A jihad terror group finds support in the U.S. from an official of Hamas-linked CAIR and others.
"Hizballah's Brash U.S. Supporters," from IPT News, November 18:
(Part two of three) Green and yellow flags bearing an emblem of a hand grasping an assault rifle waved at a September rally in Washington. The flags of Hizballah, the Iranian-backed foreign terrorist organization, flying in the nation's capital, are a sign of defiance.For a group responsible for more American deaths than any terrorist group other than al-Qaida, whose leaders continue to view America as the enemy, Hizballah enjoys surprisingly open support within pockets inside the United States.
From rallies like September's Al Quds Day protest featuring Hizballah flags and images of its leaders, to speeches endorsing its activity by national Islamist leaders, to a radical student movement that gives voice to its dogma, the Lebanese-based terrorist group that is considered an Iranian proxy is cast as a legitimate political player and heroic resistance movement.
In fact, the rally's purpose - honoring Al Quds Day - continues a legacy established 30 years ago by the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, a continuing source of inspiration to Hizballah.
Al Quds is an Arabic reference to Jerusalem and protests oppose Israel's control of the city. In addition to support for Hizballah, Al Quds rallies routinely feature incendiary rhetoric and call for Israel's destruction. The most recent event in Washington's Dupont Circle included a claim that the 9/11 attacks were a Zionist plot "in order to justify to occupy the land of the Muslims such as Afghanistan, such as Iraq, such as Pakistan, now moving on to the rest of the areas."
The Hizballah flag and images of the group's leaders, like Hasan Nasrallah, are ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies throughout the country. A 2006 protest outside the Los Angeles Israeli consulate featured chants of "Long Live Hizballah." A 2000 rally in Lafayette Park featured the nation's most prominent Muslim political activist at the time garnering enthusiastic cheers when he asked the crowd if they supported the organization.
Ideological support for Hizballah in the United States, however, is not limited to flag waving and chanting.
U.S. government officials have accused one U.S. Muslim student group of providing intelligence to Hizballah's biggest financial and political supporter, Iran.
In 1987, a group of Persian speaking Muslims publicly pledged allegiance to the Iranian government and handed out literature written by the then- Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini during a conference in Dallas.
The group, the Muslim Students Association, Persian Speaking Group (MSA-PSG), is also known by its Farsi name, Anjoman Islamie.
Federal officials have repeatedly linked the group to Hizballah and the Iranian government. A 1994 FBI report on Hizballah activities in the U.S. obtained via the Freedom of Information Act said "Hizballah also is known to be in contact with the Anjoman Islamic [sic], an Iranian student group active in the United States."
In 1998 testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, then-Chief of the International Terrorism Section of the FBI Dale Watson said that members of the Anjoman Islamie are heavily relied upon by the Iranian government "for low-level intelligence and technical expertise." Watson added that, "the Anjoman Islamie also provides a significant resource base which allows the government of Iran to maintain the capability to mount operations against the United States." [...]
Other supporters argue that Hizballah is a legitimate political party in Lebanon. Despite its ugly side, they say, Hizballah is a multi-faceted organization that also provides social services. "You may think of Hizballah as a terrorist organization, and certainly they have engaged in terrorist acts, but they are also the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon," writer and Muslim scholar Reza Aslan explained in a 2009 speech.
Likewise, CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid emphasized earlier this year to an audience at Washentenaw County Community College in Ann Arbor, that there are "different wings" of Hizballah. "They run schools, hospitals, humanitarian aid, and they have a military wing," he said. "But the whole organization has been lumped as a terrorism organization."
The U.S. Supreme Court specifically rejected the legitimacy of this argument in its opinion which recently upheld a federal statute which prohibits material support of any part of a designated terror organization:
"'[F]oreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.' ... 'Material support meant to 'promot[e] peaceable, lawful conduct,' ... can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways.... Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups--legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds--all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks. 'Terrorist organizations do not maintain organizational 'firewalls' that would prevent or deter . . . sharing and commingling of support and benefits.' ... '[I]nvestigators have revealed how terrorist groups systematically conceal their activities behind charitable, social, and political fronts.' ... 'Indeed, some designated foreign terrorist organizations use social and political components to recruit personnel to carry out terrorist operations, and to provide support to criminal terrorists and their families in aid of such operations.'"Holder et al. v. Humanitarian Law Project at al, 561 U.S. , ___, 130 S. Ct. 2705, 2725 (2010), (citations omitted).
There is much, much more. Read it all.
I'm wondering whether our FBI and CIA are really as ignorant (compared to,for instance, the private-sector Investigative Project on Terrorism) as they appear to be -- or are they pretending to be quite ignorant as a way of misleading the Islamists and jihadists. Playing stupid is a longstanding technique of intelligence agencies of nation states. Food for thought.
"You may think of Hizballah as a terrorist organization,
Yes, I do.
and certainly they have engaged in terrorist acts, but they are also the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,"
Hardly difficult to appear to be a 'dynamic political and social organization' when you have an army of thugs to enforce your will. How would they hold up under a true democracy?
It's just the old Goodcop/ Badcop game that Islam plays to a 'T'.
"It's just the old Goodcop/ Badcop game that Islam plays to a 'T'."
It's the "nuanced" approach dividing extremists to extremist-extremists and moderate-extremists, and terrorist groups to military wing and political wing, and all the other variations.
Suppose that wholly within Oklahoma one Islamist orders than some other Islamist must have his hand chopped off, in compliance with Sharia law. It would only be applied among Muslims and thus touch on the scope of whether the First Amendment could be interpreted so as to remove from exclusive "jurisdictional" authority any arm of the secular state within which the state-within-a-state Islamists seek to isolate themselves from.
Sharia, whatever its occasionally purported goodness, or at least the less violent parts of its application, is inseparable from the whole, and from the taint of "religious" exemption.
Any organization that is merely colorable as religious can simultaneously be directly affiliated with a rain of terror. The reasoning about material support, inclusive of commercial trade, could be applied to any member state of the OIC, as if such organization itself were the head of an axis of evil. And yet we make an exception . . for practical reasons related to oil, or in other cases as a demonstration of our own idiocy.
There should be a list of entities affiliated with Islam and Sharia that should be denied recognition as charities, which does not trigger the need to be bring any criminal charges at all against anyone.
The federal judge in Oklahoma City might see that a law that bans chopping the hand off of another person, as a tool of persuasion through terror (cruel and unusual, at least today), is wholly devoid of any and all motivation other than the hatred of Sharia (and of Muslims in particular) and must be halted so as to recognize the First Amendment to its fullest extent.
Congress has the power to remove the federal judge in Oklahoma for failure to recognize and enforce federal jurisdictional authority over persons who claim a blanket religious exemption as to any and all features of their belief (and their actions) that are at least colorable as religiously motivated.
Reasoning in the article is similar to that here:
SABRI v. UNITED STATES - 541 U.S. 600 (2004) http://supreme.justia.com/us/541/03-44/case.htmlSharia compliance, is itself sufficiently tied to terror to . . . . to deny the privilege of incorporation to any entity that professes to hold any allegiance to such terror.