GOVERNOR CHRISTIE: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8506/pub_detail.asp
More Than Meets The Eye
Chris Christie, former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, the poster child of the Republican party, a true conservatives conservative. People everywhere were asking if we would run for President in 2012.
Chris Christie was sworn in as New Jersey’s 55th Governor on January 19, 2010 and got right to work. He is out there trying to save his state, going head to head with the teachers union, cutting the budget and doing what he promised he would do when he was campaigning.
So when all the negative articles and blogs starting on January 14th about his appointment of a Muslim lawyer to the Superior Court of N.J. I had ask myself why? So, the guys a Muslim, so he defended alleged terrorists, so what – isn’t that what lawyers are supposed to do?
The headlines were all over the place, here are just a few:
And so it went. Strong words “ties to Hamas”?
I gave him the benefit of the doubt, I even argued with my ‘America Akbar’ radio co-host Jan, I told her “it was probably just ignorance on his part; he doesn’t understand Islam or Sharia”. But Jan would not back down, not that she ever does. “No! He was on my short list for 2012, not anymore” she shot back.
We decided to try and get Governor Christie on the show so he could explain the appointment, his reasons and mostly so he could defend himself.
I contacted the Governor’s office in Trenton, N.J. and got his ‘Press Office’ on the phone. After the introductions I explained why I was calling. “The Governor doesn’t do interviews about individual appoints” is what I was told.
I explained that “in this case he may want to rethink that, there were a lot of people that were supporters who have written him off, I personally was receiving dozens of emails from people calling him a traitor.”
I was asked to hold on for a minute and when the gentleman came back he asked for my contact info and told me that “someone would be in touch via email that day.”
I waited until 4:45 that afternoon and still had not received anything. I called back and this time I spoke to Mr. Hunter. He apologized to me after I explained the situation, re-took my info and assured me I would receive an email before day’s end. It would contain all the information on Sohail Mohammed as well as who, if anyone, would be coming on my radio show.
I contacted Mr. Hunter the next morning after, yes, you guessed it, I had received absolutely nothing.
This time he told me “the person from upstairs that was supposed to bring the info to be emailed to me never dropped it off.” He said he would “contact them and get everything right out to me.”
I told Hunter, “At this point I really don’t care about the email, I want to know if Governor Christie is going to be a guest on the show and if not, what representative would be?”
Hunter stated, “I can tell you that unfortunately the Governor will not be able to be on your show, but I will see who we can get. You will get the email explaining everything today”.
Once again I waited, this time I called Hunter back at 4:30. He told me “here comes the info I was waiting for right now, I’ll get this straight out to you.”
Well needless to say, I have yet to receive anything. So much for the “transparency” Christie had promised during his run for office.
I always work off write about things that I can back up with facts and what better fact than the person in question, in this case, Governor Christie himself. I gave the governor and his “Press Office” the chance to explain themselves and when that didn’t happen I started my research.
Let’s start at the beginning. Christie apparently met Sohail Mohammed at an annual Ramadan dinner at the American Muslim Union (AMU).
NJ governor Chris Christie and Sohail Mohammed talk at the American Muslim Union.
One of Sohail Mohammed’s clients is the radical imam Mohammed Qatanani, the head of New Jersey’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County. In 2008, while Christie was the U.S. Attorney for N.J. the Department of Homeland Security initiated deportation proceedings against the imam, because Qatanani was alleged to be connected with Hamas.
So what did Christie do? The very night before the immigration judge was to announce his decision regarding Sohail Mohammed’s client, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie praised the defendant. Yes, he praised him saying “My view is he’s always had a very good relationship with us, and he’s a man of great goodwill.” Where did Christie make this statement? He announced it at a Ramadan break-fast dinner.
Terror expert Steve Emerson explained it this way,
Qatanani has a history of Hamas support and was related by marriage to a leading Hamas operative in the West Bank. This fall, Qatanani will return to a New Jersey immigration court, where the Department of Homeland Security is fighting to have him deported. In his initial application for a green card filed in 1999, government lawyers say Qatanani failed to disclose a conviction in an Israeli military court for being a Hamas member and providing support to the terrorist group.
