On Saturday, April 3, the terrorist-linked Islamic Center Dar Al Hijrah in the Washington DC suburbs will hold their annual fundraising banquet.  The original flyer headlined  that seven elected officials were “invited”: former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, now Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Sen. James Webb (D-VA), Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, Fairfax Supervisor Penny Gross, and Virginia State Delegate Kaye Kory.   We thought that those elected officials would not want their names associated Dar Al-Hijrah, long-known as an al-Qaeda linked Islamic center, on which we had posted at Biggovernment.com on February 14.  So on February 17, we mailed and faxed a letter to each of the seven elected officials, alerting them to the invitation using their names, and asking them if they would remove their names as invitees.

Within a few days, Senator James Webb and State Delegate Kaye Kory’s names were removed from the invitation.

Their offices declined to comment, but the removal of the names did follow receipt of our faxes, letters, and phone calls.

The reasons the others should not legitimate the Dar Al-Hijrah fundraiser, we had written them, included the Islamic Center’s continued support for the Dar al-Hijrah imam in 2001, Anwar Al-Awlaki, the senior al-Qaeda recruiter for three 9/11 hijackers, imam and mentor to the accused 2009 Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 people, and online mentor to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.   We described several other Dar Al-Hijrah leaders linked to terrorism and supporting violent jihad against America, including the current imam who will host the April 3 event.

Yet –  after multiple letters, faxes, emails and phone calls alerting their offices to the invitation listing their names – as of Sunday, March 28, 2010, Congressmen Connolly and Moran, former Governor and current DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Bulova and Supervisor Penny Gross have all chosen to keep their names on the invitation. Governor Tim Kaine’s spokesman did comment that they had not received an invitation and would not attend, but declined to comment on whether they had asked for Kaine’s name to be removed from the invitation.

So, if these five officials DO attend the dinner they have helped publicize now for over a month, here’s some background on their jihadist host, the current Imam at Dar Al-Hijrah, Shaker Elsayed.  Taken word for word from the letters  they were mailed – and faxed – and then faxed again.

On February 17, we mailed this information on Imam Elsayed  to Rep. Gerry Connolly and the others:

“Mr. Elsayed, the current Imam and a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S., openly supports the terrorist organization Hamas, including their doctrine advocating the destruction of Israel.  In 2005, shortly after becoming Dar Al-Hijrah’s Imam, he preached that ‘Islam forbids you to give allegiance to those who kick you off your homeland, and to those who support those who kick you off your homeland…We do have license to respond with all force necessary to answer our attackers.’ ”

And on February 17, Congressman Jim Moran’s letter, like all the others, told him this info on Imam Elsayed

“According to video available online at the Investigative Project on Terrorism,  in 2002 at a conference sponsored by the Muslim American Society, Mr. Elsayed stated (translated from Arabic): ‘And about the subject unfairly named suicide bombers, homicide bombers, or murderers, or killers. Our answer to this issue is simple. To decide that this man is a martyr or not a martyr, it is a pure religious matter. Nobody who is not Muslim has any right to decide for us, we the Muslims, whose is a martyr or another. We as Muslims will decide that. It is in-house business.[...]‘ “

And the letter we sent – same day – to Former Governor Tim Kaine, now Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told him as well as the others about this quote from Imam Elsayed:

“The Islamic scholars said whenever there is an attack on an Islamic state or occupation, or the honor of the Muslims has been violated, the Jihad is a must for everyone, a child, a lady and a man. They have to make Jihad with every tool that they can get in their hand. Anything that they can get in their hand and if they don’t have anything in their hand then they can fight with their hand without weapons.”

These five elected officials’ names are still on the flyer. Only five days remain for them to tell the American public whether they support Imam Shaker Elsayed and his jihadist doctrines.

According to a February 5, 2007 statement from the Department of Justice, “Benkahla was convicted of making materially false statements both in his grand jury appearances in 2004, as well as to the FBI in 2004. These false statements included his denial of his involvement with an overseas jihad training camp in 1999, as well as his asserted lack of knowledge about individuals with whom he was in contact.”

