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Please read just a few of the headlines that World Net Daily has published.
January,
2007
Iran prepares people for 'messiah miracles'
Government broadcasts series on imminent appearance of apocalyptic Islamic 'Mahdi'
Official Iranian radio has completed broadcasting a lengthy series on the imminent appearance of a messianic figure who will defeat Islam's enemies and impose Islamic Shiite rule over the entire world – even speculating on specific dates the so-called "Mahdi" will be revealed.
"Be joyous my heart, miracles of the Messiah will soon be here," reads a poem used to conclude the first broadcast. "The scent of breaths of the One we know comes from near. Grieve not of sorrow and melancholy, as assured I was … last night that a Savior will come, it's clear."
After the coming of the 12th imam, or Mahdi, "liberal democratic civilization" will be found only in "history museums," explained the program.
"Contrary to the views of western theoreticians, who usually depict an ambiguous and dark future for mankind, Muslim experts believe human history, despite its many ups and downs, has a very auspicious fate," explained the program. "Muslims believe hopes for the realization of such a happy ending for the world are called 'Awaiting Redemption,' and means waiting for man's problems to be solved by the Savior at the end of time. This awaiting influences many, and inspired them with activity and enthusiasm in confronting darkness and oppression for changing the existing situation. …"
This messianic figure will be a direct descendant of Muhammad, according to the broadcasts.
"In short, when he reappears, peace, justice and security will overcome oppression and deceit and one global government, the most perfect ever, will be established," it said.
The Mahdi will appear suddenly, according to the report, in Mecca. Though no one can know the day, Shiites believe, the report actually suggests possibilities in the Muslim calendar.
The Mahdi will lead a cataclysmic battle against a descendant of Muhammad's archenemy, Abu Sofyan, culminating in the cities of Kufa and Najaf. His enemy, though, is destroyed later in Jerusalem.
"Another beautiful moment of the Savior's appearance is the coming down of Prophet Jesus (PBUH) from heaven," says the report. "Hazrat Mahdi receives him courteously and asks him to lead the prayers. But Jesus says you are more qualified for this than me. We read in the book Tazkarat ol-Olia, 'the Mahdi will come with Jesus son of Mary accompanying him.' This indicates that these two great men are (sic) complement each other. Imam Mahdi will be the leader while Prophet Jesus will act as his lieutenant in the struggle against oppression and establishment of justice in the world. Jesus had himself given the tidings of the coming of God's last messenger and will see Mohammad's ideals materialize in the time of the Mahdi."
As WND reported last month, in a greeting to the world's Christians for the coming new year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he expects both Jesus and the Mahdi, to return and "wipe away oppression."
"I wish all the Christians a very happy new year and I wish to ask them a question as well," said Ahmadinejad, according to an Iranian Student News Agency report cited by YnetNews.com
"My one question from the Christians is: What would Jesus do if he were present in the world today? What would he do before some of the oppressive powers of the world who are in fact residing in Christian countries? Which powers would he revive and which of them would he destroy?" asked the Iranian leader.
"If Jesus were present today, who would be facing him and who would be following him?"
In a videotaped meeting with Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli in Tehran, Ahmadinejad discussed candidly a strange, paranormal experience he had while addressing the United Nations in New York last September.
He recounts how he found himself bathed in light throughout the speech. But this wasn't the light directed at the podium by the U.N. and television cameras. It was, he said, a light from heaven.
According to a transcript of his comments, obtained and translated by Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, Ahmadinejad wasn't the only one who noticed the unearthly light. One of his aides brought it to his attention.
The Iranian president recalled being told about it by one of his delegation: "When you began with the words 'in the name of Allah,' I saw a light coming, surrounding you and protecting you to the end."
Ahmadinejad agreed that he sensed the same thing.
