Hamas-linked CAIR announced this on Facebook on August 14 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Ahmed Bedier, former chief of Hamas-linked CAIR’s Tampa office, is a “moderate” Muslim leader — he even appeared on Glenn Beck’s show in March 2007 to speak out against “extremism.” On that show, he declared: “We condemn any nation, country or group that uses Islam or misuses and misinterprets Islam in violent ways.” Announcing his depature from CAIR, he explained his future plans in terms to warm any multiculturalist’s heart: “I”m going to expand on and build upon my work as a civil rights and human rights leader into broader areas of peace building, interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.”
However, like so many moderates, Bedier is not really all that moderate. He has said that before 1995, when the State Department declared Palestinian Islamic Jihad a terrorist group, there was “nothing immoral” about associating with the group. The anti-terror advocacy group Americans Against Hate notes that “Bedier’s answer is startling, given the fact that, prior to 1995, Palestinian Islamic Jihad took credit for five terrorist attacks, which resulted in the murders of eight innocent people. This includes a suicide bombing in the town of Netzarim Junction, in November of 1994.”
And when two Muslim college students, Youseff Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, were found with pipe bombs (and one of whom admitted to making a video about how to use remote-controlled bombs against American soldiers), Bedier claimed that the pipe bomb material was just fireworks and said, “Both of them are really naïve kids.” On a Florida TV show, Bedier sidestepped numerous opportunities to condemn the barbaric practice of stoning.
Regardless of all that, Ahmed Bedier is still touted as a “moderate” by those who are clueless and compromised. And now his brother has been killed while fighting for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. It is interesting how many Muslim leaders in the U.S. have spent years denying any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, despite all the evidence to the contrary, but have rallied to support the Brotherhood when it was cast out of power in Egypt. In his statements of grief over his brother’s death, Ahmed Bedier never distanced himself from his brother’s political or religious stances.
Then today there is also this:
“Al-Qaida chief’s brother arrested in Egypt,” by Maggie Michael for the Associated Press, August 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):
CAIRO “” Egyptian authorities have arrested the brother of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri, a security official said Saturday.
He said Mohammed al-Zawahri, leader of the ultraconservative Jihadi Salafist group, was detained at a checkpoint in Giza, the city across the Nile from Cairo.
Remember: for the mainstream media, you’re ultraconservative if you’re pro-Sharia, and also ultraconservative (or “far-right”) if you oppose Sharia.
But anyway, it’s a revealing tale of two brothers: one of the leader of al-Qaeda, the other of a “moderate” Muslim leader, both fighting for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. One would think that a “moderate” wouldn’t have anything in common with an al-Qaeda “extremist,” right? Or so the learned analysts tell us. But here again, as always, they’re wrong.