Syrian jihadists pick former rep of Hamas-linked CAIR to lead interim government

New York Times reporter Anne Barnard is much more respectful toward the jihadist Hitto than she was toward the counter-jihadist Pamela Geller. Par for the course. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, Hamas-linked CAIR is a sainted, sinless organization -- even when one of its former officials becomes the leader of a group that will unavoidably contain violent pro-Sharia jihadists.

"Syrian Rebels Pick U.S. Citizen to Lead Interim Government," by Anne Barnard for the New York Times, March 18:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s main exile opposition coalition elected a naturalized Syrian-born American citizen early Tuesday to be the first prime minister of an interim Syrian government, charged with funneling aid to rebels inside Syria and offering an alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
By choosing Ghassan Hitto, 50, an information technology executive who lived in Texas until recently, the Syrian opposition coalition concluded months of contentious efforts to unite behind a leader, under pressure from the United States and its allies, which demanded that the opposition set up clear chains of command as a condition of increasing aid to the rebels.

Mr. Hitto, a relative unknown in opposition politics who rose to prominence recently through efforts to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid, was far from a unanimous choice. After a day of maneuvering and voting on Monday that lasted into early Tuesday, he won 35 votes, just three more than Assad Mustafa, a former agricultural minister under Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.

Mr. Hitto faces formidable challenges in his quest to to establish administrative authority over areas of northern Syria that have been secured by the rebels....

With his many years in Texas, Mr. Hitto may seem like an unusual selection to lead a government struggling to establish street credibility with rebels — or an uprising facing allegations from Mr. Assad’s supporters that it is an American creation.

But he said he could not resist getting involved, especially after his son Obaida, 25, sneaked off to Syria and joined rebel fighters to shoot videos, deliver humanitarian aid and spread word of their struggle.

Mr. Hitto and his wife, Suzanne, an American schoolteacher, have four children, all born in the United States, where Mr. Hitto advocated for Muslim Americans after 9/11 as a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations....

« Previous Entry | Home Page | Next Entry »

6 Comments

| Leave a comment

Livingengine | March 19, 2013 11:00 PM | Reply

Mr. Hitto has also been a leader in several other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas support organizations:

According to investigative research posted on the GMBDR, Mr. Hitto was a Secretary-Treasurer of the American Middle Eastern League for Palestine (AMELP), another name by which the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) operated and that shared the same office and officers. The IAP was known to have been part of the Hamas infrastructure in the U.S.

In 2002, U.S. media also identified Mr. Hitto as a “friend of the Elashi family” and who appeared to be acting as their spokesperson. In 2009, Ghassan Elashi was sentenced to 65 years in prison for his role in financing Hamas as part of the Holy Land Foundation.

In 2002, U.S. media identified Mr. Hitto as the Vice-President of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Dallas Fort-Worth Chapter (see Note 1). A Hudson Institute report identifies CAIR as part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas support infrastructure in the U.S.

According to the Texas Secretary of State, Mr. Hitto is a director of the Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Center of Dallas. He has also been listed in the past as the contact person for the Dallas chapter of the MAS. The Hudson Institute report also identifies the MAS as part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
http://globalmbreport.com/?p=8046

Livingengine | March 19, 2013 11:40 PM | Reply

Ghassan Hitto as member of CAIR-DFW
http://web.archive.org/web/20020208113314/http:/www.cairdfw.org/about.shtml

Ghassan Hitto, the American Middle Eastern League for Palestine, and Omar Ahmed
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2000/752/317/2000-752317115-1-Z.pdf

Livingengine | March 19, 2013 11:53 PM | Reply

The Living Legacy of CAIR and the Islamic Association for Palestine By: Joe Kaufman and Beila Rabinowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, October 22, 2007

During the start of the 90’s, a young group of radicals had taken over the leadership of the IAP. In March of 1990, the IAP officially split up its organization and incorporated an office in Richardson, Texas, the city where HLF was located. The group name on the documents was the American Middle Eastern League for Palestine (AMELP). The incorporator was then-IAP President Yasser Salah Bushnaq. Among other things, AMELP would serve as the IAP’s publishing house.

What is interesting is that, according to the state of Texas, AMELP is still active, classified as an “IN GOOD STANDING – EXEMPT CORPORATION.” What is even more interesting is that the Registered Agent of AMELP is Ghassan Dahduli – an associate of convicted Al-Qaeda operative Wadi Al-Hage – who was deported from the U.S. in November of 2001 for fraudulently obtaining a work visa. In April of 1991, the IAP’s Illinois corporation was dissolved, and a new one was formed in October of 1993, using the alias American Muslim Society (AMS). Listed in the new corporation were the following “assumed names”: Islamic Association for Palestine in Chicago, Islamic Association for Palestine in North America, Al-Zaytouna and Al-Zaytouna Newspaper.

