RYAN MAURO: THE ISLAMIST TIES OF “RELIGIONS FOR PEACE”
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ryan-mauro/the-islamist-ties-of-religions-for-peace-usa/
Religions for Peace USA (RFPUSA), which says it is “the largest and most broadly-based representative multi-religious forum in the United States,” is holding a webinar on July 25 titled, “What You Can Learn from the Fight to End Islamophobia.” The group is yet another coalition of Islamists and their non-Muslim political allies. And, as usual, it is tarring the Islamists’ opponents as “Islamophobes.”
The webinar is being jointly held with the American Center for Outreach, a Tennessee Muslim group that will use the event to highlight its “successful challenge to the nation’s most vehemently anti-Muslim legislation in 2011.”
The seminar is being promoted by the Shoulder-to-Shoulder Campaign, another interfaith bloc allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. You’ll notice a lot of cross-pollination if you look at the leadership of RFPUSA, Shoulder-to-Shoulder and ISNA’s declared “interfaith partners.”
Naeem Baig, President of the Islamic Circle of North America, sits on RFPUSA’s Council of Presidents and Executive Council. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies ICNA as one of its fronts as part of its “kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” The memo instructs its members to use “the art of ‘coalitions,’ the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’”
ICNA’s conferences bring together the rock stars of the Islamist movement. At its 2011 event, radical imam Siraj Wahhaj advised the audience to wait to talk about Sharia because “we are not there yet.” At ICNA’s event over Memorial Day Weekend, radical imam Zaid Shakir told the audience of 32,000 that the U.S. Constitution is inferior to Sharia because Muslims and non-Muslims are equal.
The President of ISNA, Imam Mohamed Magid, is on the Council of Presidents. In 2004, he reacted to U.S. investigations of some Muslim Brotherhood entities by saying the U.S. government is “intent on dismantling Muslim organizations and bringing them down.”
ISNA’s Director of Community Outreach, Mohamed Elsanousi, is on the Executive Council. Last year, he and Magid went to Mauritania for a Muslim Brotherhood-linked conference. It was hosted by the vice chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organization led by Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi.
Another member of RFPUSA’s Executive Council is Sayyid Syeed, the director of ISNA’s Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances. He was recorded in 2006 stating, “Our job is to change the constitution of America.”
Ibrahim Ramey represents the Muslim American Society on RFPUSA’s Executive Council. ICNA’s extremist conferences are held jointly with the group. Federal prosecutors said in 2008 that MAS “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
Two officials from the Imam Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation are also on the body. It was one of over 60 Islamic sites in America to receive funding from an Iranian regime front. It received $25,000 from the Alavi Foundation in 2012 and $5,000 in 2009. The Alavi Foundation is part of the Iranian regime’s “propaganda machine,” according to U.S. officials and Iranian dissidents.
Daisy Khan, the wife of Imam Rauf of Ground Zero Mosque fame, represents the American Society for Muslim Advancement on the RFPUSA Executive Council. In October 2006, she debated against the position, “Freedom of Expression Must Include the License to Offend.”
To its credit, the RFPUSA Executive Council does include Zainab al-Suwaij of the American-Islamic Congress, a genuine foe of the Islamists. The Council on American-Islamic Relations lashed out at her group, accusing it of being part of the “Islamophobia Network” even though it is Muslim. Her influence is positive, but she is far outnumbered by the CAIR-friendly Islamists and their non-Muslim allies.
The organizations that belong to RFPUSA will ring a bell with readers who have followed our coverage of the Islamists’ interfaith political allies.
On the Christian side, RFPUSA includes representatives from: United Methodist Church; Presbyterian Church USA; Episcopal Church; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; United Church of Christ; National Council of Churches in America; Evangelical Lutheran Church of America; Armenian Church of America; Orthodox Church of America; the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, California.
On the Jewish side, RFPUSA includes representatives from: United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism and the Union of Reform Judaism.
On the non-Abrahamic side, RFPUSA includes representatives from: National Congress of American Indians, Unitarian Universalists Association; World Sikh Council-America Region; Won Buddhist International; Buddhist Churches of America; Buddha’s Light International; Hindu Seva American Charities; Hindu Temple of North America; International Shino Foundation; Krishna Consciousness; Federation of Zoroastrian Associations in North America; and Jain Associations in North America.
RFPUSA claims to be “the largest and most broadly-based representative multi-religious forum in the United States.” The U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s directive to “possess a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’” is being followed.
This article was sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
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