Report: OIC Used CAIR to Route Money to Georgetown

Georgetown University was set to receive $325,000 from the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), via a scheme that would have used the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a middleman, according to Patrick Poole at Pajamas Media. The intended purpose of the money was to promote a conference on Islamophobia, a form of racism that the OIC wants to see criminalized throughout the world.

The significance of the plan comes from the OIC's stated desire to criminalize free speech about Islam, by banning insults to Islam, the Quran, and its prophet. By funding American academic programs that present its views, Islamist voices at the OIC are trying to dictate the debate on American college campuses.

The plot was apparently initiated in 2006 by discussions between the OIC, CAIR, and Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU). An email from Nov. 20, 2006, shows that the OIC United Nations representative pushed CAIR leader Nihad Awad and Hadia Mubarak, who is both a CAIR board member and a CMCU senior researcher, to move ahead on plans for the Islamophobia conference. The email also noted that funds would be transferred to the CMCU as soon as the director of the senter, Professor John Esposito, sent a letter confirming the plans to the OIC.

Esposito and CAIR's Nihad Awad followed up with a Jan. 11, 2007 letter to set the plan in motion and to begin the transfer of the funds to CAIR and later to the CMCU. A July 19, 2007 letter shows the plan went sour, with the OIC asking for the transfer of only $62,100 to the university for a speech on Islamophobia, but asking CAIR to return the remainder of the money. The OIC and CAIR later exchanged letters, with CAIR pleading that the money should remain with them and the OIC demanding its return for auditing concerns. The OIC was also concerned with CAIR's negative media and legal issues at the time.

Despite the setback, the OIC, the CMCU, and CAIR still support promotion of anti-Islamophobia education. Esposito and CAIR's Ahmed Rehab were scheduled to speak at an OIC conference held last September, on the campus of Chicago's American Islamic College.

Flotilla Organizer Reportedly Reconsidering

The Turkish organization behind last year's deadly flotilla raid in the Mediterranean Sea is offering conflicting statements whether it will participate in the upcoming flotilla this month.

"We are reconsidering our plans. We cannot close our eyes to the developments on our doorstep," IHH deputy head and spokesperson Hüseyin Oruç told the Hürriyet Daily News on Tuesday.

"Our goal is not to set sail to Gaza. We think we can serve the purpose by sending a ship or canceling it," Oruç said. A decision will be made by the end of the week, and flotilla organizers will meet in Athens this weekend, he added.

Oruç said IHH is "reconsidering" its plans given the Syrian refugee issue in Turkey. More than 8,000 Syrians fled to Turkey this month seeking sanctuary from President Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime, and the country has vowed to help them.

Yet on Wednesday, IHH officials told the World Bulletin "the new flotilla definitely will set sail to Gaza as scheduled. Yet we are talking [sic] to a plan Mavi Marmara ship will start journey a bit later and join the main flotilla off Gaza. It will be clear in today's or tomorrow's meeting. Definitely Mavi Marmara ship will set sail to Gaza as other ships of the new flotilla."

Oruç's statement comes in sharp contrast to recent defiant remarks from IHH.

"We are now coming with our second flotilla," IHH head Bulent Yildirim told a May 30 demonstration in Istanbul commemorating the death of nine activists on the Mavi Marmara ship a year earlier. "We are not alone. We are coming with our nine martyrs this time. A year ago 600 people applied to join us and after our blood was shed in the waters of the Mediterranean this number has gone over 500,000."

IHH's withdrawal won't stop the flotilla, organizers say. "The IHH have their own reasons, internal reasons. It won't stop us from going," Dror Feiler, Free Gaza Movement leader in Sweden said on Wednesday. Participants say they want to break the Israeli embargo on Hamas even though Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing, allowing goods to flow freely.

Ten ships are scheduled to partake in the flotilla, with approximately 300 activists from dozens of countries. The ships are planning to meet in the Eastern Mediterranean near Cyprus at the end of the month and then sail to Gaza.

There is no indication on IHH's website that plans for the flotilla are off. Instead, a section of the website is dedicated to articles and banners promoting the upcoming venture.

Washington Planning For Possible Jihadist Takeover in Yemen

With the security situation in Yemen continuing to deteriorate, the CIA is planning for the possibility that al-Qaida or other enemies of the United States could seize power there, a senior U.S. official said this week. The United States is building a secret CIA base in the Persian Gulf region to carry out drone strikes against terror targets in Yemen - a facility which will take on much greater importance in the event of a jihadist takeover there.