"On the last day when I was speaking, one of our group told me that when I started to say 'Bismillah Muhammad,' he saw a green light come from around me, and I was placed inside this aura," he says. "I felt it myself. I felt that the atmosphere suddenly changed, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, all the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn't move an eyelid, I'm not exaggerating. They were looking as if a hand was holding them there, and had just opened their eyes – Alhamdulillah!"
Ahmadinejad's "vision" at the U.N. is strangely reminiscent and alarmingly similar to statements he has made about his personal role in ushering in the return of the Shiite Muslim messiah.
He sees his main mission, as he recounted in a Nov. 16 speech in Tehran, as to "pave the path for the glorious reappearance of Imam Mahdi, may Allah hasten his reappearance."
According to Shiites, the 12th imam disappeared as a child in the year 941. When he returns, they believe, he will reign on earth for seven years, before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world.
Ahmadinejad is urging Iranians to prepare for the coming of the Mahdi by turning the country into a mighty and advanced Islamic society and by avoiding the corruption and excesses of the West.
All Iran is buzzing about the Mahdi, the 12th imam and the role Iran and Ahmadinejad are playing in his anticipated return. There's a new messiah hotline. There are news agencies especially devoted to the latest developments.
"People are anxious to know when and how will He rise; what they must do to receive this worldwide salvation," says Ali Lari, a cleric at the Bright Future Institute in Iran's religious center of Qom. "The timing is not clear, but the conditions are more specific," he adds. "There is a saying: 'When the students are ready, the teacher will come.'"
World Net Daily
January, 2007
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HOMELAND
INSECURITY
New Muslim congressman avoids loyalty
questions
Ellison had been greeted by shouts of
'Allahu Akbar!' from campaigners
When the first Muslim congressman in U.S. history, Keith Ellison (Hakim-Mohammed) of Minnesota, won the 2006 election and was making the regular thank-you-to-my-supporters speech, he allowed his fans to shout, "Allahu Akbar!," the same phrase allegedly used by the 9/11 suicide pilots.
Since November he's addressed various different Islamic groups and organizations, and he's used the Quran to be sworn into office. He's also been linked to Islamic organizations with questionable agendas.
What he hasn't done is respond to requests from WND to confirm that he will, in fact, base his decisions on the laws of the United States on the U.S. Constitution, not the Quran.
It was during his campaign that he raised the issue of his Islamic beliefs himself, and confirmed then that they would play a large role in his decision-making process:
(Story continues below)
"I am inspired by the Quran's message of encompassing divine love, and a deep faith guides my life every day," he wrote in his promotional materials.
He later told a group meeting in Detroit that, "I'm not here to be a preacher, but in terms of political agenda items, my faith informs these things."
He was given unprecedented permission during this week's swearing-in ceremonies to place his hand on a piece of the nation's archival history – the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson – for his photo-opportunity with family and friends.
The two-volume edition, published in London in 1764, was brought to him in a special case sent by messenger from officials at the Library of Congress.
Ellison said he chose to use the Quran because it showed Jefferson believed wisdom could be gleaned from many sources, although as superstar performer and WND columnist Pat Boone explained Jefferson quoted often from the Bible in his writings, not the Quran.
(Another explanation for Jefferson's possession of a Quran could have been a desire to know his enemies. It was during Jefferson's presidency that the U.S. took on the Muslim slave-traders and pirates on the Barbary Coast of Africa in war.)
Rick Jauert, a spokesman for the congressman, was reached at his campaign headquarters in Minnesota two weeks ago, and confirmed that the congressman does not believe there will be a conflict between his religious beliefs and his duty under the U.S. Constitution.
But when asked which would take priority if there is a conflict, or to describe how the congressman will resolve the differing philosophies provided by the U.S. Constitution and the Quran, which calls for beheading "infidels," he said he could not answer immediately.
Since then, WND has been unable to obtain answers from the congressman or his staff.
