The Flyin' Imams and Their Carnivale of Terror

Update: Shock of all shocks, they're looking to settle just as their dirty laundry is practling precluding any chance of a verdict in their favor.

A group of Muslim imams is seeking an out-of-court settlement with US Airways, saying they should not have been removed from a Minnesota-to-Phoenix flight last month and were not behaving suspiciously.

Five of the six Islamic religious leaders have retained the Council on American-Islamic Relations for legal representation and are seeking a "mutually agreeable" resolution, said Nihad Awad, CAIR executive director.

US Airways scheduled a meeting with the imams on Dec. 4 to discuss the incident, but the men canceled it and hired the activist group to act as legal counsel.

"With the hopes of reaching an amicable resolution to this matter, we would like to take this opportunity to ask for a formal meeting with US Airways executives and legal counsel," said Arsalan Iftikhar, CAIR's national legal director, in a letter to the airline.

Here's an amicable resolution: Charter your own buses. Or use the shoeleather express. Either way, stay off of public transportation.

How you like them apples?

Thanks to FreeAlabamastan, but I can't link it, because the blog has been deleted and replaced, as all deleted blogs are, by porn.

Don't delete your blog! You can delete all content, maybe put up some charity links in its place. But actually deleting the blog gives it immediately to the porn guys.

...

Even a columnist at the Minneapolis (Red) Star-Tribune notices the connections between the sob-sister sheiks and terrorists.

Suspicion about imams grows as terror links pile up

Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune

...

Who are the parties involved here, who seem so interested in linking airport security with racial bigotry?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the imams' legal representative, is an organization that "we know has ties to terrorism," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in 2003. And the Muslim American Society, which is also supporting the imams? It's the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, which called it "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

How about Omar Shahin, the imams' spokesman and also president of the North American Imams Federation? He is a native of Jordan, who says he became a U.S. citizen in 2003. From 2000 to 2003, Shahin served as president of Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), that city's largest mosque.

The ICT is well known. The mosque has "an extensive history of terror links," according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who testified about terrorist financing before the Senate Banking Committee in July 2005.

The Washington Post described these links in a 2002 article. "Tucson was one of the first points of contact in the United States for the jihadist group that evolved into al Qaeda," the Post reported. And the ICT? It held "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started," said Rita Katz, a terrorism expert quoted by the Post.

...

The best-known terrorist with apparent (according to the Post and Emerson) connections to the ICT is Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane that flew into the Pentagon on 9/11. Hanjour took aviation lessons in Tucson in the late 1990s.

Shahin has downplayed the ICT's connections to terrorism. The mosque should not be held accountable for former members who may have engaged in terrorism after they left Arizona, he told the Post in 2002. Al-Qaida nests in America? "All of these, they make it up," he told the Arizona Republic shortly after 9/11.

But dubious activity continued when Shahin became ICT president. For example, the mosque raised thousands of dollars for an Islamic charity called the Holy Land Foundation in 2001, and Shahin served as the charity's Arizona coordinator, according to the Associated Press. Holy Land "collects funds for widows and orphans and needy people," he told the AP.

In December 2001, the Treasury Department froze Holy Land's assets, citing its funding of the terrorist organization Hamas' efforts to recruit suicide bombers.

Shahin also told the Arizona Daily Star in 2001 that he would permit the Global Relief Foundation to raise funds at the ITC. In 2002, the U.S. government froze that organization's assets because of its support of bin Laden, Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Another incident of interest occurred during Shahin's tenure at ITC. On June 13, 2003, the FBI arrested Muhammad Al-Qudhai'een, who was active at the mosque, and transported him to Virginia to testify as a material witness before a federal grand jury investigating 9/11.

Earlier, the FBI had investigated Al-Qudhai'een's involvement in a 1999 incident. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Al-Qudhai'een and Hamdan al Shalawi, a fellow Saudi, were removed from an America West flight after engaging in what the flight crew considered suspicious activity. The crew asserted that Al-Qudhai'een had twice attempted to open the plane's cockpit door. After 9/11, FBI agents in Phoenix considered whether the incident had been a "dry run" for the attacks. The 9/11 Commission noted that Al Shalawi had reportedly trained in Afghan terrorist camps in November 2000, learning how to conduct "Khobar Towers"-type bombing attacks.

The America West incident attracted national attention in 1999. In 2000, the two Saudis filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination by the airline. "What happened to us was based on racial and religious discrimination," al Shalawi told the Arizona Republic. CAIR hired the Saudis' attorney for them, and urged a boycott of the airline. America West won the lawsuit. Al-Qudhai'een was later deported to Saudi Arabia.

I'm unimpressed by all of this in this sense: I expect this. This isn't any surprise. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find high-profile Muslim advocates and imams who are not closely connected to terrorism.

The sad fact is that Muslims, as a general matter, support terrorism, or at least do not mind terribly much associating with those who do.

Your local Kiwanis Club would not permit a murderer or a terrorist-conspirator to remain a member in good standing. The Muslim religion does. It's that simple, and I, for one, have had enough of the PC game where we're supposed to pretend this isn't true in the interests of... well, in the interests of enabling terrorism, I guess.

You know why you're treated with suspicion, guys? Because you do suspicious things. You associate with suspicious people. You donate to shady "charities" and you engage in suspect rhetoric.

This isn't "racial profiling" or bigotry, it's a sad truth that has to be recognized.

And that truth saddens and disgusts non-Muslims. It ought to sadden and disgust Muslims more as well.

Via Riehl World, who has more on the Flyin' Imams.

posted by Ace at 11:45 AM

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