Islamic media has reported on a newly-emerging organization whose leaders are tied to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and which is designed to help elect Muslims to local governments in the Chicago area. According to an OnIslam report:
07 January 2013 CAIRO – Reclaiming their political rights, an increasing number of American Muslims is running for local elections, creating a new generation of future leaders within the Chicago area Muslim community. ‘I think (Muslims) are awakening because we made this our home, so we need to get involved,’ Nazneen Hashmi, who is running for one of three Hanover Township trustee seats, told the Daily Herald. Engaging in the political live as early as in the 1980s, Hashmi, a single mother with two children in college, decided it was time to give back to her community of Streamwood. An information technology professional, Hashmi was appointed to the village’s Community Relations Commission where she worked to promote diversity and organized a forum on marriages around the world. Hashmi is among several Muslim candidates running for elected office in the suburbs this spring who have caught the eye of the group Project Mobilize. The project aims at fostering a greater civic involvement and helps the political campaigns of first-time candidates through training, networking, fundraising and providing resources to reach target demographic. ‘We wanted to be the vehicle to help those individuals gain leadership skills,’ group co-founder Reema Ahmad said. ‘Project M is a tool that they can wield. We do not have any political agenda beyond helping communities that are politically marginalized have a voice.’ Working previously with the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago, Ahmad began to recognize the potential for growing future leaders within the Chicago area Muslim community. ‘It was time for the Muslim community to kind of take the next step and take ownership of the political process and run ourselves for political office,’ she said. ‘That was the motivation for starting Project Mobilize, which was founded in May 2010. Our goal was to build our leadership from the bottom up.
Read the rest here.
In November, a post reported on another one of the innumerable front groups of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, this one calling itself the Muslim American Citizens Coalition and Public Affairs Council (MACCPAC).
According to its website, the following individuals are members of the board of Project Mobilize and are known to have ties to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood:
- Safaa Zarzour (Secretary-General of the Islamic Society of North America who has extensive ties to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood)
- M. Yaser Tabbara (former Executive Director of Council on American Islamic Relations Chicago chapter)
- Oussama Jammal (Vice President of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, known to have been a center for terrorism fundraising)
In addition, the online c.v. for Reema Ahmed indicates that she did more than “work with” the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). She was in fact the Government Affairs Coordinator for the Chicago chapter. In addition, she is currently a director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee where Salah Sarsour serves as the Religious Chair as well as being the registered agent for the Wisconsin chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS), a part of the US Muslim Brotherhood closely tied to the Egyptian organization. The Sarsour family in Milwaukee is known to have many ties to the Hamas infrastructure in the US.
Her c.v also indicates that she is a Fellow at the American Muslim Civic Leadership (AMCLI) Institute which serves as home for Project M. According to its website, the AMCLI is:
…housed at the University of Southern California’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC), and works in partnership with the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at Georgetown University.
In 2005, Saudi prince Alaweed bin Talal, a financial supporter of the global Muslim Brotherhood, donated $20 million to the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown which is headed by Dr. John Esposito who has espoused views consistent with Brotherhood doctrine and during the 1990’s was known for his claims that Islamic fundamentalism was, in fact, democratic and posed no threat to the U.S. Dr. Esposito has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations including having served on the advisory board of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in the U.K. headed by Azzam Tamimi, a leader in the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood and often described as a Hamas spokesman. Dr. Esposito has also served with global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi on the Steering Committee of the Circle of Tradition and Progress and enjoyed a close relationship with the United Association For Studies and Research (USAR), part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and part of the Hamas support infrastructure. The AMCLI website indicates that the organization is funded by a group of liberal foundations that includes the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation (George Soros), and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Also serving as an AMCLI Fellow was Department of Homeland Security Adviser Mohamed Elibiary who has numerous ties to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
Documents released in the Holy Land Trial have revealed that the founders and current leaders of CAIR were part of the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood and identified the organization itself as being part of the US. Muslim Brotherhood. A recent post discussed an interview with the Deputy leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in which he confirms a relationship between his organization and CAIR. Investigative research posted on GMBDW determined that CAIR had origins in the U.S. Hamas infrastructure and CAIR and its leaders have a long history of defending almost all individuals accused of terrorism by the US. government, frequently calling such prosecutions a “war on Islam.” In 2009, a US federal judge ruled “The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas.”