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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.

Frontpage: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about Anthony Weiner’s marriage to his Muslim Brotherhood wife, Huma Abedin.

How is it exactly that a Muslim woman connected to the Muslim Brotherhood is married to a Jewish man? Something is not fitting here, right?

Spencer: Jamie, Islamic law prohibits a Muslim woman from marrying a non-Muslim man. A Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman, but not the other way around. This is yet another manifestation of Islamic supremacism: the idea is that a wife will become a member of her husband’s household, and the children will follow the religion of the father. Thus, Muslim men marrying non-Muslim women ultimately enriches the Islamic community, while the non-Muslim community must forever be made to diminish.

Consequently, when a non-Muslim man begins a relationship with an observant Muslim woman, he is usually pressured to convert to Islam, and such conversion is made a condition of the marriage. Of course, laws are often honored in the breach, and this is not always true. So while we know that Huma Abedin’s parents were devout and observant Muslims — indeed, her father was an imam — we don’t know what exactly is going on with her marriage to Anthony Weiner.

Certainly the most likely scenario is that Weiner did convert to Islam, as Abedin’s mother, a professor in Saudi Arabia, would almost certainly have insisted that he do so. Weiner has made no public statement of this conversion, but since it would almost certainly have cost him politically if he had announced it, this silence is not any indication that he didn’t actually convert.

However, it is also possible, given the recent scandal involving Weiner’s apparently frequent and sexually charged contact with other women, that the rumors that the Abedin/Weiner union is a political marriage of convenience are true. After all, in 2008, Hillary Clinton was running for president. There were widespread insinuations that she was involved in a romantic and/or sexual relationship with Abedin, her ever-present personal assistant. Those whisperings persisted into Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Abedin’s 2010 marriage to Weiner, at which Bill Clinton presided, put those rumors to rest.

In Islamic law, a Muslim must officiate a marriage ceremony; hence if Bill Clinton was the only one officiating, the marriage was not valid according to Islamic law. Huma Abedin would undoubtedly have known that. Thus, if no Muslim was officiating along with Clinton, Weiner would not have had to convert to Islam, as the whole thing was a charade from the outset, apparently entered into with the full awareness of all parties concerned.

FP: This all seems very strange. What do you personally think is going on?

Spencer: Either Weiner converted to Islam to marry Abedin, and a Muslim was officiating at the ceremony along with Clinton, or the marriage is a sham and Abedin, at very least, is fully aware of that — and probably the others are also. I don’t see any other possibilities.

FP: Sorry, I am a bit confused about the Bill Clinton angle. Isn’t this a bit of a bizarre person to ask to officiate your wedding? One would think that in getting married, you have things like faithfulness and loyalty on your mind, no?

Spencer: Yes, Bill Clinton is a strange choice, indeed — unless the whole point of the union had to do more with the Clinton connection than with faithfulness and loyalty.

FP: According to Islamic Law, Huma Abedin could be killed, right? If the whole thing is not a charade and a trick, it is a bit bizarre that her family, who are Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Sisterhood operatives, have allowed this and not punished her, no?

Spencer: Yes, Jamie. If the marriage is not a sham, it is exceedingly strange that Huma Abedin’s mother and other Muslim Brotherhood connections would have no problem with it. She is, of course, a high profile individual in the United States, and thus is in a very different situation from that of a woman in Saudi Arabia who might enter into a relationship with a non-Muslim man. In Saudi Arabia, such a woman would almost certainly be murdered; would Brotherhood operatives murder the aide to the Secretary of State for committing the same sin? That is not so clear.

FP: Last year, Walid Shoebat translated the Arabic declarations relative to the validity of the Weiner-Abedin marriage. One publication Shoebat translated was the Al-Marsid newspaper, which reported on the marriage specifically:

“Dr. Anwar Shoeb of the faculty of Islamic law in Kuwait declared that the marriage between Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin is null and void, considering it adultery as confirmed in the Sharia position, prohibiting the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim, regardless of whether he is a Jew or a Christian. In this case, he assured the invalidity of the marriage certificate between them.”

Your thoughts on this?

Spencer: Dr. Shoeb is completely correct, of course, from the standpoint of Islamic law. In light of that, it is striking that there is no record anywhere of any Islamic anger about Abedin’s marriage or Hillary Clinton’s connection with her. This lends credence to the possibility that the marriage is a sham, and is known to be a sham among those in the Islamic world who have been responsible for stirring up and manipulating popular anger about other matters, such as the cartoons of Muhammad.