Oddly, Christie — a Republican who was then the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey — sided with Qatanani against DHS, allowing a top lieutenant, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness at Qatanani’s first immigration trial, and publicly embracing the imam at a Ramadan breakfast at his mosque. Christie later appointed McKenna as New Jersey’s head of homeland security…
The U.S. Attorney’s office was not a party to the case, Christie said, and his praise for Qatanani was not meant to be “a commentary on the dispute between the imam and DHS” but after 9/11, he found the imam “to be a constructive force in attempting to strengthen our relations with that community.”
Christie found Qatanani After 9/11 to be “attempting to strengthen our relations with that community.”? Where was he before 9/11?
Daniel Greenfield wrote this on his website Sultan Knish,
Passaic County has the second largest Muslim population in the country. And the Islamic Center of Passaic County is the state’s largest mosque, and it’s the only one run by an Imam who was a member of the Hamas terrorist organization. But when the United States government attempted to deport Mohammed Qatanani, New Jersey’s pols and wannabe pols like Christie, quickly came to his aid. Despite the fact that Mohammed Qatanani was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization that is behind both Al Qaeda and Hamas, despite his own guilty plea to being a member of Hamas, and despite the fact that even in the United States, he had defended a charity that provided funds to children of suicide bombers (this is done as an incentive to reassure terrorists that if they die their families will be taken care of), Qatanani was not deported.
Conservative New Jersey website had this to say,
“The first Imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, Mohammad El-Mezain, was convicted of funneling money to Hamas. El-Mezain had actually boasted of raising almost 2 million dollars for Hamas. And his replacement, Qatanani, actually was a member of Hamas. An ordinary politician might have been forgiven for not knowing this, but Christie was the US Attorney for New Jersey. It’s absolutely impossible that he would not have known the background of the Islamic Center of Passaic County. Yet Christie attended a Ramadan dinner, in the same place where terrorists had fundraised, and kissed Qatanani on the cheek.”
“Publicly embraced him”, “kissed him”? Back in August last year, Christie made the following statement when speaking about the Ground Zero mosque,
“Given my last position, that I was the first U.S. attorney post-9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists,” Christie said. “And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account. Just because it’s nearly nine years later, those sensitivities cannot and should not be ignored.
“On the other hand, we cannot paint all of Islam with that brush. … We have to bring people together. And what offends me the most about all this, is that it’s being used as a political football by both parties. And what disturbs me about the president’s remarks is that he is now using it as a political football as well. I think the president of the United States should rise above that. And should not be using this as a political football, and I don’t believe that it would be responsible of me to get involved and comment on this any further because it just put me in the same political arena as all of them.”
“But it would be wrong to so overreact to that, that we paint Islam with a brush of radical Muslim extremists that just want to kill Americans because we are Americans. But beyond that … I am not going to get into it, because I would be guilty of candidly what I think some Republicans are guilty of, and the president is now, the president is guilty of, of playing politics with this issue, and I simply am not going to do it.”
“But it would be wrong to so overreact to that, that we paint Islam with a brush of radical Muslim extremists that just want to kill Americans because we are Americans.” Islam was painted with that brush because of its own words and book, the Quran.
Sohail Mohammed’s most famous clients would be “The Fort Dix Six”, the group of would-be Islamic terrorists from Yugoslavia and the Middle East who were plotting to shoot up the Fort Dix military base in N.J. in January 2006.
Mohammed was extremely outspoken about the phrase “Islamic militants” in the case. “Don’t equate actions with religion,” he said.
He also publicly defended the Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian after his 2003 indictment that alleged he was the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Sami Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide goods and services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. At his sentencing, the federal judge said the evidence was clear he was “a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You were on the board of directors and an officer, the secretary. Directors control the actions of an organization, even the PIJ; and you were an active leader.”
During an interview on MSNBC Sohail Mohammed stated,
“It all points out to the distrust that the Muslim community have, which is this is nothing but a witch-hunt,” he said. “This is nothing but a politically motivated indictment, and all you are waiting for is the right opportunity to indict the person, the climate is right.”