If you want to fundraise for a jailed jihadist, Dar Al-Hijrah is definitely the $40-donation-for-a-halal-chicken-dinner venue of choice.  Dar Al-Hijrah’s  jihadist credentials are impeccable:

Dar Al-Hijra is the mosque where Anwar al-Awlaki was Imam  between January 2001 and April 2002.  Al-Awlaki (bio here and here) was the senior al-Qaeda recruiter and motivator for various terrorists, including three 9/11 hijackers, the accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.  Al-Awlaki may still be alive in Yemen, and after some concerns about his civil rights, reportedly the Obama administration now has him targeted as a terrorist.

And who can forget that earlier Dar Al-Hijra Imam from 1995-1999, Mohammed Al-Hanooti,  named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  In 1999, when he was still Imam at Dar Al-Hijra, he testified in support of Ihab M. Ali, who had refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the 1998 United States embassy bombings.   Al-Hanooti told the federal judge that Islamic law “gives him [Ihab M. Ali] the right to abstain from giving testimony in case it hurts him or it hurts any other Muslim.”

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Studies teacher – and Dar Al Hijra Islamic Camp Counselor -  Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of providing material support to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, and conspiracy to assassinate President Bush, now serving a life sentence.  Abu Ali was also valedictorian of his class at the Saudi Islamic Academy, the Saudi Embassy-backed 900-student school in the Washington, DC suburbs, that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has repeatedly urged the US State Department to shut down on the grounds that it teaches religious intolerance.

Or the Dar Al-Hijra Imam between August 2003 and May 2005, the memorable Sheikh Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, formerly a Muslim Brotherhood member and Shariah judge in the Sudan, and one of the founders of both the mosque and the Muslim American Society (MAS), who left the mosque to become the executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America.

That’s the same  Fiqh Council that on February 9, 2010 issued a legal opinion – a fatwa – against the use of full body scanners in airports for Muslims.  He’s also active in bringing Shariah law to America, as the head of the Islamic Judiciary Council of the Shari’ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA).

And we cannot neglect to mention the member of Dar Al-Hijrah’s Executive Committee, Abelhaleem Hasan Abdelraziq Ashqar, convicted in November 2007 of contempt and obstruction of justice for refusal to testify before a grand jury with regard to Hamas, and sentenced to 135 months in prison.   A major Hamas operative since at least 1988,  Ashqar was accused of opening bank accounts and maintaining U.S. records for Hamas.

Nor is Dar Al-Hijrah  just your average, friendly neighborhood mosque.  In fact, their original Constitution required their Board of Directors to  include  leaders of  Muslim Brotherhood front groups who would later be identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial: “the Current Secretary General of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Current President of Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), the Current General Manager of North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), and the Current President of Muslim American Society (MAS).”  In 2005, when the current Imam Shaker Elsayed became Imam, he amended the mosque’s constitution to give precedence to the Muslim American Society, and now the mosque Board is run by the “Current President of the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Current MAS DC Area Chapter President, the Executive Director of MAS National Office.”  Elsayed had been Secretary General of the Muslim American Society before becoming Dar Al Hijrah’s imam.  The Muslim American Society was founded in 1993 as the American chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was Imam Shaker Elsayed who sent the email invitation text for the February 13, 2010 fundraiser for Sabri Benkhala:

“Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:22:48 -0700
From: legaladmin@universal-justice.net
Subject: Mark Your Calendar (2/13/10): Dinner

Dear Friends of Justice,

Assalamu Alaikum. The Universal Justice Foundation is pleased to announce that it will be hosting a fundraising dinner to support Br. Sabri Benkahla by contributing to his legal fees. The event will feature Dr. Jamal Badawi from Canada, Imam Rodwaan Saleh from Texas, and Br. Sabri’s attorney John Sheldon, Esq. and will be held at Dar Al Hijrah IslamicCenter’s Main Courtyard. Tickets are only $40 and registration will be at 5:30. The program will begin promptly at 6:00 P.M., and dinner will be served early. Please arrange to purchase tickets as soon as possible because space is limited! You may buy tickets at our website www.universal-justice.net or from Sh. Shaker at Dar Al Hijrah. If neither option is convenient, please email us at legaladmin@universal-justice.net and we will arrange your ticket sale…

May Allah reward you greatly for your efforts in serving justice!

