RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Islamic Society of Santa Barbara (ISSB) is determined to construct a 10,000-square ft. mosque in Goleta, CA. Their effort to do so began in 2001 when they purchased a parcel of land in Goleta, CA, a recently incorporated town in Santa Barbara County. That was followed by an application for construction filed by developers in 2003. In December 2013, the the Goleta City Council unanimously approved the project. “All of us made history today,” ISSB Chairman Jamal Hamdani said at the time. “I am truly proud to be an American, a Muslim, and a member of this community.”

The ISSB was founded in 1984 and according to its website it is a 501(c)(3) independent organization. Their ideological commitments include teaching the Qur’an and the customs of the Prophet Mohammed, and they insist their approach to Islam is one in which they will “educate and remind,” rather than “compel, dictate, judge, or classify.”

Yet there is a bit of disingenuousness attached to one of their statements: “Islam is a set of philosophical and spiritual outlooks; ISSB does not engage in political activities.”

Not exactly. One of the members of their community is the Muslim Student Association (MSA), and the notion that the MSA doesn’t not engage in political activities is utterly preposterous. Since its inception at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in January of 1963, the MSA has expanded to nearly 600 chapters nationwide, including 150 affiliated with MSA National. It was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a group established by Hasan al-Bannain Egypt in 1928. The MB spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas, spied for the Nazis in the Middle East, and fought for Hitler during WWII. The MB’s doctrines define Islamist jihadism as it is practiced by Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Hamas and the government of Iran.

The establishment of the MSA in America was one part of an initiative launched by Saudi Arabia in the ‘60s to spread the poisonous and violent Wahhabist ideology that animates Sunni terror groups. As Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security Policy explained in 2004, all of the groups set up by the Saudis “were tightly controlled and financed by the Saudi government and the Wahhabi clergy.”

Three years later a New York Police Department report labeled the MSA an “incubator” for Islamic radicalism. In 2011, former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo contended the ultimate purpose of the MB “is to implement Islamic government here in the United States,” he explained. “And they say that.”

Many former MB members have done their best to implement that goal. They include Anwar al-Awlaki who inspired Fort Hood mass murderer Maj. Nidal Hasan before being killed in a U.S. drone strike; Ramy Zamzam, former MSA Washington, D.C. council president, convicted for attempting to join the Taliban and kill American troops; Omar Hammami, former MSA president at the University of South Alabama who became a leader of the al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia; and Abdurahman Alamoudi, the MSA’s national president during the 1980s, currently serving a 23 year prison sentence after pleading guilty to being a senior al Qaeda financier.

Thus it is disquieting to learn that ISSB co-founder Mukhtar Khan, born in Saudi Arabia, also founded the (MSA) chapter at University of California, Santa Barbara, (USCB) in 1975. That would be the same chapter of the MSA that disrupted a 2004 speech by Italian Muslim cleric Abdul Hadi Palazzi, who was labeled an “apologist for Zionism” because he criticized militant Islam. In 2008 members of the chapter were challenged by Freedom Center’s David Horowitz to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and refused to do so. Three years later they attempted to prevent Horowitz from speaking on campus by pressuring the Associated Students Finance Board to deny funding for security. MSA member Ahmed Naguib revealed the association’s rationale for the denial, insisting that “people have the right to freedom of speech, but I don’t believe he has that right if it’s threatening students’ safety. He made several racist remarks about Arabs and accused people of terrorism last time he visited.”

Nonetheless, in its 2010 depiction of the ISSB’s effort to get the Goleta mosque approved, the Santa Barbara Independent painted a picture of tranquility and harmony insisting the ISSB’s “10-year march through the valley of difficulty has not left them embittered,” and that the ISSB “derives strength from its diversity, choosing to focus on what makes them similar instead of what makes them different.”