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) has been permitted by the Yemeni government to conduct limited strikes there since 2009. JSOC employs a mix that included special operations teams working with Yemeni forces, armed drones and ship-fired missiles to hunt terrorists. Permission was granted on a case-by-case basis and often depended on the mood of longtime Yemeni strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, currently being treated in Saudi Arabia for injuries suffered when opposition tribesmen shelled his palace in Sana earlier this month.

But with radical Islamists apparently gaining military strength, Sana is giving U.S. forces greater freedom to target Islamist radicals operating in Yemen. The near-assassination of Saleh has likely reinforced this inclination.

The State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Daniel Benjamin, said Tuesday that Washington had growing concerns that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - currently regarded as the most immediate terror threat to the U.S. - has been able to capture and keep more territory in Yemen.

Another danger is that the AQAP will attempt to take advantage of the chaos there to obtain more weapons and to bolster its connection with al-Shabaab in neighboring Somalia, another al-Qaida affiliate, Benjamin said.

Meanwhile, jihadist forces in Yemen continue to make headway. On Wednesday, dozens of gunmen thought to be affiliated with al-Qaida attacked government offices and security buildings in the southern Yemeni town of Huta, killing two policemen and wounding five others.

On Wednesday, a group calling itself "supporters of Sharia" issued a statement condemning Yemeni air force raids against Islamist targets. The group published what it said were the names of pilots "as targets for revenge" and offered a bounty for their capture, Agence France Presse reported.

Read more U.S. military operations in Yemen here.

Ros-Lehtinen Calls for Lebanon Aid Cutoff

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., is calling for a cutoff of all U.S. aid to Lebanon's new government, which is dominated by allies of the Hizballah terror organization.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati - appointed head of a caretaker government in January after Hizballah toppled the moderate government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri - announced the formation of a government in which Hizballah and its allies hold 18 of the 30 positions. Hizballah brought down the government in an effort to derail an investigation of the February 2005 murder of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. The Shiite radical group is suspected of involvement in the slaying.

"The U.S. should immediately cut off assistance to the Lebanese government as long as any violent extremist group designated by the U.S. as foreign terror organizations participates in it," Ros-Lehtinen said Monday. She warned that Hizballah and its allies "will control the Lebanese government and likely benefit from the years of U.S. assistance, including to the Lebanese military."

By contrast, Iran and Syria welcomed the news. Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi "congratulated Mikati and the Lebanese people on the formation of the new government," the semi-official Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime continues to commit atrocities against its own people, congratulated Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri on the formation of the new government.

The political breakthrough that made the new government possible was forged by Berri, a Shiite Muslim and longtime ally of Damascus, who relinquished a Shiite-controlled parliamentary seat to a Sunni ally of Damascus.

BBC News noted that for the first time since the Hariri assassination, Lebanon has "a one-sided, mainly pro-Syrian government." While Hizballah itself holds just two of the 30 seats in the new cabinet, "its status as the prime mover in the government is beyond doubt, for the first time," the BBC added.

Fatah, Hamas Discuss Unity Deal

Fatah and Hamas representatives began talks in Cairo Tuesday on the implementation of an Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement, focusing on the establishment of a Palestinian Authority (PA) unity government in the West Bank and Gaza. Fatah and Hamas have been estranged since Hamas seized power in a bloody 2007 coup in Gaza, with Fatah remaining in control of the West Bank.

The main subject of contention is the identity of the new PA prime minister. The Fatah Central Committee has voted for current PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who has won plaudits for his corruption-fighting activities even as he has talked out of both sides of his mouth on fighting terrorism.

Fayyad's candidacy is seen as critical to determining whether the PA will continue to receive Western financial support and political backing. But Hamas strongly opposes Fayyad, regarding him as a tool of the United States and Israel. On Tuesday, Fayyad reportedly indicated that he would not attempt to go forward in the face of continued opposition from Hamas, saying he wouldn't be an obstacle to the formation of a unity government.

The Obama Administration is reportedly pressuring Israel to accept the 1967 border as the basis for a peace settlement with the Palestinian unity government. Jennifer Rubin writes that this would mean that "Israel would have to bargain for the Western Wall, which Obama used as a rhetorical flourish at his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to woo the Jewish community" by pointing to the longstanding Jewish connection to the wall.

Rubin adds that the administration is insisting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu negotiate with the PA even though Hamas has failed to endorse the Quartet Principles: recognizing Israel's right to exist, renouncing terrorism and agreeing to abide by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Read more about the Fatah-Hamas agreement here.

Prosecutor Defends Plea Bargain with Mumbai Plotter

The government's plea deal with a key player in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks was the right move, even though David Headley's involvement was far greater than the man he testified against earlier this month, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said.

Information gleaned from Headley's interrogations with federal investigators provided a detailed insight into ways terrorist groups and the Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency ran their operations, Fitzgerald said in a telephone interview with the investigative journalism website ProPublica.

Headley also can be called upon to testify against other Mumbai plotters. He pleaded guilty last year to his role in plotting the Mumbai attacks and was the prosecution's star witness in the trial of Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana. Headley scouted targets for the attacks in Mumbai. Last week, a jury acquitted Rana of involvement in that attack, but found him guilty on charges related to a separate plot to attack a Danish newspaper and for supporting for the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT).

Rana helped provide Headley with a cover for surveillance trips to target the Danish newspaper, Jyllands Posten. The newspaper's 2005 publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammad had led to violent protests across the Muslim world.

Headley testified that members of Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the ISI, helped orchestrate and finance the two plots.

Defense attorney Charles Swift said that Rana was wrongly implicated by Headley, who Swift argued agreed to testify against Rana to avoid the death penalty. He thought it unlikely that other top-level terror suspects hiding in Pakistan will ever be brought to trial.

Swift was not surprised by the mixed verdict, ProPublica reported.

"From the beginning we feared the verdict could be a compromise," he said. "That's why we asked to separate the Mumbai charges from the Denmark charges. There is more evidence on the Denmark plot. He was found completely not guilty on Mumbai."

Fitzgerald rejected that claim saying, "The verdicts are hardly as inconsistent and as some have made them out to be."

"The jury could give Rana the benefit of a reasonable doubt as to how much he knew about the Mumbai attacks," Fitzgerald said. "But Rana played a more direct role in Denmark. … And there was more corroborating evidence beyond Headley, whose credibility was challenged by the defense. Jurors naturally look for intrinsic corroboration. They want to see something in black and white."

CAIR Official Hypes American "Islamophobia" on Iranian Television

The Iranian government is pursuing nuclear weapons, helping Syria brutally suppress anti-government uprisings and is "the most active" sponsor of terrorist groups throughout the world. And, of course, it considers the United States to be the Great Satan and a bitter enemy.

Yet American Islamists seem to have no hesitancy taking to Iran's state-sponsored English-language media arm to bash America as inherently hostile toward Muslims. The latest to do so is Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, who appeared June 4 to argue anti-Muslim sentiment is raging in America.

"It's really a disturbing situation where, primarily right-wing extremists are exploiting and promoting anti-Muslim sentiment for their own political gain," Hooper said. "And I think we're going to see more and more of it leading up to the 2012 elections."

Last month, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney went on PressTV to blast American and NATO operations in Libya, actions that came at the Arab League's request.

Regardless of one's views on debates over Sharia law or opposition to mosque construction, it's difficult to understand what CAIR hopes to accomplish by making its case on a broadcast outlet controlled by a hostile government.

"Respectable American journalists do not go onto the state-run TV station of a hostile and murderous totalitarian police state to denounce their domestic political opponents," journalist Michael Totten recently wrote of another reporter. The same can be said of political advocacy groups and their mouthpieces.

Muslim Brotherhood: Anti-Americanism Linked to Anti-Semitism

Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism go hand-in-hand in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, as demonstrated in a recent speech by the group's leader Mohamed Badie. To Badie, the current problems in the Middle East have historical roots in a Jewish conspiracy, coupled with Masonic and American/Western elements.

"Allah has warned us the tricks of the Jews, and their role in igniting the fire of wars," Badie said in a speech posted to the Brotherhood's Arabic-language website on June 2 and translated by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. "The Almighty said: 'Every time they light the fires of war, Allah extinguishes them; and they labor hard to spread corruption on earth: and Allah does not love the spreaders of corruption."

