American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

by Steven Emerson

  On October 28, 2000, pro-Palestinian protesters marched from Freedom Plaza to Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C., singing “Victory comes from Allah and Hizballah is our model” and “Oh dear Nasrallah, we are allied with you in liberation.” On arriving at Lafayette Park, a rally commenced that included Abdulrahman Alamoudi, former AMC executive director and now secretary of AMC’s Board of Directors. Alamoudi addressed the cheering crowd:

  “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. Anybody supports Hamas here? [Crowd cheers responsively.] Anybody is a supporter of Hamas here? [Crowd repeats cheer.] Anybody is a supporter of Hamas here? [Crowd cheers even louder.] Hear that, Bill Clinton? We are ALL supporters of Hamas. Allahu akbar! [Crowd cheers.] I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hizballah…anybody supports Hizballah here? [Crowd cheers responsively.]”52

  At the end of January 2001 in Beirut, the same Abdulrahman Alamoudi attended and participated in what the U.S. State Department called a terrorist conference with a “destructive agenda.”53 The conference brought together leaders of Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, and Osama bin Laden’s organization. The communiqué issued at the end of the conference stated, “The only decisive option to achieve this strategy [the destruction of Israel] is the option of Jihad in all its forms and resistance….” The communiqué also called for a boycott of American products (in addition to Israeli products): “The American products are exactly like the Israeli products. America today is a second Israel.”54

  Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)

  Formally established in 1971, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is composed primarily of Muslim supporters of South Asian descent. It is allied with the militant fundamentalist movement of Jamaat-e-Islamiya in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

  ICNA openly supports militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations, praises terrorist attacks, issues incendiary attacks on Western values and policies, and supports the imposition of the shar‘ia (Islamic code of law). It has created several nonprofit charitable organizations that collect tax-deductible contributions for militant Islamic causes. ICNA’s views are disseminated through regular conferences and a monthly publication called The Message.

  In March of 1996, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), chairman of the Foreign Operations subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, stated that “One of the groups with Hamas ties is the Dallas-based Islamic Association for Palestine in North America, which, in turn, apparently is allied with the Islamic Circle of North America in New York.”

  According to an ICNA brochure, da‘wa (proselytizing) is an integral function of the organization: “ICNA invites both Muslims and non-Muslims to understand Islam (the only way of life prescribed by Allah) as a complete code of life and to enter into its fold totally.”55 Objective 5 in the brochure states ICNA’s pledge “to make every effort to contact, cooperate with, and coordinate the Islamic movements outside North America.”56

  In 1995, ICNA’s president made the following comments on the topic of jihad at a conference in Columbus, Ohio: “Sometimes, especially nowadays, I hear some Muslims defining jihad, and they will talk and talk and talk about everything in jihad, but they’ll be very careful that there is nothing of qital [battle, fight, combat] mentioned in there. Well, at least you should not be disrespectful to the people you’re talking to. They can pick up a Koran of any translation, and see whatever is there in an instant. And a strong part of Islam is qital, and all nations and all people have a legitimate use of violence and war. And in Islam we came up with the first international law, that when you have qital, then you have ‘culture of qital.’ There’s a method, there’s a decision-making body. It’s not that a person gets angry and he starts his own qital. But when you present jihad you have to present it in its entirety.”57

  At a 1989 Kansas City conference sponsored by the Islamic Association for Palestine, Sayid Thaqib, an ICNA representative, came to express the organization’s solidarity with Hamas. At one point Thaqib told the gathering: “We say to the enemies of Islam, wherever they may be, that their days are limited, and they will have no refuge after we show them true Islam, and there is no peace without Islam. And this message we send to all Muslims, and especially the mujahideen in Palestine, and if we are not with you in our bodies, then we are with you in our in our hearts, through our material and activist support, praised be Allah. And we assert to you that the Dawn of Islam is coming in Palestine, and we will see it in sha Ullah in Palestine, and all the Islamic countries, and Allah bless them with true Islam in sha Ullah.”58

  From July 6 to 8, 2001, in Cleveland, Ohio, ICNA held its 26th annual convention under the title “Islam for Peace and Justice: Palestine, Kashmir, and Imam Jamil.” As part of a fundraising dinner, ICNA member Munir el-Kassem, from Canada, urged the organization’s supporters to make a donation of $10,000 each towards ICNA because “We need to accumulate enough with actions to deserve to go home safely. And we know what I mean by home, not the home of this dunya (this world), but the home that we all yearn for: the home of al-Akhira (the next world). If you really want to have that you should do jihad with your wealth.”

  The previous year’s ICNA convention was held from June 30 to July 2, 2000, in Baltimore, and featured the leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islamiya, Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad. The Jamaat-e-Islamiya is the most prominent radical Islamic movement in Pakistan and its members openly support the Taliban government and learn the ways of jihad. At the conference, Ameer Ahmad alleged that the principal duty of American Muslims is to unite in a single government with Muslims all over the world: “Now, this is the duty of the American Muslims, the Muslims living here, they have got a message. The Muslims everywhere are with a message…. We have got a universal message and we are a universal government.”59

  The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)

  The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) was founded in 1988 as a nonprofit social welfare organization with a 501(c)(4) tax status. MPAC calls itself a “public service agency working for the civil rights of American Muslims, for the integration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims and their representatives.”60 While these objectives reflect magnanimous intentions, MPAC’s many rallies and sponsored events reveal implicit support of terrorist activities.