During their journey to realize a mosque, the ISSB hired an imam. Abdur Rahman was brought over from England in 2000, but was forced to leave or face deportation in 2008 for selling spiritual texts on the Internet in violation of his temporary visa. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) intervened on Rahman’s behalf, getting him an additional three weeks in America.

Rep. Lois Capps has been a solid supporter of the ISSB, and was involved in ISSB’s participation in the “EcoFaith” initiative, which helped develop green building plans for the Islamic center. That would be the same Lois Capps who joined six Democratic colleagues on a letter written to Attorney General Eric Holder decrying efforts to monitor the activities of radical Islamist groups and known Muslim Brotherhood front groups. A list of groups was provided along with a request that Holder address their grievances. The list included the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim American Society’s Freedom Foundation, run by convicted felon Mahdi Bray, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). The latter two groups were designated as terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates last November. Furthermore, ISNA and CAIR were designated “unindicted co-conspirators” by the Justice Department in the Texas Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial.

Rahman’s replacement was Yama Niazi, an Afghani whose family fled that nation on the heels of the Soviet invasion. And once again, the ISSB’s contention that it eschews political activity rings hollow. Niazi was one of several individuals and Muslim organizations who signed a statement released in August 2014, insisting “Israeli aggression against the civilian population of Gaza has surpassed all levels of brutality and cruelty.” The statement demanded an end to that aggression, a call to stop sending U.S. tax dollars to the Jewish State, support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and an affirmation of the “Occupied Palestinians” to defend themselves against “continued occupation, expansion of settlements and land expropriation.”

Many local residents have expressed unease with the building of the Islamic center in Goleta, especially since the funding sources are not known. Women in particular have expressed concern about influence of  harsh gender norms of Sharia law in their communities. “As an American woman, I feel betrayed,” a letter to the editor of a local newspaper stated. “According to a prior letter to the editor, the very symbol of subjugation of women, a large Islamic ‘center,’ was given approval to be built near UCSB. Who forgot to safeguard us American women, our rights and our future from despotic Sharia Law, which documentation reveals Islam starts invoking at 5.8 percent of population?”

Santa Barbara Independent editor Matt Kettmann, who wrote the initial story on the Goleta mosque, attempted to dismiss those concerns—even as he admitted women attending ISSB services “are hidden by a curtain behind the men in prayer rooms large and small; unrelated women and men are not supposed to touch each other, even in a casual handshake; and at social gatherings, men and women eat apart and then play apart, with men kicking around soccer balls and women playing a game of charades.” Regardless, he insisted “according to the women I interviewed, inequality is far from the truth.”

Another writer brought up a far more relevant consideration asking, “who will finance this Islamic center in Goleta? It has been documented that 50 percent to 80 percent of mosques in the United States are financed by Saudi Arabia, where Sharia law is followed. Also, a mosque or Islamic center is different from a church or synagogue. Islam, a political, religious ideology that has total control over the lives of Muslims, is taught there. That means there is no separation between church and state, and it trumps the Constitution.”

Certainly knowing who is funding the construction of the two-story mosque of just under 10,000 square feet that will contain a prayer area, dining room, library, and lecture hall might assuage some of those concerns. As mentioned above, the ISSB is a part of the EcoFaith initiative, a multi-faith “environmental coalition” helping them develop green building plans for the mosque that can be viewed here. Yet while those plans are fairly detailed, there is no mention of the cost, likely to run into the millions, or the sources of funding. The initial report of the mosque cited above reveals that cost for the paperwork alone came to $150,000. Moreover, ISSB members still hold religious services at the Goleta Vally Community Center. The ISSB website provides no list of current directors or officials and a search on the site itself provided nothing more than bylaws addressing the issue in a general way.

Yet whether concerned residents can pierce the veil of political correctness that attaches itself to virtually every aspect of this story remains to be seen. The ISSB is under no obligation to publish its sources of funding. It remains to be seen whether they feel the need to placate those concerned residents or not.

The answer to that question may be quite revealing, in and of itself.