Before I head off with my family to the legendary Jersey Shore for a few days of R n' R, I wanted to check in one last time and give everyone an update on two stories I've been following closely here this week. First, last weekend's ISNA conference in Washington, D.C. I explored Pastor Rick Warren's participation in the conference here and here.
I've also learned that Obama White House official Valerie Jarrett made a speech at the event, and that several branches of the U.S. government had booths set up there as well. As for the actual content of the conference? Well, here is a sampling from the Investigative Project on Terrorism: .
During the 2009 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention, Imam Warith Deen Umar spoke about his books, Jews for Salaam: The Straight Path to Global Peace, and Judaiology. Umar, the former head of New York prisons' Muslim chaplain program, repeatedly described Jewish conspiracies to control the world, as he does in this excerpt.
Transcript:
"You need to know that Obama, the first man that Obama picked when we were so happy that he was the President, he picked an Israeli - Rahm Emanuel - his number one man. His number two man - [David} Axelrod - another Israeli person. Why do this small number of people have control of the world?
You need to go back into your history and find out about France and Germany and England and America got together and offered the Israelites, who became the Israelites, they offered them Ghana, the plains of Ghana. Why don't you take Ghana since we beat you down so badly? That's what the Holocaust was all about. You need to read my chapter on the Holocaust and the anti-Holocaust movement. There's some people in the world says no Holocaust even happened. Some of their leaders say no Holocaust even happened. Well it did happen. These people were punished. They were punished for a reason because they were serially disobedient to Allah.
I see. The Jews control the world and had the Holocaust coming to them. Nice. Umar, who was fired from his job as head of New York's prison chaplains for, among other things, praising the 9/11 hijackers, "also called for "more jihad" during his talk at ISNA. Another genius on that same ISNA "author's panel" stated that the terror group Hezbollah should remain armed. These are the type of anti-Semitic ideologues that ISNA has a long history of embracing. Considering this, why would ISNA then be embraced by the likes of Rick Warren and the Obama administration? I'd say they have some 'splainin to do.
As for the Al-Qaeda linked cell that was recently broken up in Egypt, more details are emerging from the Egyptian Interior Ministry. Here's Haaretz on the arrests:
Egyptian authorities have arrested 25 militants in a Palestinian-led terror cell on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil pipelines and ships crossing the Suez Canal, Egypt's Interior Ministry said Thursday.
The ministry said the new cell is headed by a Palestinian and includes 24 Egyptians, mostly engineers and technicians, and it had contacts with militants in the Gaza Strip as well.
"They believe in takfiri and jihadi thought," the statement said, referring to the radical Sunni Muslim ideology espoused by militant groups like Al-Qaida.
The group planned to use explosives rigged with mobile phone-activated detonators against shipping in the busy Suez Canal, and learned about explosives from Al-Qaida militants on jihadi Web sites, said the statement. The Jerusalem Post has more here.