Sincerely,

Shaker Elsayed
Founder and Chairman, UJF

Shaker Elsayed, the current Imam, and founder and Chairman of that “United Justice Foundation” fundraising organization for convicted terrorists,  is a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S.  He stated in  a sermon at the Dar Al Hijrah in 2005, shortly after becoming Imam there and stacking the Board of Directors with Muslim American Society leaders,  that “Islam forbids you to give allegiance to those who kick you off your homeland, and to those who support those who kick you off your homeland…We do have license to respond with all force necessary to answer our attackers.”  And in the same sermon he stated, “The call to reform Islam is an alien call.”  He is also an outspoken supporter of Hamas and their objectives, including the destruction of Israel.

The Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hassan, attended Dar Al-Hijrah periodically when he lived in the Washington, DC area, up to 2009 when he was transferred to Texas, and his now infamous powerpoint presentation, “The Koranic Worldview as it Related to Muslims in the Military” is closely in line with the 2005 preaching of the current Dar Al-Hijrah Imam, Shaker Elsayed.    See for example slide 11 in that series: “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims”; the examples in slide 13; or the quote that appears to track exactly with Elsayed’s 2005 sermon, on slide 49:  “Fighting to establish an Islamic State, to please God even by force, is condoned by the Islam.”

Dar Al-Hijrah has been staffed by a series of Imams who  radicalize their members – the members don’t “self-radicalize,” as Major Hasan was said to do in the negligent report on the Fort Hood Shooting put out by the Pentagon.  The U.S. intelligence community missed the warning signals from Dar Al-Hijrah’s earlier Imam Anwar al-Awlaki; they should heed the warning signals from the current Imam, Shaker Elsayed.

More on this in days to come – including which invited elected officials could be coming to dinner at Dar Al-Hijrah in April, at their gala annual fundraiser…

But it doesn’t seem to early for the Imam that headed the Mosque in Virginia that Hasan and several of the 9/11 terrorists once attended. Anwar al-Awlaki, once the Imam of Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, has released a statement saying that Nidal Hasan “did the right thing” with his criminal rampage at Fort Hood. Anwar al-Awlaki is thought to be in Yemen having left the U.S. shortly after 9/11.

It is, of course, infuriating that our government refuses to see the obvious. In fact, this incident itself proves that even the Army is so afraid of being charged with political incorrectness that it allowed this jihadist Major to roil in his radical jihadism for some time without being opposed by his superiors.

This attitude of refusing to see the forest for the trees is best exemplified by Andrew Bast of Newsweek who thinks he’s got the real reason behind Major Nidal Hasan’s murderously criminal rampage at Fort Hood last Thursday. Could it be that Hasan was steadily radicalized and steeped in hateful Islamofascism? Could it be a jihad mindset that sent Hasan into that military clinic yelling Allahu Akbar as he shot at anyone that got in his way?

Nope. Ridiculously, it was a “military on the brink,” it was the “stress” an uncaring U.S. military is forcing upon its members that was at fault as far as Bast is concerned. This is his obtuse conclusion in Newsweek’s piece headlined, “Is Fort Hood a Harbinger? Nidal Malik Hasan May Be a Symptom of a Military on the Brink.”

Ominously, Bast begins with his worry that there could be more members of the military about to follow Hasan’s murderous example. Bast absurdly starts his piece with this: “What if Thursday’s atrocious slaughter at Fort Hood only signals that the worst is yet to come?” And why would it be a sing that “the worst is yet to come,” you might wonder? Why else but that all that “stress” the military is putting everyone under is about to cause the whole combined services to explode?

[Hasan's is a] killing spree that may momentarily remind us of a reality that most Americans can readily forget: soldiers and their families are living, and bending, under a harrowing and unrelenting stress that will not let up any time soon. And the U.S. military could well be reaching a breaking point as the president decides to send more troops into Afghanistan.