  On October 28, 2000, MPAC was a cosponsor of a rally in Washington, D.C. in support of the recent spate of violence known as the Al-Aqsa intifada between the Palestinians and the Israelis. (This was the rally at which the American Muslim Council’s Abdulrahman Alamoudi exhorted the crowd to voice their support for the Hamas and Hizballah terrorist organizations.) During these exhortations, MPAC’s Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations. Dr. Maher Hathout, MPAC’s Senior Advisor, also participated in this rally. Later, in an article in The American Muslim, rather than condemning the rally for its extremist and militant views, Hathout heralded the rally as a marker of a “new era”: “The rally in Washington, D.C. was the embodiment of this new phase of activism in the United States…. [T]he speakers and the slogans were relevant and pertinent to the American seen [sic]…It was then not a normal rally…it transcended the barriers and limitations of a specific local struggle…. It is a new era…”61

  Maher Hathout condemned the U.S. strike against Afghanistan in retaliation for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda destruction of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998: “Our country is committing acts of terrorism according to the definition. What we did is illegal, immoral, inhuman, unacceptable, stupid and un-American.”62

  A few weeks earlier, on October 6, MPAC’s Political Advisor Mahdi Bray coordinated and led a rally where approximately 2,000 people congregated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., to “express their outrage over that country’s [Israel’s] aggression against Palestinian civilians and holy sites.”63 Hate
speeches and exhortations to violence against Jews were heard throughout the rally. “With our blood and soul we will liberate Palestine” was frequently shouted by speakers and the crowd. At one point during the rally, Mahdi Bray played the tambourine as one of the speakers sang, while the crowd repeated: “Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is calling us, let’s all go into jihad, and throw stones at the face of the Jews [sic].”

  On December 22, 2000, MPAC’s Mahdi Bray organized a rally in Lafayette Park outside the White House to celebrate a “Worldwide Day for Jerusalem.”64 In Arabic, the crowd responsively chanted with the emcee, “Khaybar, Khaybar oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad is coming for you!” Posters calling for “Death to Israel” and equating the Star of David with the Nazi swastika were openly displayed and anti-Semitic literature calling for the destruction of the Jews and Israel was distributed. Members of the crowd burned the Israeli flag while marching from the White House to the State Department.

  Bray spoke at this rally, along with Imam Mohammed al-Asi, former director of the Islamic Education Center in Potomac, Maryland, who exhorted the crowd to violence in the name of Islam. Al-Asi said: Now, all our khatibs (speakers), our imams, our public speakers, should be concentrating on militarizing the Muslim public. This is not a time to make a speaking issue out of this…. Muslims have to familiarize themselves with every means possible…. Rhetoric is not going to liberate Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa. Only carrying arms will do this task. And it’s not going to be someone else who is going to carry arms for you and for me. It is you and me who are going to have to carry these arms.65

  MPAC’s response to a bombing in Jerusalem that killed fifteen, including six children, was telling. On August 9, 2001, a suicide bomber entered a pizza parlor and detonated a bomb that was strapped to his body. A press release by MPAC responded: “[The Jerusalem bombing] is the expected bitter result of the reckless policy of Israeli assassination that did not spare children and political figures…. MPAC holds Israel responsible for this pattern of violence.”66

  MPAC also justified Hizballah’s 1983 bombing of the American Marine barracks in Beirut as a “military operation” rather than a terrorist attack: “Hezbollah organized the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 killing 241 marines, the largest number of American troops killed in a single operation since the end of the Vietnam war. Yet this attack, for all the pain it caused, was not in a strict sense, a terrorist operation. It was a military operation, producing no civilian casualties—exactly the kind of attack that Americans might have lauded had it been directed against Washington’s enemies.”67

  In November 1999 Salaam al-Marayati, Executive Director and one of the Founders of MPAC, appeared on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” He responded to accusations that he supports Hizballah. Rather than condemning the terrorist organization, he explained: “If the Lebanese people are resisting Israeli intransigence on Lebanese soil, then that is the right of resistance and they have the right to target Israeli soldiers in this conflict. That is not terrorism. That is a legitimate resistance. That could be called liberation movement, that could be called anything, but it’s not terrorism.”68

  The American Muslim Alliance (AMA)

  The American Muslim Alliance (AMA) was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in California in 1994.69 According to its articles of incorporation, the AMA was established to raise the political awareness of Muslims in America. Since its establishment the AMA has operated on the state and national levels as a political action committee.