One blogger was a little concerned over the situation:
"During the victory celebration for the nation's first Muslim congressman (not that there's anything wrong with that... in principle), Congressman Keith Ellison's supporters scream 'Allahu Akbar!', the same phrase that the 9/11 hijackers screamed, the same phrase suicide bombers scream, the same phrase head choppers scream before slicing off the heads of hapless and bound victims. May God protect this country," the blogger wrote.
In a campaign document talking about his faith, Ellison said, "As a young man I was outraged and frustrated by the racism and injustice I saw in my community and the world around me. Those experiences propelled me to become a social activist, using my words and actions to draw attention to the very serious problems of inequality, racial injustice and poverty in our society.
"As I matured, I had to confront my anger and face it down. I eventually realized that it is easy to be a critic pointing out problems and failings, but it is a far more difficult thing to be part of creating the solution. As my father used to say, 'Any jackass can kick a barn down; it takes a carpenter to build it back up.' Eventually I understood what my father had been telling me, and I committed to being one of the carpenters."
But he confirmed he still holds that "outrage" at the direction of the United States.
Ellison said he decided to seek congressional office because, "I am for peace now, for universal health care, and for a sustainable future."
"I will fight for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and for an international reconstruction effort; for universal single payer healthcare so that Americans can get the medical care that they need whether they have a job that offers insurance or not; for green energy, conservation, environmental justice, and a sustainable future for our country and the world," he wrote.
He recognizes Israel, and said "a lasting peace in the Middle East should be one of the United States' most focused goals."
"Right now Hamas represents the greatest obstacle to this path, and until Hamas denounces terrorism, recognizes the absolute right of Israel to exist peacefully and honors past agreements, it cannot be considered legitimate partners in this process," he wrote.
Jauert explained that Ellison's conflicts between his faith and the law would be no more than those Catholics who support abortion, and then face objections from church leaders who believe they should not be allowed to take part in church rites.
"Not every follower of Islam supports Sharia law," Jauert told WND.
In his speech in Detroit, Ellison said it appears people "see their religion as an identity thing, much in the same way Crips or Bloods might say, 'I'm this, this is the set I'm rolling with.' They've never actually tried to explore how religion should connect us, they're into how religion divides us … they haven't really explored … how my faith connects me to you."
But as WND reported earlier, he's been linked to a radical Islamic school of thought that requires loyalty to the Quran over the U.S. Constitution.
A black convert to orthodox Sunni Islam, Ellison spoke to the North American Imams Federation, or NAIF, at the group's Nov. 19 conference in Minneapolis.
His talk flowed into a breakout session listed on the agenda simply as "American Open University," according to the conference program. It turns out the university is a "distance-learning" center based in Alexandria, Va., and known to local law enforcement as "Wahhabi Online."
Later that day, Ellison met with NAIF's president, Omar Ahmad Shahin, who lectures at the same American Open University. (He also met at the time with New York imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.) The radical Islamic school trains many of NAIF's more than 150 members, who control mosques across America.
American Open University supports Sharia, or Islamic law. And its founder and chairman, Jaafar Sheikh Idris, has denounced the U.S system of democracy as "the antithesis of Islam" and argued no man has the right to make laws outside Allah's laws expressed in the Quran.
"There is a basic difference between Islam and this form of democracy," he says. "The basic difference is that in Islam it is [Allah's] law as expressed in the Quran and the Sunna that is the supreme law within the limits of which people have the right to legislate.
"No one can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to that divine law," Idris adds. "Examples of such violations include the legalization of alcoholic drinks, gambling, homosexuality, usury or interest, and even adoption."
Ellison's campaign also was backed by the Washington-based lobby group Council on American-Islamic Relations, a partner organization to American Open University-affiliated NAIF. CAIR held fundraisers for Ellison, a civil-rights lawyer and one-time acolyte of Louis Farrakhan who admits to making anti-Semitic remarks in the past (under various alias including Keith Hakim, Keith Ellison-Muhammad and Keith X Ellison).
