Everyone loves a parade. And if you don’t, you’re an Islamophobe… and quite possibly a parade-o-phobe too.
“Main street parade to honor Muhammad,” from World Net Daily:
Muslim leaders at an encampment at the Catskill Mountains called “Islamberg” have been granted a permit by the city of Binghamton, N.Y., to hold a parade on Saturday in honor of Muhammad’s birthday.
The holiday is called Milad-un-Nabi and is being celebrated by a group of families who live at the nearby property owned by Muslims of the Americas, Inc.
The city has the parade scheduled on its calendar from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the downtown area, including its main street, and a report in the local Press & Sun-Bulletin said the celebration previously held on the group’s own property this year is being expanded.
“We’re trying to do an interfaith thing, we’re reach out to the community to do a program based on unity,” Maryam Rahim, a spokeswoman, told the newspaper. “We haven’t been very well known “¦. We want everyone to come out and celebrate, may ask questions.” […]
Rahim told the paper some Muslims claim the celebration is not important, but others classify it alongside Eid-ul-Fitr, the celebration that concludes the month of Ramadan for Muslims.
The newspaper said Muslims of the Americas was formed in the 1980s when several families migrated from New York City to make a new start. There now is a mosque and a private school on the land.
However, there are others who describe the location as a training facility for the Pakistani terrorist group Jamaat ul Fuqra.
As WND reported earlier, a covert visit to the encampment found neighboring residents deeply concerned about military-style training taking place there but frustrated by the lack of attention from federal authorities. The visit was conducted by the Northeast Intelligence Network, which worked with an Internet blogger, “CP,” to publish an report.
The neighbors interviewed, who asked not to be identified, said in the report compiled only two years ago they feared retaliation if they were to make a report to law enforcement officials.
“We see children — small children run around over there when they should be in school,” one neighbor said. “We hear bursts of gunfire all of the time, and we know that there is military-like training going on there. Those people are armed and dangerous.”
The resident said his household gets “nothing but menacing looks from the people who go in and out of the camp, and sometimes they yell at us to mind our own business when we are just driving by.”
“We don’t even dare to slow down when we drive by,” the resident said. “They own this mountain and they know it, and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can’t even do that. Who wants to buy property next to that?”
Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or “community of the impoverished,” was formed by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani in New York in 1980. Gilani, who refers to himself as “the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr,” has stated his objective is to “purify” Islam through violence. […]
Try to walk down the street where their community (Islamberg) is and you will be greeted by a man armed with a rifle. I have witnessed this on more than one occasion (even prior to 9/11) on Roods Creek Rd. when passing by slowly as I headed out to the Cannonsville reservoir,” said a nearby resident who also asked for anonymity.
Fox News earlier reported that the compound has remained shrouded in mystery and fear, partly because it sits near the huge reservoir system that provides New York City with most of its drinking water.
The report said New York State police authorities confirmed they’ve had the group on file for years.
The compound is on 70 acres of remote land and residents have expressed concern for the gunshots they hear.
“They are training for war, either for war here in this country or against our troops,” said one neighbor.
Read it all.