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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Egypt: Thousands screaming “Allahu akbar” mourn Blind Sheikh, mastermind of 1993 WTC jihad bombing

Feb 24, 2017 12:56 pm By Robert Spencer

Those who favor jihad and Sharia are just a tiny minority of extremists, right?

“If he were a bad man, people from all over the country wouldn’t have came to attend his funeral.”

Exactly so.

“Thousands mourn ‘blind sheikh’ convicted in 1993 World Trade Center bombing,” by Amina Ismail and Arwa Gaballa, Reuters, February 22, 2017:

Thousands of mourners gathered in a small Egyptian town on Wednesday for the funeral of the Muslim cleric known as “the blind sheikh” who was convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.

Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was also convicted of planning a broader “war of urban terrorism” in the United States, died on Saturday in a North Carolina prison aged 78.

Movements across the Islamist spectrum from the Muslim Brotherhood to al Qaeda issued statements mourning him, and several leaders from Egypt’s Islamic Group, which views the sheikh as a spiritual leader and renounced violence in 1997, attended.

Carrying signs that read “we will meet in heaven” and chanting “we will defend you with blood and soul, Islam,” hundreds of mourners gathered at Al-Gamaliya, his hometown in Egypt’s Nile Delta province of Dakahlia, to wait for Abdel-Rahman’s body as it made its way back from the U.S. via Cairo.

The Egyptian-born Abdel-Rahman, who lost his eyesight due to childhood diabetes and grew up studying a Braille version of the Koran, remained a spiritual leader for radical Muslims even after more than 20 years in prison.

As an adult he became associated with the fundamentalist Islamic Group and was imprisoned and accused of issuing a fatwa leading to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, against whom he had railed for years.

Abdel-Rahman was still an important figure in radical Islam even after years in prison. A year before his al Qaeda followers pulled off the most destructive assault on U.S. soil, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden had pledged a jihad to free Abdel-Rahman from prison.

When Mohammed Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his short-lived presidency of Egypt in 2012, he said winning the sheikh’s freedom would be a priority. The jihadists who attacked an Algerian oilfield and took hostages in 2013 also demanded his release.

Yet supporters paint him as a revered scholar who faced injustice and torture at the hands of the Egyptian and U.S. governments for sticking by his principles.

Mourners chanted “God is great” and cheered as his body, draped in a brown blanket inside a wooden coffin, was brought out to be washed at his brother’s house before the burial.

“If he were a bad man, people from all over the country wouldn’t have came to attend his funeral,” said Mostafa al-Wakeel, a 40-year-old lawyer who traveled around 175 kilometers (110 miles) from Cairo….

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Filed Under: "Tiny Minority of Extremists", Egypt, Featured, Jihad in the U.S. Tagged With: Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman


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Comments

  1. miriamrove says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    See if libs can use this. Thousands supporting a terrorist which means thousand are terrorists. m

    • Frank says

      Feb 25, 2017 at 6:51 pm

      Hopefully Trump will add Egypt to the travel ban

  2. concerned canadian says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    he was one ugly SOB-inside and out

    so full of hate , lacking joy

    Sounds like his religion did him well

  3. Shmooviyet says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:50 pm

    “If he were a bad man people wouldn’t have came to attend his funeral”.
    What do Rachman’s grieving followers consider a “bad man”? They should be celebrating; he & Bin Laden are frolicking together in allah’s trashy paradise.

    • gravenimage says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 2:25 pm

      Yes, Shmooviyet–what pious Muslims consider “bad” is *not* slaughtering innocent Infidels.

      God, I hate Islam.

  4. Walter Sieruk says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:53 pm

    As for the statement that Muslim man said about that blind Sheikh who had died . In his saying what was ,no doubt , sincere but confused and deluded. His statement was “If he was a bad man people from all over the country wouldn’t come to attend his funeral.’ Since this sheikh Adel -Rahman was the mastermind mind of the first jihad WTC bombing so many people who are Muslims who have traveled so far to attend his funeral . This means that the deceptive and delusional powers and influence of Islam is so very strong that all those people who came to the funeral of that sheikh are so very confused and deluded by their Islamic worldview that they can’t discern the clear different between right and wrong and likewise by are also blind to the difference between good and evil.
    How sad . How tragic. What hideous damage Islam can to to the human soul and mind.
    In addition to all this , it might be or might not ,be of some interest to some people that the Bible reads in Isaiah 5:20. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” [N.K.J.V.]

    • Westman says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 3:02 pm

      My observation is that there is an inherent understanding within toddlers, primates, and even animals, like dogs, and crows that recognizes fairness and justice.

      Islam redefined what is good or evil as it suited the needs of conquest to provide, “openings” for Dawa, and booty from other societies to sustain a permanent war footing and professional soldiers(looters). The entire apparatus was designed to make men subservient to Allah; who had a mysterious way of thinking the same thoughts as Muhammad and Islam’s 7th and 8th century compilers of an official Quran and Sunna.

      Not even communists have acheived such successful brainwashing; multiple propaganda repetitions, daily, a spy-on-each-other culture, and the reduction of non-muslims to mere animals for Islam’s use or destruction. Even a baby, born anywhere in the world, has more inate morality and appreciation for the value of all humans than Islam.

  5. overman says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    “Those who favor jihad and Sharia are just a tiny minority of extremists, right?”

    Exactly, it’s just another politically-correct statistic. l’ve always believed it to be a myth – tens of millions worldwide are supporting jihad and sharia. The West really needs to wake up to this fact.