CAIR's founder has argued the Quran should replace the Constitution as the highest authority in the land. The group's director of communications, moreover, has expressed his desire to see the U.S. become an Islamic state.
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2006: Muslim year of perpetual outrage
It began with the Danish cartoons. It ended with the flying imams. The year 2006 was a banner year for the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. Twelve turbulent months of fist-waving, embassy-burning, fatwa-issuing mayhem, intimidation and murder resounded with the ululations of the aggrieved. All this in the name of defending Islam from "insult." Let's review.
In late January, masked Palestinian gunmen took over a European Union office in Gaza City to protest the publication of a dozen cartoons about Islam, Muhammad and self-censorship in the Danish newspaper the Jyllands-Posten. They stormed the building, burned Danish flags, and spearheaded an international boycott of Denmark's products across the Muslim world.
The rage was manufactured pretext. The cartoons had been published four months earlier with little fanfare. It wasn't until a delegation of instigating Danish imams toured Egypt with the cartoons – plus a few inflammatory fake ones, including an old image of a French hog-calling contest participant deceptively portrayed as "anti-Muslim" – that the fire started burning. Think the mainstream media will remember that? Not likely. They fell for the ruse and were slow to acknowledge it after American bloggers and Danish television exposed the scheme.
What was really behind Cartoon Rage? Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time.
Alas, Western journalists, analysts and apologists were too clouded by their cowardice and conciliation to see through the smoke. More than 800 were injured in the ensuing riots, and 130 people paid with their lives. The innocents included Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro, who was shot to death in Turkey on Feb. 5 by a teenage boy enraged by the illustrations. The Muslim gunman shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" as he murdered Father Santoro while the priest knelt praying in his church. Several brave moderate Muslim editors who stood up to the madness were jailed, fined and convicted of crimes related to insulting Islam. The Danish cartoonists remain in hiding.
The world soon tired of Cartoon Rage, but the "peaceful" Muslim ragers were just warming up. They found excuses large and small to riot and threaten Western infidels. In India, they protested the magazine publication of a picture of a playing card showing an image of Mecca and also burned Valentine's Day cards. An insult to Islam, they screamed. In Spain, they protested a Madrid store for selling a postcard with a mosque on it with the words "We slept here." An insult to Islam, they protested. In Pakistan, they burned down a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, a Pizza Hut, and toppled Ronald McDonald. In Jakarta, they smashed the offices of Playboy magazine. You know why.
In June, the trial against lioness journalist Oriana Fallaci for insulting Islam commenced in Bergamo, Italy. She had been charged by professional Muslim rager Adel Smith of the Muslim Union of Italy of "vilipendio" – vilifying Islam – in her post-9/11 books slamming jihad. A judge had refused to throw out the case. She faced a pile of death threats and accusations of "Islamophobia" for speaking truth to Islamo-power.
Fallaci's death from cancer during the fifth anniversary week of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks pre-empted the trial in Italy, but her passing did nothing to pre-empt the eternal rage of the perpetually outraged. The day she died, the grievance-mongers were shaking their fists and calling for the head of Pope Benedict XVI for his speech that made reference to a 14th-century conversation touching on holy war and jihad. For engaging in open, honest intellectual and spiritual debate, he was condemned, lit afire in effigy and targeted anew. The ragers bombed Christian churches in Gaza City and Nablus. They murdered Italian Sister Leonella Sgorbati, an elderly Catholic nun shot in the back by a Somalian jihadist stoked by Pope Rage. "Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim," a Somalian cleric had declared. The Vatican made nice with Muslim leaders.
New outrages are always in bloom. In late September, it was a Berlin production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" that featured the decapitated head of Muhammad. A week later, it was a banyan tree attacked by Indonesian Muslims who wanted to disprove its mystical powers. A few days after that, it was former British foreign secretary Jack Straw, who had the audacity to make the very obvious observation that full Muslim veils impede communications between women and Westerners. Offensive! Disturbing! An insult to Islam!
