AFDI Decries Inflammatory Victimhood Posturing by Hamas-Linked Groups In Wake of Boston Jihad

NEW YORK, April 24, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), a foremost civil rights and human rights advocacy organization, today decried the wave of inflammatory victimhood posturing by Islamic supremacist groups such as the Hamas-linked groups following the Boston Marathon bombings and the revelation that the suspects in the case are Islamic jihad terrorists.

AFDI also noted that Americans of all faiths have rejected the call by a minority of extremists to deflect responsibility for jihad terror and obfuscate its root causes in Islamic texts and teachings.

While yet another violent jihad hate plot has been uncovered in Toronto in the wake of the Boston bombings, AFDI calls upon Muslims in the U.S. and Canada to take responsibility for cleaning up their communities and instituting programs to teach against the ideology of jihad hatred that fuels these plots. Instead, groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations is trying to fool Americans into thinking after these bombings that Muslims are victims.

"Americans need to understand the threat they're facing," said AFDI Executive Director Pamela Geller. "That is the chief lesson of the Boston jihad bombings. Hamas-CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Hamas funding trial in our nation's history, has created out of whole cloth a propaganda campaign that dissembles, deceives, and deliberately lies about what happened in Boston and its implications. This only serves to prevent an effective response to jihad terror, thereby enabling jihadists to strike again more easily."

CAIR is indeed an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed posters telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI.

Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.

And although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to hateful and violent Islamic supremacist and jihad groups.

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.

Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:

• Ghassan Elashi , founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, in 2009 received a 65-year prison sentence for funneling over $12 million from the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation to the jihad terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians
• Mousa Abu Marzook, a former CAIR official, was in 1995 designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a "terrorist and Hamas leader." He now is a Hamas leader in Syria.
• Randall Royer, CAIR's former civil rights coordinator, in 2004 began serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding al-Qaida and the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai jihad massacres.
• Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America, which was linked to al-Qaida. After pleading guilty to visa and bank fraud charges, Khafagi was deported.
• Rabih Haddad, a former CAIR fundraiser, was deported for his work with the Global Relief Foundation (which he co-founded), a terror-financing organization.

In 1998 Omar Ahmad, CAIR's co-founder and longtime Board Chairman, said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

After he received unwelcome publicity as a result of this statement, Ahmad denied saying it, several years after the fact. However, the original reporter, Lisa Gardiner of the Fremont Argus, stands by her story.

CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper once said: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

AFDI stands for:

• The freedom of speech – as opposed to Islamic prohibitions of "blasphemy" and "slander," which are used effectively to quash honest discussion of jihad and Islamic supremacism;
• The freedom of conscience – as opposed to the Islamic death penalty for apostasy;
• The equality of rights of all people before the law – as opposed to Sharia's institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Join AFDI/SIOA's Facebook page.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at [email protected].

SOURCE American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI)