OBAMA APPOINTEE DALIA MOGAHED SILENT ON THREATS TO FORMER MUSLIMS
The Iconoclast
Sunday, 18 July 2010
President Obama appointee Dalia Mogahed “overwhelmingly†silent on FMU Freedom Pledge
President Obama appointee Dalia Mogahed “overwhelmingly†silent
on pledge to stop threats against former Muslims’ human rights
“Dalia Mogahed, a prominent American Muslim appointed by President Obama to the White House Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, does not honor freedom to choose one’s beliefs as guaranteed under our First Amendment. That is the only conclusion we can draw from the overwhelming ‘silence’ and non-response to a Freedom Pledge letter sent on October 20, 2009 to Ms. Mogahed by our organizationâ€, according to author and human rights activist Nonie Darwish. She is executive director of Former Muslims United (FMU).
Dalia Mogahed is a Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She is coauthor of the book and film Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think with Dr.John L. Esposito, a Georgetown University colleague at the Prince Alaweed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding. In April, 2009, President Obama appointed Ms. Mogahed to the White House Advisory Council.
Since joining the White House Advisory Council, Ms. Mogahed has engaged in outreach to Muslim Brotherhood front groups , identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Dallas Federal Holy Land Foundation Trial, such as the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Leaders of the Holy Land Foundation were convicted on charges of funneling $12 million to Hamas, a Palestinian group designated as terrorists by the federal government.
Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser, of the American Forum for Islam and Democracy (AFID), one of only two signatories of the FMU Freedom Pledge contends in a report by The Investigative Project that Ms. Mogahed’s outreach to radical Muslim groups does not help.
The damage is immeasurable to Muslims seeking non-radical alternatives. They are going to say, why bother?’ The government has chosen sides in the conflict.
Ms. Mogahed and co-author Dr. Esposito, have been criticized for distorting Muslim world opinions about support of ‘justified terrorism’ regarding 9/11 using data from the Gallup Center for Muslim studies surveys.
Note this comment from The Investigative Project:
In Who Speaks for Islam? , Mogahed and Esposito claim that approximately 91 million people, or 7 percent of Muslims worldwide (the percentage who believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified), can be referred to as “politically radicalized.”
Robert Satloff [ of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy] found that the percentage justifying 9/11 was closer to 36 percent, or more than 450 million people, a third of the world’s Muslim population.
The Pew Global Attitudes Project surveyed Muslims in the Palestinian territories and 15 countries . . . . According to the Pew survey, an average of 23.5 percent of Muslims supported suicide bombings in 2007.
FMU is a human and civil rights organization whose mission is to protect and defend those who have chosen to leave Islam and face threats to their lives and property under Fatwas or rulings from Muslim clerics and legal authorities both here in the United States and abroad.
Darwish said, “The objective of the letter sent by FMU was to request that Mogahed sign a pledge to honor the freedom of former Muslims to choose a personal belief other than Islam. Ms. Mogahed over the past nine months failed to sign the FMU Freedom pledge. We are dismayed. We call upon Ms. Mogahed, who considers herself a law abiding citizen of this country to reconsider her position and sign the Freedom Pledgeâ€.
In the fall of 2009, FMU mailed copies of the Freedom Pledge asking Ms. Mogahed and other Muslim leaders to repudiate the Shariah aw consensus permitting execution of apostates from islam, to more than 111 Muslim American leaders of 50 organizations. Only twopledges were returned – one from Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser of the AFID and the other from Dr. Ali Ayami, executive director of the washington, DC-based Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Saudi Arabia. To date, FMU has sent over 163 Freedom Pledge Letters to Muslim leaders across America.
Comments are closed.