Once again we see a member of the Old Media entirely dismissing the role that radical Islam played in Hasan’s crimes. In fact, Bast seems to suffer the fantasy that at any minute hoards of “stressed” soldiers will soon be roaming military bases across the world indiscriminately shooting at their fellows. One wonders if Bast thinks that they will all be yelling Allahu Akbar in their “stress” as Hasan did? Likely he doesn’t because he doesn’t think Islam had any role in this incident.

Saying that it is “hard to draw too many conclusions” about Hasan’s rampage, Bast then incongruously goes on to ascribe his actions to “stress” instead of radical Islam and that this stress is hampering our armed forces.

… it comes at a time when the stress of combat has affected so many soldiers individually that it makes it increasingly difficult for the military as a whole to deploy for wars abroad.

Bast then goes on to ascribe motivations to Base Commander Cone’s actions in the aftermath of the attack that make no logical sense at all.

In an abrupt news conference, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the top commander at Fort Hood, said in response to the shooting that authorities would “increase the security presence” on the military base. On the surface, it seemed like a logical enough plan. But it makes one wonder how much any kind of lockdown will either get at the root causes of soldier stresses or better prepare them for more battle.

General Cone’s lock down of Fort Hood, Mr. Bast, had nothing at all to do with getting “at the root” of stress. It was a security effort meant to get a handle on that particular incident. Why Bast made the illogical jump from a decision made to quell a crisis to the military’s overall efforts to deal with soldier stress is anyone’s guess.

Naturally, radical Islam couldn’t possibly be at fault here Bast obviously thinks. “Hasan’s perspective is unknown,” the Newsweek hack says. Oh? Yelling “Allahu Akbar” during his criminal actions, his past conversations expressing Islamic jihadism, and his radical Islamic Internet postings aren’t any indication of Hasan’s “perspective,” Mr. Bast? Couldn’t the fact that Hasan attended the same radical mosque that the 9/11 hijackers attended serve as even a tiny hint of his “perspective,” Mr. Bast?

Then Bast goes on to compare soldier suicide rates with Hasan’s crimes as if they are comparable.

Listen, no one denies that concern for the mental health of our soldiers is an important issue nor that stress really is rising in the services today. No one will deny that these issues should be carefully investigated and that solutions to these issues are supremely important to our uniformed personnel. No one dismisses the oft times devastating effects of posttraumatic stress disorder on our troops and no one wants to just sweep these problems under the proverbial rug.

But neither “stress” nor any assumptions of posttraumatic stress disorder have any bearing on what this murderous Muslim did at Fort Hood. It is plain that radical Islam served as Hasan’s chief motivation and for the Old Media to wish this fact away is criminally negligent on its part.

Of course, the real reason that Bast grafted this “stress” issue onto Hasan’s criminal actions is clear by his last paragraph. It is obvious that Bast’s chief aim here is to discredit the military and try to force the nation to accept a loss in Afghanistan as his ilk did at the end of the Vietnam Conflict. His only goal is to undermine the troops and lead to the end of a war of which he obviously disapproves.

The U.S. is drawing down troops in Iraq at a quick clip, but Gen. Stanley McChrystal has requested tens of thousands more to fight in Afghanistan. Though President Obama has made no decision about the way forward, some suggest that as many 80,000 more could be sent in as reinforcements. That would put nearly 150,000 American soldiers in country for at least the foreseeable future, pushing a thumb down on an already stressed-out military. Of course, the vast majority of those under that stress, no matter how brutal, will not pick up a gun and shoot indiscriminately, like Hasan did. But the situation is bad, and getting much worse. From there, it isn’t much of a leap to argue that to further tax our military would do as much as anything to guarantee that the homegrown terror on display today could well repeat itself in the future.

Bast’s real message is that it’s all “bad and getting much worse,” that the U.S. military is too “stressed-out” to be effective. It is plan that he thinks we need to end the efforts in Afghanistan and bring all our troops home now. Sadly, Bast is not above illegitimately using this Hasan incident to push his political ends, either. It’s all just another unprincipled effort by a member of the Old Media to push the anti-war meme.