Not to be outdone, a delegation of extortionist imams boarded a US Airways flight in Minneapolis in November and tried to manufacture an international human-rights incident. They clamored for a boycott and threatened to sue.
The good news: The fire did not catch here this time.
The bad news: As Oriana Fallaci warned before her death: "The hate for
the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and
them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and
the worst is still to come."
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HOMELAND INSECURITY
Quantico mosque leader promoted
Pentagon honors Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain
In a special ceremony, the Pentagon recently promoted a Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain who catered to al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo and fought to establish the first mosque in Marine Corps history.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England personally promoted Navy chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. Saifulislam also received a Joint Service Commendation Medal at the Pentagon ceremony held on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Pentagon officials say the ceremony was unprecedented.
"It's unusual for a deputy secretary to personally promote an officer of that rank," said one official who wished to go unnamed. "No one has known of such a high-level dignitary doing that."
England also earlier this year personally dedicated a new Islamic center at Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va., on the advice of Saifulislam, a Bangladesh immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 1995.
The Muslim chaplain, who is stationed at Quantico, recited verses from the Quran in Arabic and English at the summer dedication ceremony, which included representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, several leaders of which have been convicted on terrorism-related charges.
Saifulislam, which is Arabic for "Sword of Islam," received his religious training at a radical Islamic school raided by federal agents after 9/11. The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, based in Leesburg, Va., is run by Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian terror case. A federal affidavit used to obtain a warrant to search the school alleges Al-Alwani gave at least $50,000 in jihad money "to support suicide bombings."
Saifulislam insists he is moderate and condemns "terrorism," but critics say his Wahhabi background and associations should give the Pentagon pause.
"The Pentagon is giving him a permanent, taxpayer-supported platform from which to convert grunts to Islam," said terror expert Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington."
"With the Quantico mosque, the Pentagon is facilitating the study of the holy text the enemy uses, heretically or not, as their manual of warfare."
Saifulislam's promotion along with the dedication of his new Quantico mosque – the first of its kind in the 230-year history of the Corps – comes on the heels of a Muslim spy scandal at Gitmo involving another Muslim chaplain.
Army Capt. James "Yousef" Yee, who ministered to al-Qaida detainees, was charged with mishandling classified information. Yee, a convert to Islam, quit the Army and the charges were dropped. But two of his Muslim military friends at Gitmo were convicted of espionage-related crimes.
Yee's predecessor at Gitmo was Saifulislam, who was first assigned to the terrorist prison camp after 9/11. While at the Cuban base, the Navy imam privately counseled al-Qaida prisoners in their native tongues of Urdu and Arabic. "I must give hope for them to cope," Saifulislam said at the time.
He set up the diet and prayer regimes for the detainees, recommending they be served halal meals – including traditional dates and lamb – prepared according to Islamic dietary law. Gitmo detainees can now choose from a menu of 113 Muslim-appropriate meals.
In addition, Saifulislam saw to it that detainees receive copies of the Quran and have access to prayer beads and skull caps. Saifulislam also set up a program to train guards to be more sensitive to the religious customs of their Muslim prisoners.
West Point bows to Mecca
Multiculturalism appears to trump concerns about Islamist infiltration of the military. Following the Marine's lead, the Army in October dedicated a new mosque at West Point.
The U.S. Military Academy's first worship hall for Muslims boasts green carpets, shoe racks and a pulpit facing Mecca. Officials agreed to set up the mosque, large enough for dozens of followers, after Muslim leaders complained that the office where Muslim cadets gathered for Friday prayers had become too crowded.
The Army has been recruiting international cadets from Muslim countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Muslim enrollment at the academy in New York has jumped to 32 from just two in 2001.
"We live in a world where everyone is looking at the United States saying, 'You're anti-Islam,'" explained West Point Chaplain Col. John Cook. "But here at West Point, that's not what we do."