Mohammed had an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, two months after 9/11,
MATTHEWS: What else do they have in common, the people who blew up the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon? What else do they have in common?
MOHAMMED: All male.
MATTHEWS: Keep going. If you’re a policeman, you have got to use your brain here. What else do they have in common? They all come from Middle Eastern countries. They’re all Islamic zealots.
MOHAMMED: Well, you cannot call them — and anybody who professes or who says that he believes in a religion, a peaceful religion, cannot take the banner and crash a plane, and you blame every single person who follows this faith.
They are not “extremists,” they are being good Muslims following the words of the Quran. Daniel Greenfield also made some other connections,
Sohail Mohammed is a board member of the American Muslim Union, an organization that has interlocking leadership with groups that have fundraised for Hamas and hosted a Hamas speaker. The American Muslim Union is closely interlinked with Qatanani’s Islamic Center of Passaic County.
Let’s see where the “fair and impartial” future Judge Sohail Mohammed really stands. Our future Judge is a board member of the American Muslim Union, where he and Governor Christie first met. Here is what the Jewish World Review had to say about the AMU back in 2004 when the UJA Federation of Bergen County and North Hudson and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of New Jersey had an issue with them,
Though the American Muslim Union appears moderate in its official literature — saying it is “dedicated to serving the American Muslim community and its unique needs” — the organization has interlocking leadership with a group that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and hosted as a guest speaker last year an alleged Hamas member.
Although the ties to Hamas are allegations — El-Mezain nor anyone else affiliated with AMU or ICPC has been arrested — AMU has co-sponsored several rallies that any genuinely moderate groups would not associate themselves with. Chief among these rallies is one held in Times Square in April 2002, which called for, among other things, an end to the Israeli “massacres” of Palestinians.
To judge for yourself, look at a flyer promoting the event by clicking here. The headline is “Stop Palestinian Genocide” and features an obviously forged photo of a baby lying in a pool of blood in a hospital bed. There may be many legitimate debates among reasonable, moderate people about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, but there are no widespread “massacres,” nor is there any “genocide” of Palestinians. It is wildly false to claim either.
The 5th sponsor listed on the above mentioned poster is the AMU. Would Sohail Mohammed be fair and impartial as a Superior Court Judge when the defendant in his court is a fellow Muslim?
According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism,
The AMU has criticized some of the response to the September 11 attacks, especially regarding the PATRIOT Act. Explaining why the AMU had become more politically active and was holding voter registration drives, one employee of AMU said: “Right now, the Patriot Act—basically it’s unconstitutional…I believe it targets Muslims unfairly. If someone’s going to come out with a bill that’s discriminatory, I’m not going to vote for them.”
As general counsel to the American Muslim Union (AMU), Mohammed often represented clients subject to government allegations concerning terrorists. The AMU often is highly critical of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.
One online newsletter even included a claim that a “Zionist commando orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks” and shows support for a “Rabbi” from the extremist Jewish organization Neturei Karta, which denies the right of Israel to exist and supports its dismantling.
I had written back in August about a case in N.J. where the Judge based his decision in a rape and assault case on the fact that the defendant was a Muslim,
Here is what the Judge wrote for his decision on a restraining order following a finding of domestic violence:
“This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited.”
Luckily, an Appellate Court overturned that Judge’s findings, but if Sohail Mohammed gets confirmed as a Superior Court Judge, how many more findings will we see like this in the county of Passaic that has the second largest Muslim community in the country?
This is an extremely dangerous appointment that not only puts New Jersey at the doorstep of Sharia law, but has me wondering where Christie truly stands.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Gadi Adelman is a freelance writer and lecturer on the history of terrorism and counterterrorism. He grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed. Since returning to the U. S., Gadi teaches and lectures to law enforcement agencies as well as high schools and colleges. He can be heard every Thursday night at 8PM est. on his own radio show “AmericaAkbar” on Blog Talk Radio . He can be reached through his websitehttp://gadiadelman.com.
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