The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced that one of the two featured speakers at its 15th annual banquet will be a controversial Imam known as Siraj Wahajj (aka Siraj Wahaj). A university website provides concise biography of Wahaj detailing his involvement with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood :
Wahaj is a well-known African-American Muslim speaker in North America , and a supporter of Islamic causes in America . He’s currently the Imam (religious congregation leader) of the Masjid Al-Taqwa Mosque. Born and raised in New York as Jeffrey Kearse, he became a Sunday school teacher as a teenager, then later went to New York University (NYU) where he studied Math Education. In 1969, he converted to Islam. He changed his name to Siraj Wahaj, which means “Bright Light” in Arabic, and was chosen to receive Imam training at the Ummul Qura university of Mecca in 1978. In addition, he also taught Islamic Studies at Howard University. Siraj has been vice president of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) since 1997 and has served on the Majlis Ash-Shura, a consultative council of Islamic scholars, since 1987. He is also a member of the board of advisors for the American Muslim Council. He has appeared on several national television talk shows and interviews in America and was the first person to give an Islamic invocation to the United States Congress. He led his Brooklyn community in an anti-drug patrol in Brooklyn, New York, which was a success and put a dent in the drug trade in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and received praise from the New York Police Department for his work.
Omitted from this biography is that Wahaj was a character witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called “blind-sheikh” convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and was also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Critics also accuse Wahaj of anti-American speech such as calling for replacing the American government with an Islamic caliphate and warning that America will crumble unless it accepts Islam. Wahaj is a frequent speaker at events sponsored by US. Muslim Brotherhood organizations.
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 as well as identifying the organization itself as being part of the U.S. 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 had determined that CAIR had it origins in the U.S. Hamas infrastructure and is an integral part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood with a long history of support for fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. As discussed in previous posts, It appears that the FBI has recently ended its long-standing relationship with CAIR.
Earlier, the CAIR web site featured Obama administration faith advisor Dalia Mogahed as one of its two speakers but her name was replaced recently by Mr. Wahaj. Prior posts have detailed Ms. Mogahed’s ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood. The second speaker schedule for the CAIR banquet is the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Prior posts have discussed the Reverend Jackson’s appearances at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and at an event sponsored by the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), both organizations tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood.