In FrontPage, Daniel Pipes comments on the significance of the Boim case (thanks to Jeffrey Imm for the link):
Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million (U.S.)....Third, as the Boims’ lawyer, Stephen J. Landes explains, it shows that “the American court system is prepared to bankrupt the Islamist terror network,” just as it earlier destroyed the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, two extremist and violent organizations, “by bringing unpayably large judgments against them.”
Finally, the case confirms a pattern of culpability among even the most innocent-appearing of Islamic institutions. Two of the three liable groups have known ties to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group; Holy Land Foundation serves as its fundraising arm, Islamic Association for Palestine as its political front. But the Quranic Literacy Institute appeared wholly unconnected to Hamas. It is a religious group based in a Chicago suburb that since 1991 has engaged in the pious work of translating Islamic sacred texts from Arabic, then publishing them in English.
But appearances can deceive. In June 1998, Federal authorities charged QLI with having for nine years supported “a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities and domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities” and seized $1 million of its cash and assets....QLI’s complicity in terrorism has great significance, for it is no rogue outfit but a stalwart of the Saudi-backed “Wahhabi lobby” in the United States. QLI’s founding president, Ahmad Zaki Hammad, is a scholar of Islam boasting advanced degrees from Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University and the University of Chicago. He has served as president of the lobby’s largest organization, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and sat on the board of the North American Islamic Trust, its mechanism for taking over mosques and other Islamic properties.
When the QLI’s assets were impounded in 1998, leading organizations of the Wahhabi lobby – ISNA, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Students’ Association – leapt to its defense, declaring themselves “shocked at this unprecedented action taken against members of the Muslim community.” Nearly a thousand supporters rallied on QLI’s behalf, chanting “Allahu Akbar.”
And yet, we now know that this innocuous-appearing organization did have a key role funneling money to Hamas.
Muslim institutions too often are not what they seem to be. The “Progressive Muslim Union” is actually reactionary. Mosques harbor criminals. Honey companies and Islamic “charities” fund terrorism. A “mainstream” Muslim leader pleads guilty to an assassination scheme.
The lesson is clear: Wahhabi organizations like the QLI cannot be taken at face value but must be scrutinized for extremist, criminal, and terrorist connections. Extensive research, including undercover operations, is needed to find out the possibly sordid reality behind a seemingly benign exterior.
Read it all.
You don't say? Wahabi organisations are not what they pretend to be?
Go to Saudi Arabia to find out more. "Nothing is real- Strawberry fields forever..."
Let' take the bastards on and shake 'em down, sooner the better.
Muslim charities must be 'outraged' about being turned upside down by 'infidels'- but: There is a time for everything; and if we take them on now it will save a lot of lives later on...
" Nearly a thousand supporters rallied on QLI’s behalf, chanting “Allahu Akbar.”"
You gotta give it to them, they do take the time and trouble to organise and protest. We anti-jihadists somehow never seem to be able to do so for a variety of reasons - yup, like working for an honest living etc.
It sure helps the jihadis and radicals that tghere's fudinga nd organisation available to them which is one reason why they manage to organise and protest so effectively.
Well, Finally! As my Old Fashioned Mom would say, "Bless Patty's PIG!" The US has done far too much to finance Islamics with one purpose: To kill all Westerners! It's time to stand up for ourselves in any way available! WooooHooooo! This makes a wonderful Christmas Gift to this world!
If I might recommend a relevant book:
"Hatred's Kingdom" by former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895261359/102-4093917-8284124?v=glance
http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/gold.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory051403.asp
So much Islamofascism goes back to Saudi money. If you want to do something constructive today, do something about our use of oil. Sure, work politically but do something on our own too. Buy a hybrid, get a deisel, downsize your vehicle, use mass transit, car pool, turn down your thermostat, recycle, fill your tires, take excess weight out of your vehicle, walk more ... we are all wariors in this war!
Let them have their rallies, just make sure there are plenty of photographs being taken of who's doing what. Same thing with their slime bucket "charities"- keep a good trail on the dollars. Those who pervert religion, or who fail to evolve it from it's usually clumsy origins, aren't seeking kingdoms in heaven or the will of any God; they seek only to gain power over the worldy kingdoms here on Earth and impose their will on their fellow men. It has always been the same. Secular governments and instituions will ever contend with such as these.
Those who hear the word "zakat" or "charity" and think in terms of the United Way, or the Salvation Army, or the Save the Children Federation, have another think coming. "Zakat" is a privilege, for it allows Muslims to pay a prescribed part of their wealth for the furtherance of the "way of Allah." Anything that helps further the faith can be an appropirate goal.
Note, please, that Muslims contributing to non-Muslim charities is out of the question -- unless of course such actions are noisily and publicly undertaken (like that check offered by the Saudi with the facial tics, that check returned -- or was it ripped up --by Mayor Giuliani), in order to further the cause of Islam by somehow making non-Muslims grateful (you know -- like a nice gift of fruit to soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital if they were wounded rescuing the Kuwaitis, that sort of thing).
Muslim charities in an act of disingenuous ingenuousness, asked the Justice Department some time back -- gosh, can't you tell us what Muslim charities it is okay to contribute to? the problem is that, when one contributes to anything having to "further the way of Allah" it is almost never simply soup-kitchens. With the soup-kitchens, comes the indoctrination, and with the indoctrination, comes the hatred for Infidels. Possibly the only kind of "Muslim" charity that might be devoid of this would be one devoted to irrigation projects, or restoring a dilapidated wall of a mosque, or something. And for some reason, there don't seem to be any Muslim charities involved in that kind of activity -- and only that. If you hear of one, let us know.
The next time someone begins to prate -- whether it is an editorial writer in The New York Times or someone on NPR -- about the wonderful "social justice" side of Islam ("you know-- all that charitable giving, and so on") ask if they have any idea what that "zakat" is supposed to be for. And ask them where, in the world, are the greatest unearned riches, and the greatest theft of national wealth by small groups -- military as in Egypt or Algeria, or family as in Saudi Arabia and the sheikdoms, and where in the world would it be easiest to eliminate all poverty given the vast oil wealth, but there is not only no effort to do so, but a demand on the Infidel world that it do something.
Islam and "social justice" -- honor killings, persecution of all non-Muslims, theft of foreign aid and oil wealth. Can people learn to think before uttering inanities, so that perhaps the total number of those inanities may, over time, steadily diminish?