According to Badie, "such was their [the Jewish] plot by night and by day to divide the Muslims, old and new." Their intentions could be traced from Napoleon to the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, and on to the strife in Arab nations like Sudan. "We will only gain their land by feeding the fire of animosity between them, to facilitate their destruction by our hands," Badie claimed that Herzl said at a 1903 Masonic Conference.

As a part of this conspiracy, Badie argues that the West is in collaboration with the Jews. "O Muslims: I do not think that the West wants well for Muslims good," Badie said. "I do not imagine the Americo-Zionist alliance wants our blessed revolution to reach its objectives, in the forefront of which are: that we enjoy freedom in our land, that we be independent in our decision and that we have sovereignty over our homelands."

The speech underlines assertions that the Brotherhood has not reformed its ideology, despite public pronouncements on their website and in English-language comments to the media. The organization recently generated controversy by condemning the killing of Osama bin Laden, and for its support for terrorism and a shaky commitment to democratic principles.

British Official Accuses Iran of Aiding Syrian Crackdown

British Foreign Secretary William Hague has condemned Iran for its role in helping Syria quell the anti-government protests sweeping the country, according to the Daily Telegraph. More specifically, Hague has accused Iran of providing "equipment" and logistical support to Syria and demonstrating "hypocrisy in world affairs."

Hague's remarks are not the first British accusation leveled against Iranian-Syrian cooperation in suppressing recent protests. The top British diplomat in Iran was summoned to Tehran last Thursday to recant earlier British statements on the issue.

The most recent criticism is in response to the discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 10 Syrian soldiers outside military police headquarters in the northern town of Jisr al-Shaghur, the Telegraph reports. This town made headlines earlier last week when Syrian forces launched a tank-led crackdown on protesters, causing thousands to flee to Turkey.

A Syrian military defector also told Al-Arabiya that he had been forced to fire on several soldiers last week in Jisr al-Shaghur for ignoring orders not to shoot unarmed civilians and using women and children as human shields. The government has claimed, however, that the soldiers and up to 120 others were killed by "armed gangs" in the area, and used this as a pretext for the violent operation against the town.

Despite the prolonged chaos and strong British, French, and American support for a United Nations resolution condemning the violence in Syria, efforts to initiate an international-military intervention have been thwarted by China and Russia who oppose UN condemnation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In light of this opposition, Hague asserted that there is "no prospect" of passing a resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Syria. Drawing a comparison to the conflict in Libya, Hague also said the Arab League has made "no such call" for intervention in Syria similar to its support for action in Libya.

The ongoing protests in Syria to put an end to President Assad's 11-year reign have claimed the lives of at least 1,100 civilians so far.

Brotherhood Leader Has High Praise for Terrorist Leader

Egypt's main Islamist group has long denied official links to the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, but public statements and actions by its senior leaders have often gone a long way to undercut the credibility of such denials.

On Friday, Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, eulogized little-known Hamas founder, Mohamed Hassan Shamaa. Shamaa, 76, reportedly died of a stroke after decades as a senior leader of the Gaza-based terrorist group. After his death, Hamas admitted Shamaa was the leader of the group's governing body, or Shura Council. The identities of the Council's other leaders is a closely guarded secret, and Shamaa's name had never been previously disclosed.

Of Shamaa, Badie gave high praise and "offered condolences to the Muslim world in general and the Palestinians in particular..." In the eulogy, Shamaa is described as an "influential" public figure with an "exceptional ability to listen and dispense sound wisdom."

Shamaa's likely role in killing or injuring hundreds, if not thousands, of Israeli and American citizens since Hamas' founding in 1987 is notably absent from Badie's comments.

Contrary to repeated denials by the Brotherhood of ties to Shamaa's group, Hamas was established as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood—a fact the group readily admits in its founding charter. The Brotherhood has ideologically stood by its progeny, frequently calling for armed resistance against "crusaders" and "occupiers" in Palestine.

Following the fall of longtime President Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be growing increasingly bold in its actions and statements. The MB has formed a political party—the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)—and has increased its target for the number of seats it will contest in September's important parliamentary elections to nearly 50%. It has also ratcheted up its rhetoric in support of Iran and Hamas.

Badie's recent statement appears to be yet another example that the group, now a legally sanctioned party in Egypt, is growing more and more comfortable showing in public where its heart truly lies.

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