“For several years, Mateen regularly attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and was there as recently as two days ago, said Imam Shafiq Rahman on Sunday.” So reported the Washington Post on June 12.
And today, the Washington Post adds in a new report: “Last Friday, June 10, Mateen went to the Fort Pierce mosque to pray and spent more than an hour there with his 3-year-old son.”
But the mosque president, Taher Husainy, “hadn’t seen Mateen since he was a child, he said, adding that Mateen seemed normal.” How did he know Mateen seemed normal if he hadn’t seen him since he was a child?
And how is it that the president of the mosque hadn’t seen Mateen since he was a child? Did mosque president Taher Husainy never attend the mosque of which he was president? After all, the mosque imam, Shafiq Rahman, says Mateen attended regularly and was last there two days before his jihad massacre. But “Husainy wasn’t sure if Mateen attended the Vero mosque recently.”
Rahman and Husainy need to get their story straight, and no doubt they will, and will start claiming they never saw Mateen and didn’t know him. Right now, however, it is clear that Husainy is lying. “War is deceit,” said Muhammad.
Besides lying, Husainy is playing the familiar victimhood card, saying that the mosque is afraid of the backlash that rarely, if ever, actually materializes. Mosque leaders pull this every time there is a jihad attack, and there is never any shortage of credulous or complicit mainstream media reporters to lap it up and package it for the public.
“Members fear ‘reputation’ of Vero mosque attended by Orlando shooter,” by Lulu Ramadan, Palm Beach Post, June 17, 2016:
A handful of people trickled slowly into a Vero Beach mosque for prayers Friday afternoon, routine to many in the Muslim community, but the crowd was smaller than usual.
“People are worried,” commented Victor Ghalib Begg, a longtime member of the tiny place of worship worship nestled between a karate studio and bagel shop in a plaza along Southwest 9th Street.
They worry about “retribution” to the mosque, which Orlando attacker Omar Mateen reportedly attended sparingly. But more than that, mosque leadership said, members are worried about a stigma:
“Our biggest concern is our name, our reputation, the way people look at us,” said Taher Husainy, president of the mosque.
Mateen, who killed 49 at an Orlando nightclub Sunday before being slain in a police shootout, and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, believed to be the first American suicide bomber in Syria, both prayed at this Vero Beach mosque and the Fort Pierce Islamic Center.
Husainy knew both men, and says that while they each carried out their crimes in the name of known terrorist organizations, it’s a mere coincidence they came from the same small Muslim community in the Treasure Coast.
Lulu Ramadan of the Palm Beach Post doesn’t bother to explain how she arrived at that conclusion.
“It’s very puzzling and bewildering,” Husainy said.
FBI agents questioned a member of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce on Friday, a lawyer with the [Hamas-linked — ed.] Council of American-Islamic Relations told Reuters.
Sunday’s mass shooting wasn’t brought up in the “khutbah” — or weekly preaching — to the 20 or so members who congregated Friday. This compares to the 50 who usually attend, Begg said.
Husainy hadn’t seen Mateen since he was a child, he said, adding that Mateen seemed normal.
Husainy wasn’t sure if Mateen attended the Vero mosque recently and if he conversed with Abusalha, who traveled to Syria to fight alongside Islamic extremists of Al-Nusrah Front.
Mateen and Abusalha were seen together in serious conversation at a party five years ago, a classmate of Mateen’s told The Palm Beach Post.
The mosque’s leaders insisted Mateen and Abusalha’s actions don’t reflect the peaceful practice of the many who gather at the mosque. The fact that both men were associated with the same mosque, however, has forced leaders to talk to members about extremism within the community.
“We told members to be cautious and to come to us if they notice something suspicious,” Husainy said.
Mosque leaders have made the same recommendation in the past, although no members have ever done so.
After Abusalha blew himself up in the 2014 suicide attack on Syrian government forces killing 37, federal investigators visited the Vero Beach mosque and questioned members, Husainy said. They did not visit after the Orlando shooting….
Why not?