    • A Harris USA says

      Feb 25, 2017 at 12:43 pm

      overman, never understand why the MSM does not cover this.. If so many filthy Muslims loved this piece of crap, why was it not shown on the news?? Not only fake news a problem, but the reason the west does not wake up, is the media does not cover this on the daily news.. If a lot of sheep saw the wolf in the bushes hiding and acting like there is not one reason to want these people in our land.. There are many Imams out there in this country that preach this creep is some kind of Islamic state saint… And I suppose he is.. According to Islam…… SICK

  6. gravenimage says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    Egypt: Thousands screaming “Allahu akbar” mourn Blind Sheikh, mastermind of 1993 WTC jihad bombing
    ……………………………

    You learn a lot about people by seeing who their heroes are. In this case, a thug who murdered innocent people and launched the first attack on the WTC, where almost 3000 would die less than a decade later.

    Just seeing that huge field of violent arse-lifters scrambling all over each other to offer prayers for this dead terrorist is just terrifying.

    • Angus says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 3:17 pm

      Well said.

      The Muslim Brotherhood also mourned the blind terrorist – just one more reason to declare the MB a terrorist organization here in the US…

    • Westman says

      Feb 24, 2017 at 3:19 pm

      It makes me thankful for two oceans and, finally, a President of the United States who questions the value of becoming a part of Thomas Friedman’s desire for a grand lowest-common-denominator, or, a nation of dhimmy-dummys.

      Perhaps a way to clear out the deadwood from the agencies would be to pay them all the same China-level wage for a year so they never forget what Friedman’s model – Globalism – will bring them.

    • epistemology says

      Feb 25, 2017 at 12:10 am

      Great comment, you said

      Just seeing that huge field of violent arse-lifters scrambling all over each other to offer prayers for this dead terrorist is just terrifying.
      ——————————————————————————————-

      Indeed it is terrifying as Wellington put it arse-lifting is the stupidest way to pray and it’s terrifying to see people act in that preposterous way and at the same time paying their condolences to an evil scumbag.

      Anyway good riddance, another scumbag has beaten the dust. But this mourning only shows that muzzies love terrorists and there’s a lot of terrorism to come in the future, so we have to be prepared.

      I’m going to France attending a meeting about European de-Islamisation http://www.desislamisation.eu/

      I’ll report.

  7. Oliver says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 5:12 pm

    Perhaps, as the US oppressed him, etc- the US should consider not giving Egypt the billions in aid.

    Use it here at home.

  8. Angemon says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 6:56 pm

    As an adult he became associated with the fundamentalist Islamic Group and was imprisoned and accused of issuing a fatwa leading to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, against whom he had railed for years.

    I thought Egypt had the death penalty – what he did amounted to sedition.

    Yet supporters paint him as a revered scholar who faced injustice and torture at the hands of the Egyptian and U.S. governments for sticking by his principles.

    First thing is first: his principles are s***. Discrimination based on religion, sex or sexual preference? Yeah, his principles are s***. Second, he was arrested not for standing to his principles (which are s***) but for acting and/or exhorting others to act on them, leading to the execution of crimes. For f***’s sake, that wording could be used to defend any mass murderer. Try “Hitler faced injustice and eventually killed himself because he stuck by his principles” and see the kind of looks you get (and rightfully so, I’ll add). It’s the kind of apologism used by the likes of Trudeau when talking about Fidel Castro, whom he described as “a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century”.

  9. Ian from Liverpool says

    Feb 24, 2017 at 7:53 pm

    May he burn in hell and I hope president Trump hold Egypt accountable for not looking after their Coptic community after all they should be made to for the aid they get each year.

  10. billybob says

    Feb 25, 2017 at 1:28 am

    This is really something we should be seeing in the MSM. Everybody knows who he was. The MSM have a responsibility to show who mourns him., that Muslims mourn him, and allow us to understand these people are not our friends. Like Trump has been calling them – the very fake news..

  11. Pete says

    Feb 25, 2017 at 5:12 am

    “If he were a bad man, people from all over the country wouldn’t have came to attend his funeral,” said Mostafa al-Wakeel, a 40-year-old lawyer ….

    Hardly surprising, since all muslims worship a terrorist, murderer, rapist, pedophile as a holy prophet and the best person to emulate

    What’s most wicked, profane in our eyes is holy in islam

  12. BC says

    Feb 25, 2017 at 6:13 am

    Who paid for the body to be returned, the tax payer the same people he wanted to kill and maim.
    They should just have dumped his body in the trash or the Atlantic.

    • moeped says

      Feb 25, 2017 at 9:14 am

      That was my first thought as well. We not only tolerate evil, we pay for it.

  13. BC says

    Feb 25, 2017 at 6:27 am

    He thinks her job is to ask questions and his is to make speeches.
    He thinks it is not important that IS has murdered and enslaved non Muslims and Muslims they think are not pure enough, because the West has ‘occupied’ Muslim lands. IS is intent on conquering the world.
    I have to admire this woman for the way she kept on at him and kept herself under control

    • Eur says

      Feb 25, 2017 at 7:58 am

      Muslims lands? In these lands also live non-Muslims …. poorly, survive, are treated as inferior in their own lands. There should be no land dominated by a theocratic ideology.

      • moeped says

        Feb 25, 2017 at 9:12 am

        And they were Christian Lands well before they were muslim, just like the West is right now. These are historic times.

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