Ed. Whitfield’s Donors!

Jim Pence July 22nd, 2008

(Cross posted at Hillbilly Report )

For those that might think I’m a Muslim basher, click here and here and see what I have to say about those claiming to be Christians.
Let me begin by saying I don’t believe Ed. Whitfield is involved with terrorism or supports terrorist, but I’m questioning Mr. Whitfield’s judgment for accepting campaign contributions from the following:

  • Khaled Saffuri : Made a $1000 contribution to Ed. Whitfield . (FRONTPAGEMAG.COM ) The founding director of Grover Norquist’s Islamic Institute , Khaled Saffuri, is a Muslim Palestinian by birth. Prior to joining Alamoudi’s group (where he served for almost three years), Saffuri was active in Muslim-support operations in Bosnia, a hot-bed for Islamic radicals from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere anxious to establish a beachhead on the continent of Europe. In recent years, he has acknowledged personally supporting the families of suicide bombers – even though, in public settings, he strenuously denies having done so. He denounced President Bush for shutting down the Holy Land Foundation, a Saudi charity that the U.S. government determined was funneling American Muslims’ donations to terrorist organizations overseas.
    Saffuri had also arranged for the Bush campaign to enlist Sami al-Arian , a well-known Florida-based activist – despite the fact that the professor made little secret of his radical Islamist sympathies – to help engender Muslim support in his state. A photograph of Mr. Bush taken with al-Arian in March 2000 subsequently received considerable attention after the professor was arrested 40 terrorism-related counts. Of particular concern are those alleging his functional direction over the past 19 years of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the most murderous terrorist organizations in the Middle East.
  • Grover Norquist : Made a $250 contribution to Ed. Whitfield . (FRONTPAGEMAG.COM ) Grover Norquist has formed alliances with prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities. Equally troubling is that the arrests of these individuals and their exposure as agents of terrorism have not resulted in noticeable second thoughts on Grover’s part or any meaningful effort to dissociate himself from his unsavory friends.
    The association between Grover Norquist and Islamists appears to have started in 1998, when he became the founding chairman of an organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute, better known as the Islamic Institute. The Institute’s stated purpose was to cultivate Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans whose attachment to conservative family values and capitalism made them potential allies for the Republican Party in advance of the 2000 presidential election.
    It seems unlikely that even in Alamoudi’s wildest dreams he could have imagined the extent of the access, influence and legitimacy the American Muslim Council and allied Islamist organizations would be able to secure in Republican circles, thanks to the investment they began in 1998 in a relationship with Norquist.
    Alamoudi and Norquist
    The investment began when Alamoudi wrote two personal checks (a $10,000 loan and what appears to be a $10,000 gift) to help found Norquist’s Islamic Institute . In addition, Alamoudi made payments in 2000 and 2001 totaling $50,000 to Janus-Merritt Strategies, a lobbying firm with which Norquist was associated at the time.

Click here to view a short video of Abdulrahman Alamoudi speaking at Lafayette Park, in Washington D.C. October 28, 2000.
Ed. Whitfield has also taken two trips to Qatar, in 2002 sponsored by the Islamic Institute and 2005 also sponsored by the Islamic Institute . Good judgment? You decide.

2 Responses to “Ed. Whitfield’s Donors!”

  1. # kilowaton 22 Jul 2008 at 6:51 am

    damn we got the best government MONEY can buy

  2. # kilowaton 22 Jul 2008 at 9:53 am

    Spiritual Needs

    Until the 1990s, the Pentagon did little to tend to the spiritual needs of its growing Muslim ranks, now estimated at between 4,000 and 10,000. For Christian and Jewish troops, it has long maintained a world-wide network of more than 3,000 ordained chaplains and thousands of additional lay leaders, who back up the chaplains. But Muslims in uniform largely went without official religious attention.

    About 10 years ago, Mr. Alamoudi, the Muslim-American activist, approached the Pentagon and offered to help. A naturalized American citizen, he was born in Eritrea but is a member of a large and influential Saudi business clan. As head of the American Muslim Council, a Washington lobbying group, he rubbed elbows with politicians in both parties. His organization had “contacts within the Muslim community that not many other institutions had,” says Herman Keizer, a minister with the Christian Reformed Church in North America who then headed the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, which oversees military religious activity.

    Mr. Alamoudi’s entreaty resulted in the Pentagon setting up two programs: one to recruit Muslim clerics as chaplains and another to train troops and employees as Muslim lay leaders. An offshoot of Mr. Alamoudi’s American Muslim Council began certifying chaplains and worked with the Islamic institute to train lay advisers.

    “There was some concern about the connections between [Mr. Alamoudi's organization] and countries in the Middle East,” says Rev. Keizer, who left the military-chaplain board in 1994. But he declines to elaborate on this concern and confirms that it didn’t stop the Pentagon from relying on Mr. Alamoudi and his group.

    Recently, that reliance has become problematic. In October, Mr. Alamoudi was indicted on charges of illegally taking from Libya hundreds of thousands of dollars that federal prosecutors say they suspect “was intended for delivery” to terrorists in the Middle East or anti-American fighters headed for Iraq.

    Prosecutors say Mr. Alamoudi is also at the center of a network of northern Virginia-based Islamic groups that are under federal investigation for possibly financing terrorism. Mr. Alamoudi was denied bail in October after prosecutors presented evidence in court that he “expressed his support for terrorism and repeatedly transferred money to terrorists,” including the Palestinian group Hamas and front groups affiliated with al Qaeda. U.S. investigators have quoted him in court documents as discussing terrorism with an unidentified informant, and saying, “I prefer to hit a Zionist target in America or Europe.”

    Mr. Alamoudi has pleaded innocent to the Libya-related charges and hasn’t been charged in the Virginia investigation. His lawyer, Stanley Cohen, says the accusations against his client are part of an attempt to intimidate influential Muslims. “There’s a lot of smoke and huff and puff, but there’s nothing there,” the lawyer said. Mr. Cohen added that his client has had only limited involvement with the institute.

    Pentagon spokesman James Turner declines to comment on the charges against Mr. Alamoudi. Mr. Turner says the military no longer uses the institute to train Muslim lay leaders, but he declines to elaborate or explain whether another group is doing such training. The last of five plaques commemorating the sessions in the institute’s lobby is dated 2000.

    geocities.com/emorseraf/a_muslim_school_used.htm

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