no hope of saving their reputations, at least in the short run of events. They should get out of the way and let those intent on protecting democracy and rescuing Islam – and who have nothing to hide, explain away, or apologize for – carry on the struggle. They should go home, read their Qur’an, and ponder how their addiction to ideology and publicity, and their ambitions and dishonesty, have harmed their community. They have succeeded for too long in imposing silence on the majority of American Muslims. Better that MPAC and the rest now be silent, than that they continue their charade of moderation, enabled by naïve Western public officials.