FP: So, just to crystallize the matter then, there is a remote possibility that Abedin is actually being deceptive in her marriage to Weiner to follow Muslim Brotherhood instructions and to infiltrate the U.S. government, correct?

Spencer: Certainly. That is a very real possibility, and it should be investigated. But the only ones who have the means to do so are mainstream media journalists who are either clueless or complicit.

FP: The other scenario is that Anthony Weiner converted to Islam but just kept it on the low-down, right?

Spencer: Indeed.

FP: Is there a chance that Weiner’s life might be in danger from the Muslim Brotherhood  for having done what he just did and been caught for it — and for having humiliated his Muslim wife in this way?

Spencer: I think that is unlikely. If he is a Muslim, his wife is his possession and his humiliation of her is not all that important. If he is a non-Muslim and the marriage is a sham, the sham has blown up in the faces of all concerned, but Weiner is so high-profile that I think he is more likely to be cast aside than to be physically threatened. In any case, I haven’t heard anything to the effect of any threats to Weiner, but I will be monitoring the situation.

FP: Omar Abu-Namous, the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center in New York, is encouraging Huma Abedin to stand by her husband. Why would an imam support a Muslim wife to stand by a Jewish husband who has disgraced her?

Spencer: Only if he is a Muslim.

FP: I see.

Ok, you mention that Abedin’s mother is a professor in Saudi Arabia. Does she wear the niqab? How come Abedin doesn’t wear a niqab? How come her family doesn’t make her veil in some way?

Spencer: Yes, Saleha Mahmood Abedin is an associate professor of sociology at Dar al-Hekma College in Jeddah. She doesn’t wear the niqab, but she does wear the hijab. Huma doesn’t wear either the niqab or the hijab. There may be any number of reasons why not: she may not be all that devout, or she may be calculating that to wear it would be off-putting to many followers of the Clintons, and thus it is prudent in the short term not to do so. Obviously, if the latter is the case, her manifestly devout family’s apparent sanguine attitude toward her not wearing it would become completely understandable.

FP: When we see women in Saudi Arabia they are usually wearing the niqab. How come Abedin’s mother is wearing only hijab and showing her face, which we usually don’t see Saudi women doing?

Spencer: Jamie, women in many Saudi cities wear the niqab as a matter of social custom, and — no doubt — because of considerable pressure from their relatives, but it is not actually mandated by law. And Jeddah, where Saleha Mahmood Abedin lives, is the city in Saudi Arabia where people are least likely to insist on this strict Islamic observance; you will see the niqab worn much more frequently in cities such as Mecca, Medina, and Riyadh.

FP: Ok, let’s get back to Huma Abedin. Don’t you find it a bit concerning that we have someone with close associations to the Muslim Brotherhood advising our Secretary of State and having access to sensitive information? How come no one in the media is talking about this?

Spencer: Definitely. According to published reports, Abedin is still an observant Muslim, and given her mother’s established ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within,” that is a matter of grave concern. If the mainstream media were actually interested in reporting the news, journalists would be asking Abedin tough questions not so much about her marriage to Weiner, but about her family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. They should also be asking Clinton about her knowledge of these ties, and examining Clinton’s record for indications that this influence has been a determining factor in her policy decisions.

Imagine if the personal assistant to the Secretary of State had a personal assistant whose family was deeply involved in the Ku Klux Klan. Do you think the media would be as indifferent to the implications of that?

FP: I’m a bit baffled; what do you make of it all?

Spencer: The questions involved in the Weiner/Abedin case are obvious, but the answers are not. And so above all, this is a glaring example of how the mainstream media is not doing its job, and is, in fact, failing the American people in neglecting to get the facts about a matter that could have serious implications for our national security. As it is, a woman with extensive ties to an organization dedicated to destroying the United States is the most trusted aide of the Secretary of State — and no one cares. If a fiction writer had turned in a manuscript containing that scenario, it would have been rejected as unbelievable.

FP: Robert Spencer, thank you for joining us here at Frontpage and thank you for having the courage to speak about these things.

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine’s editor. He is the author of the critically acclaimed and best-selling, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. His new book is Showdown With Evil. He can be reached at jamieglazov11@gmail.com.