The U.S. military now boasts more than 10,000 Muslim soldiers, many of them black converts. On the eve of the Army's push into Iraq, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a black Muslim convert, fragged commanding officers at a military camp in Kuwait. He killed two of them and wounded 15 others.
Akbar, recently convicted of murder and given the death sentence, said at the time he did it out of loyalty to the umma, or global community of Muslims.
"You guys are coming into our countries," he said, "and you're going to rape our women and kill our children."
Within months of Akbar's traitorous 2003 attacks, the Defense Intelligence Agency issued an internal report warning that Muslim soldiers pose a possible security threat, according to national security reporter Bill Gertz in his new book "Enemies."
It was also in 2003 that Yee was accused of spying for the enemy while serving as a Muslim chaplain at Gitmo. Yee graduated from West Point, site of the Army's new mosque.
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TRAIL OF TERROR
Christian woman facing fight for sons
Battle is over husband's desire to see them 'good Muslims or dead'
A Christian woman who once served as an FBI informant on her husband's alleged support of terrorism now is seeking divorce from the self-described radical Muslim who told her he would be proud if their two teen sons blew themselves up for Allah.
But she's finding herself on her own – completely – after a judge allowed her lawyer to withdraw, refused to allow an interested lawyer from appearing in her court, and then refused to allow time for any other replacement to be found before today's trial.
At stake are Rosine Collin Ghawji's sons, whose futures have been defined by her husband as being "good Muslims" or dead, she said.
The situation is developing in the case in which Mrs. Ghawji is seeking not only her freedom from her husband, Maher Ghawji, but also to protect her sons Louis and Takek from any violent Islamic plans their father may have for them.
Joe Kaufman, who has run an anti-terrorism organization for
several years, noted that both of the Ghawji sons have, in e-mails and
other communications, told friends their father was planning to take
them to Syria against their will, and one noted that his grandfather
has promised to beat him up when he arrived there.
Mrs. Ghawji's local lawyer was given permission by a Memphis, Tenn., judge on Dec. 19 to withdraw from the case, another lawyer willing to represent her – Larry Klayman -- was denied permission to enter the case, and the court ruled that the trial date – today – would not be delayed.
Klayman, who'd been contacted about the case a few months earlier, told WND that the facts read "like a John Grisham novel." Only this case is real life, with the FBI holding ex parte meetings with the judge, the federal agency "wiring" her to record and report on her husband, her husband allegedly threatening the children that they would be better off dead than Christian, and allegations of extramarital affairs.
And Mrs. Ghawji, if her allegations are correct, is up against more than just a judicial system and a divorce trial; but against some of the most radical factions in the world today, including the adherents of blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, now serving a life sentence in the SuperMax prison in Colorado on accusations he helped in the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings in New York.
The couple married in 1986, and she said she noticed her husband's unusual activities almost from the beginning. She said between 1987 and 1992 she often waited in the women's room of a mosque for hours while her husband was meeting with Rahman, and later the FBI visited her and asked about some of her husband's acquaintances, including a man the FBI described as being on a "terrorist watch list" who had rented an apartment from her husband.
She said it appeared about that time that her husband's brother, Haitham Ghawji, started appearing more often in their lives.
She said a letter from Haitham justified killing non-Muslims and encouraged Maher to join Jihad, and when Haitham was visiting their home, where the family lived in Memphis, in 1996, he wanted to watch the news one evening.
When the report aired about the attack at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in which 19 American military personnel died, he said, "We got them! The Americans … we got them. They think they are going to rule the world, but they do not know what it is to have war on their own soil, but pretty soon they will," she reported.
The next year when the family obtained a home computer, she started watching the communications through it, and eventually talked with the FBI. They asked her to continue monitoring those, and forward to them e-mails, telephone numbers and the like.
She said on Sept. 11, 2001, a few hours before the terrorism attacks, her husband's brother sent an e-mail announcing some of his friends were coming to the U.S., and they should be made to feel welcome.