  AMA leaders often appear with individuals and institutions that support terrorist organizations. AMA’s president, Agha Saeed, has appeared at lectures and events sponsored by Hamas associated organizations and attended by Hamas supporters. For example, in 1996, 1997, and 1999, Saeed was a guest speaker at the convention of the Islamic Association for Palestine (see Chapter 5). At the 1997 Islamic Association for Palestine Conference held in Chicago, Saeed spoke on several incendiary panels, including one entitled “Zionism: A Racist and Colonialist Ideology.”70 On this panel, Saeed was joined by Sami alArian (see Chapter 6).

  On June 16, 2000, the AMA’s Boston chapter held a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign. The AMA contributed $50,000 to the campaign. Shortly thereafter, the media began reporting that AMA supported Hamas, culminating in Clinton’s returning of all of AMA’s campaign contributions. Clinton disagreed with the positions of the AMA, stating, “I have repeatedly supported Israel.”71

  The AMA’s president, Agha Saeed, has openly supported armed resistance. At the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference held in Chicago, Illinois, on September 5, 1999, Agha Saeed sanctioned armed resistance against Israel: “United Nations has a resolution…which says…people in Palestine have the right to resist their oppression by using all means including armed resistance….”

  With twenty-five other groups, the AMA cosponsored a conference in May 1999 in Santa Clara, California, to promote the Islamic State of Palestine in place of the current State of Israel. One speaker, Hatem Bazian, argued, “in the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and the stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that’s in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.”

  The American Muslim Alliance distributed anti-Semitic materials during their Second Annual Conference, held in St. Louis, Missouri, in October of 1997. The organization provided Holocaust revisionist literature to participants. One such article, written by an AMA official, maintained that “the number of Jews killed by Hitler did not exceed one million.” Likewise, the article asserted that “there were no execution gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek.” In a related vein, the AMA’s May-June 2000 Newsletter stated, “Today there are, at most, 5.5 million Jews in the United States. That’s just 2 percent of the 275 million residents of the United States. However, by using Holocaust remembrance and support to Israel as catalysts, U.S. Zionists have turned this tiny minority into America’s single most influential ethnic lobby, by far!”

  On May 24, 1998, the AMA and CAIR sponsored an incendiary rally at Brooklyn College in New York that featured the radical Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghuneim. Ghuneim argued that “he who equips a warrior of jihad is like the one who makes jihad himself.” Ghuneim also led the gathering in a song that included the lyrics, “No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.”

  The AMA’s official mission is to raise public awareness of the religion of Islam and its adherents. Yet its unofficial agenda is clear. Sadly, Islamist extremism has crept into yet another institution of mainstream Muslim society.

  Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)

  The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), located in Plainfield, Indiana, and founded in 1981, is the largest Muslim organization in the United States. It serves as an umbrella group for hundreds of Islamic organizations in North America, some of which promote the Islamic fundamentalist doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ISNA publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, which often champions militant Islamist doctrine, and it convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred. ISNA is also affiliated with the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a nonprofit organization that finances mosques, schools, and community centers across the nation, provides legal advice to Muslim organizations, and advises the Amana Mutual Fund, which invests based on Islamic principles.72

  The current secretary-general of ISNA is Sayyid Muhammad Syeed. According to the 1988 Articles of Incorporation of Human Concern International, Syeed was one of the original members of that organization’s board of directors. One of the primary projects of Human Concern International was to raise funds for the mujahideen in Afghanistan (as well as for Muslims in Africa and Lebanon and for Palestinians in Jordan).73
/>
  The president of the Board of Directors of ISNA until November 2001 was Muzammil Siddiqui, who also serves as the president of the Islamic Society of Orange County in California. Siddiqui has made statements supporting the violent ideology of radical Islam and shunning the West. In glorifying the jihad in Afghanistan and its spread to other places in the world, Siddiqui wrote, “I can see there is already some impact of jihad in Afghanistan, in the intifadah movement in Palestine…insha’ allah, you will see, in a few years, we will be celebrating, insha’ allah, the coming victory of Islam in Palestine…. We will be celebrating, insha’ allah, the coming of Jerusalem and the whole land of Palestine, insha’ allah, and the establishment of the Islamic state throughout that area.74

  Furthermore, Siddiqui has argued that the “root cause of militant outbreaks in most Muslim countries” is the United States’ support of authoritarian regimes.75 He has also claimed that Islam does not allow a Muslim to fight for non-Muslim causes, such as fighting in the United States Armed Forces. He states, “Islam will not allow a Muslim to be drafted by non-Muslims to defend concepts, ideologies and values other than those of Islam….”76

  More recently, Siddiqui appeared at a rally in Washington, D.C., where he made statements supporting the outbreak of violence by the Palestinians against the Israelis. Siddiqui’s comments contained a decidedly anti-American hue:

  The U.S.A. is directly and indirectly responsible for the plight of the Palestinian people. Our government is responsible for plenty of the injustice that is going on there. The U.S. is the greatest supporter of Israel—economically, militarily, and politically…. We want to awaken the conscience of America. America has to learn that. Because if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come. Please! Please all Americans, do you remember that, that Allah is watching everyone. God is watching everyone. If you continue doing injustice, and tolerating injustice, the wrath of God will come.77