Just last week we posted a report titled led “US Media Fails Again” and only several days later, another epic media failure has come to our attention. In this case, Public Radio International provides a platform for the President of a Wisconsin mosque with questionable ties to complain about the treatment of Muslims. According to the report:
April 06, 2016 The Wisconsin primary is over. But in this largely Christian Midwestern state — sometimes known for its civility — some residents are left to deal with an aftermath of animosity stirred by an unusually bitter political season.
You have one group of candidates that is saying you need to work with Muslims, Muslims are a part of this country,’ says Ahmed Quereshi, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
‘And then we have another group of candidates who support a ban on Muslims,’ he says, ‘who appoint people who have been on the record comparing Islam and Muslims to Satanic forces and demonizing, and saying that Islam is not a religion. So it really has been, increasingly, a tale of two Americas at least in 2016 politics.’
Quereshi says he sometimes feels like he lives in two different places.
‘We are welcomed in some places with open arms and then you go to other places and you get dirty looks,’ he says.
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW is on record as opposing Islamophobia which we believe is a very real and pervasive phenomenon but the President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (ISM) may be deserving of the “dirty looks” he says he is receiving.
To begin with, as we first reported in May 2010, one of the board members of the ISM is Salah Sarsour, currently serving as the ISM Religious Chair, who is also 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. Salah Sarsour is also a board member of the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a Palestinian advocacy group with strong ties to both the US Muslim Brotherhood and to the Hamas support infrastructure in the US. According to a former FBI analyst, the extended Sarsour family in Milwaukee is also known to have many ties to the Hamas infrastructure in the US. Similar to the media failure in this article, the GMBDW reported in August 2012 that Linda Sarsour, a member of the same family, was cited in an article on the “New McCarthyism” in which she said she “denies having any contact with Hamas or other radical Muslim groups. Only last week, the left-leaning ThinkProgress website reported that Linda Sarsour was “spreading Bernie Sanders message in Wisconsin and pictured her speaking to the ISM.
Currently listed as the ISM Director of Religious Affairs is Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah who is also listed as the Executive Director of the Fiqh Council of North America, the theological body of the US Muslim Brotherhood. In 2003, local media in Florida reported on a Saudi hate preacher invited to speak in Florida by a group headed by Shah:
Some anti-hate groups are outraged that a Saudi cleric who called on God to “terminate” the Jews and urged Muslims to shun peace with Israel is the invited keynote speaker at an Islamic conference scheduled this month in Osceola County.
A newly formed group, the Universal Heritage Foundation, is sponsoring the conference and an appearance by Shaikh Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais. Foundation leaders say the conference could bring thousands of people to 31 acres on U.S. Highway 192 near Florida’s Turnpike, site of a former culinary school that most recently housed a homeless shelter.
Zulfiqar Ali Shah, chairman and chief executive officer of the foundation and former president of the Islamic Circle of North America, envisions a home base in Florida’s tourist corridor that would attract Islamic scholars and promote tolerance among religious groups. Some anti-hate groups, however, fear Shah may be inviting radicals to Central Florida who will stir up prejudice and divisiveness.
Yet another figure of note at the ISM is Wisconsin attorney Othman Atta, its Executive Director. In 2010, AMP reported that Mr. Atta was one of its featured speakers and a report by the Investigative Project says that he opposes the US terrorist designation of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other such groups.
Needless to say, none of the above information was mentioned by the Public Radio international article that allowed yet another figure tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood to portray himself as a victim of the very real hate experienced my ordinary US Muslims who are not affiliated with the Islamist networks of the US Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. As we noted last week when we reported on yet another US media failure:
US media is doing its customary incompetent job at doing any kind of due diligence when it comes to US Muslim Brotherhood groups. Last week, World Religion News reported on an organization known as Project Mobilize, describing it only as a “a political action nonprofit organization dedicated to the betterment of the Muslim American community. ” Despite the fact that the report goes on to cite the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), it fails to identify any of the connections of Project Mobilize to CAIR itself much less to the other Global Muslim Brotherhood organizations tied to the group
As we also noted in that post, it should be relatively uncontroversial to expect that groups such as Project Mobilize and the ISM receive at least the minimum of competent journalistic scrutiny given events in the world today, but the GMBDW is not hold its breath in this regard. Surely Public Radio International, had they done their due diligence on the subject, could have found a better spokesman for the valuable effort to fight anti-Muslim discrimination and hate.