When, at a dinner party, a guest remarked how difficult it was to bring items on airplanes because of the new security measures, her husband responded: "Don't worry. We will find another way to get them."
A short time later, he erupted in rage because she had been teaching French to a little Russian Jewish boy in their home. At that point he threatened to kill her with a poison other doctors wouldn't detect and announced he was Wahhabi Muslim, whose beliefs include violence against non-Muslims.
It was at that point an FBI agent convinced her to wear a recording device and monitor her husband's financial dealings, which included donations to a front group accused of raising money for Hamas, she said.
It was also then that he cut off financial support for his family and threatened to take the children to Syria, so she sought a restraining order. But a judge, Donna Fields, ordered the boys to spend every other Sunday with their father even though they pleaded not to.
FBI agent Jim Raddatz told her he suspected her husband of leading a double life – as a physician but also as terrorist financier with connections to a Florida organization that he was unwilling to discuss.
But then he also told her her husband had contacted the FBI and they were upset with him because he hadn't provided them with some information.
Ghawji also staged a campaign of rhetoric, condemning the U.S., Jews and Israel, and praising suicide bombers, and at one point looked her in the eyes and said if their children were not good Muslims, they would be better dead.
It terrified her, she said.
Her husband also had an affair, and possibly more, with a spokeswoman working for the Islamic Society of Central Florida, she said, when details of their actions were confirmed by a private investigator.
That organization, she said, tried to sponsor a fundraiser featuring Siraj Wahhaj, who is on the U.S. Attorney’s list of potential co-conspirators to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
She alleges her husband told her for as little as $1,000 he could hire a "hitman" to kill her, and expressed pride in being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Documents also show Haitham Ghawji has been linked to convicted felon Rafat Jamal Mawlawi, who also is connected to Enaam Arnaout. On April 4, 2005, the FBI conducted a raid on Mawlawi’s residence, and the Memphis Flyer reported authorities finding a hidden stash of loaded weapons and ammunition clips, $34,000 in cash, two pictures of Mawlawi shouldering a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a gruesome videotape of war casualties with Arabic text and more than 20 passports to Morocco, Syria, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries.
In a "Government Evidentiary Proffer Supporting the Admissibility of Co-Conspirator Statements," on page 67, the U.S. Government indicated that "H. GHAWJI" was mentioned.
No spokesman for her husband, the courts, or the FBI could be reached for a comment over the New Year's Day holiday.
But just recently as allegations of terrorism connections were developing – and being substantiated, the judge sealed the court records in the two-and-a-half-year-old case, scheduled the hearing, allowed the lawyer to leave the case and took the unusual step of ruling that Mrs. Ghawji would not be allowed to bring her case in any other jurisdiction.
Klayman said from the appearance of government participation in the case, with FBI agents meeting with the judge, he contacted FBI general counsel Patrick Kelley with questions about what was going on, because of issues that include equal protection, due process and others.
Kelley's response to Klayman was that he should "do what you
have to do," he said.
World Net Daily
January, 2007
Other
related articles from other sources:
Hillary's
team has questions about Obama's Muslim background
Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?
This is the question Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Sen. Barack Obama.
An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.
"He was a Muslim, but he concealed it," the source said. "His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign."
When contacted by Insight, Mr. Obama’s press secretary said he would consult with “his boss” and call back. He did not.
Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama's Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.
"The background investigation will provide major ammunition to his opponents," the source said. "The idea is to show Obama as deceptive."
In two best-selling autobiographies—"The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" and "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance"—Mr. Obama, born in Honolulu where his parents met, mentions but does not expand on his Muslim background, alluding only to his attendance at a "predominantly Muslim school."
The sources said the young Obama was given the name Hussein by his Muslim father, which the Illinois Democrat rarely uses in public.
His father was black and came from Kenya. Mr. Obama’s mother, the daughter of a farmer, came from Wichita, Kansas. Mr. Obama's parents divorced when he was two years old. His father returned to Kenya.
Later, Mr. Obama's mother married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Mr. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.
The sources said the background check concerned Mr. Obama's years in Jakarta. In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a Madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim. Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that today most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.
Although the background check has not confirmed that the specific Madrassa Mr. Obama attended was espousing Wahhabism, the sources said his Democratic opponents believe this to be the case—and are seeking to prove it. The sources said the opponents are searching for evidence that Mr. Obama is still a Muslim or has ties to Islam.
Mr. Obama attends services at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago’s South Side. However, he is not known to be a regular parishioner.
"Obama's education began a life-long relationship with Islam as a faith and Muslims as a community," the source said. "This has been a relationship that contains numerous question marks."
The sources said Mr. Obama spent at least four years in a Muslim school in Indonesia. They said when Mr. Obama was 10, his mother and her second husband separated. She and her son returned to Hawaii.
"Then the official biography begins," the source said. "Obama never returned to Kenya to see relatives or family until it became politically expedient."
In both of his autobiographies, Mr. Obama characterizes himself as a Christian—although he describes his upbringing as mostly secular.
In “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama says, "I
was not raised in a religious household." He describes his mother as
secular, but says she had copies of the Bible, the Koran and the
Bhagavad Gita in their home.
Mr. Obama says his father was "raised a Muslim,
but by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist...." Mr.
Obama also describes his father as largely absent from his life. He
says his Indonesian stepfather was "skeptical" about religion and "saw
religion as not particularly useful in the practical business of making
one's way in the world ...."
In the book, Mr. Obama briefly addresses his education in Indonesia. "During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables."
Mr. Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School; he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He later settled in Chicago, joined a law firm and began attending and helping local churches.
Mr. Obama is married to Michelle Robinson and they have two daughters, Malia and Sasha. In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois state Senate. Eight years later, he became a U.S. senator from Illinois.
The sources said Ms. Clinton regards Mr. Obama as her most formidable opponent and the biggest obstacle to the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. They said Ms. Clinton has been angered by Mr. Obama's efforts to tap her supporters for donations.
In late 2006, when the Illinois senator
demonstrated his intention to run for president, the Clinton campaign
ordered a background check on Mr. Obama, the sources said. Earlier this
week, Mr. Obama established an exploratory committee, the first step
toward a formal race.
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Orthodox
priest was kidnapped and beheaded
MOSUL, Iraq Relatives
of an Orthodox priest who was kidnapped and found beheaded three days
later said Thursday that his captors had demanded his church condemn
the pope's recent comments about Islam and pay a US$350,000 (€280,000)
ransom.
More than 500 people attended a memorial service Thursday for father
Amer Iskender in the northern city of Mosul after his decapitated body
was found Wednesday evening in an industrial area of the city.
Iskender was a priest at the St. Ephrem Orthodox church in Mosul.
"He was a good man and we all shed tears for him," said Eman Saaur, a
45-year-old schoolteacher who said she attended Iskender's church
regularly. "He was a man of peace."
Relatives, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal,
said the unidentified group that seized Iskender on Sunday had demanded
a ransom and that his church condemn a statement made by Pope Benedict
XVI last month that ignited a wave anger throughout the Muslim world.
In a speech at a German university the pope quoted a medieval text that
characterized some of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and
inhuman," declaring Islam was a religion spread by the sword.
Before Iskender was kidnapped, his relatives said, the church already
had put up signs condemning the statement and calling for good
relations between Christians and Muslims. The message was posted again,
they said, after the priest's kidnappers made their demand.
"It was a tragedy," said Hazim Shaaiya, 60, who had come to the
memorial service to pay respects. "Father Amer Iskender was a peaceful,
kind religious man."
Relatives said the priest's oldest son had been in contact with the
kidnappers on mobile telephones. He negotiated the ransom payment down
to US$40,000 (€32,000) and had agreed to pay, but contact abruptly
ceased Tuesday night.
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