Just as AMELP was acting as the IAP in Texas, AMS was doubling as the national organization and a local IAP chapter.

Less than a year after AMS was created, the IAP founded another group, CAIR.

http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28564

PGuud | March 20, 2013 12:48 AM | Reply

Mr. Hitto and his wife, Suzanne, an American schoolteacher, have four children, all born in the United States, where Mr. Hitto advocated for Muslim Americans after 9/11 as a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

And that is how the Muslim transplants the free world. Why go to war, when you can get the job done with love?

Shame on "Suzanne." Then again, if she had any shame, she would never have married a "Muslim."

Filth begets filth.

Islam: where freedom ends and slavery begins.

SaleemSmith | March 20, 2013 2:58 AM | Reply

We ex-Muslims living with Islam's formal and informal death penalty for apostasy know that the cruel, über violent cult of Mohammedanism is a despicable fraud.

Where will Ghassan Hitto stand on Islamic law, the Sharia? The Syrian rebels (a.k.a. Sharia striving jihadists) will certainly desire an Islamic State. And what does an Islamic State mean? It means Sharia. Will the Syrian rebels be content with "Islam lite" for Syria? Not likely.

The nature and doctrines of Islam always gravitate to Muslims wanting and demanding more and more Islam. And what does more Islam mean? It means Sharia. And what is Sharia? Simply the product of devout and learned Islamic scholars earnestly pouring over Islam's canonical texts - The Qur'an, hadith and sira.

Islam's canonical texts state that Islam is a perfect religion (Qur'an, 5:3) and that Muhammad's behaviour is an "excellent pattern of conduct" for Muslims to follow (Qur'an,33:21). The results of the so-called "Arab Spring" and Islamic history and doctrine make it clear that Islam must be wholly abandoned and that all other schemes are delusion.

Along with the 164 jihad verses in the Qur'an and that make jihad a central tenet of the Islamic creed, there is this:

At least 75% of the Sira (biographies of Muhammad and quotes attributed to him) is about jihad.

The largest part of the Islamic texts (the Qur'an, hadith and sira) relate to the treatment of unbelievers, kafirs. Approximately 67% of the Qur'an written in Mecca is about the unbelievers, or politics. Of the Qur'an of Medina, 51% is devoted to the unbelievers.

Mohammed preached his religion for 13 years and garnered only 150 followers. But when he turned to politics and war, in 10 years time he became the first ruler of Arabia by averaging an event of violence every 7 weeks for 9 years. His success did not come as a religious leader, but as a political leader.

Political Islam asks: What is the real jihad? The jihad of inner spiritual struggle, or the jihad of war?

Statistical analysis of the Bukhari hadith (considered by Muslims to be the most authentic of the hadith collections) show that Muhammad repeatedly speaks of jihad. In Bukhari, 97% of the jihad references are about war, and 3% are about the inner struggle. So the statistical answer is that jihad is 97% war and 3% inner struggle.

There are 146 references to Hell in the Qur'an. Only 6% of those in Hell are there for moral failings — murder, theft, etc. The other 94% of the reasons for being in Hell are for the intellectual sin of disagreeing with Mohammed, a political crime.

Islam is no "religion of peace." Islam is primarily a religion of "injustice, intolerance, hatred, and violence." The fact is, if we non-Muslims were to say about Muslims what the Qur'an says about us, we would be arrested for hate speech. The Qur'an largely preaches discrimination, death, and imposition of its dogma on everyone. Certainly some Muslims will be offended by such statements, but frankly, so what? Judaism and Christianity, the world’s two other major monotheistic religions, have had to face the harshest of scrutiny and criticism for several hundred years which continues to this day. Islam must not be granted any special privileges or be exempt from such treatment – the implications are of tremendous importance.

Here is a recent statement from a group of Bangladeshi apostates living in the UK explaining the reasons why they have abandoned Islam:

"One who claims to be a messenger of God is expected to live a saintly life. He must not be given to lust, he must not be a sexual pervert, and he must not be a rapist, a highway robber, a war criminal, a mass murderer or an assassin. One who claims to be a messenger of God must have a superior character. He must stand above the vices of the people of his time. Yet Muhammad’s life is that of a gangster godfather. He raided merchant caravans, looted innocent people, massacred entire male populations and enslaved the women and children. He raped the women captured in war after killing their husbands and told his followers that it is okay to have sex with their captives (Qur'an 33:50). He assassinated those who criticized him and executed them when he came to power and became de facto despot of Arabia. Muhammad was bereft of human compassion. He was an obsessed man with his dreams of grandiosity and could not forgive those who stood in his way...

The statement continues,

Muhammad was a narcissist, like Hitler, Saddam or Stalin. He was astute and knew how to manipulate people, but his emotional intelligence was less evolved than that of a 6-year-old child. He simply could not feel the pain of others. He brutally massacred thousands of innocent people and pillaged their wealth. His ambitions were big and as a narcissist he honestly believed he is entitled to do as he pleased and commit all sorts of crimes and his evil deeds are justified."

London Jim | March 20, 2013 4:50 AM | Reply

'emotional intelligence'. . . Goood one, Saleem.

NOTE: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.

FrontPageMag.com

Books by Robert Spencer

The Muslim Brotherhood in America, by Robert Spencer

Islamophobia: Thoughtcrime of the Totalitarian Future

Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Robert Spencer

The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks

“My comrade-in-arms, my pal, my buddy.”
— Oriana Fallaci

“Robert Spencer incarnates intellectual courage when, all over the world, governments, intellectuals, churches, universities and media crawl under a hegemonic Universal Caliphate’s New Order. His achievement in the battle for the survival of free speech and dignity of man will remain as a fundamental monument to the love of, and the self-sacrifice for, liberty.”
— Bat Ye’or

“Robert Spencer is indefatigable. He is keeping up the good fight long after many have already given up. I do not know what we would do without him. I appreciate all the intelligence and courage it takes to keep going despite the appeasement of the West.”
— Ibn Warraq

“America's most informed, fearless, and compelling voice on modern jihadism.”
— Andrew C. McCarthy, Senior Fellow at National Review Institute

“Robert Spencer is the leading voice of scholarship and reason in a world gone mad. If the West is to be saved, we will owe Robert Spencer an incalculable debt.”
— Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

"The consummate Islam critic and expert." — Bruce Bawer

“Over the years, we have become friends, and I have received his assistance on several pieces of legislation I proposed.”
— Former Congressman Tom Tancredo

“Few people are capable of applying scholarship, analytical reasoning, and objectivity to their topic -- while simultaneously being readable and witty -- as can Robert Spencer.”
— Raymond Ibrahim

“A national treasure...The acclaimed scholar of Islam.”
— Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy

“I am indeed honored to call him my friend.”
— Brad Thor, novelist

“A top American analyst of Islam....A serious scholar...I learn from him.”
— Daniel Pipes

“A brilliant scholar and writer.”
— Douglas Murray

"One of my best teachers."
— Ashraf Ramelah, Voice of the Copts

“Thank God there’s at least one man with balls left in the West.”
— Kathy Shaidle, Five Feet of Fury

“I read people like [Mark Steyn] and Bob Spencer and the rest of them, and I say, ‘Boortz, you’re pretending you’re an author. These people really are. They really write some entertaining, some standup stuff.’”
— Neal Boortz

“Robert Spencer is the Stephen King of Jihad.”
— Chris Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia

“Armed with facts and fearlessness, Spencer stands up for Western civilization.”
— Michelle Malkin

“Widely read in conservative foreign policy circles.”
— New York Times

“Widely read in many quarters in Washington.”
— Washington Post

“A canny operative who likely has the inside track on the State Department’s Middle East affairs desk should the tea party win the White House.”
— New York Magazine

“A hero of the American right.”
— Karen Armstrong

"The leading anti-Islamic intellectual in the United States....The go-to Islam expert for the right wing."
— Salon Magazine

“Robert Spencer is an Edward Said turned upside down.”
— Stephen Suleyman Schwartz

“One of the nation's most notorious Islamophobes.”
— Hamas-linked CAIR

"Geller and Spencer are probably the most important propagandizing Islamophobes in the world. These people's voices speak very loudly — not just here in the United States but overseas."
— Heidi Beirach, Southern Poverty Law Center

“Satanic ignoramus.”
— Khaleel Mohammed

“The Likud anti-Christ.”
— Dar al-Hayat newspaper (Saudi Arabia)

“Zionist Crusader, missionary of hate, counter-Islam consultant.”
— Al-Qaeda’s Adam Gadahn, “Azzam the American”