http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/four-islamists-gov-christies-muslim-outreach-committee
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/muslims-political-influence-in-chris-christies-new-jersey/
Muslims & Political Influence in (Chris Christie’s) New Jersey
Posted on January 21, 2014 by creeping
A nice wrap up of everything we’ve been posting on Chris Christie since 2008. viaArticles: Beyond Bridgegate: Ignoring the Elephant in the Room.
By Janet Levy
The political flap over Chris Christie’s role in “Bridgegate” has thrown a spotlight once again on the rough-hewn, plain-speaking New Jersey governor. But the drama of the current brouhaha has drawn attention away from the governor’s more serious, ongoing missteps — namely, his cultivation of relationships with those associated with known terrorist groups. Remarkably, New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie appears more contrite about Bridgegate than he is about these associations that threaten national security.
New Jersey has the second-largest Muslim population of any state, after Michigan. Paterson, the county seat of Passaic County, is home to a controversial Hamas-linked mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), and contains the largest population of Palestinian Muslims in the United States. The Muslim community in South Paterson is referred to as “Little Ramallah.”
This past year, Paterson’s mayor, Jeff Jones, was the first U.S. city official to host a “Palestinian-American Day,” with a Palestinian flag hoisted over City Hall on Israeli Independence Day. Astonishingly, the event organizer, Khader Abuassab, a convicted criminal who pled guilty to fraud and swindling, is on record telling local Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. Further, Abuassab served on the Paterson Board of Education, ran for City Council, and now serves on Governor Christie’s Muslim Outreach Committee.
Christie & Mohammed Qatanani
But Christie’s record of political support for Muslims dates back to his days as U.S. attorney. It was then, in 2006, when he came to the aid of a radical Muslim imam, Mohammed Qatanani, who was on the verge of being deported from the United States for failure to disclose terrorist affiliations.
The little-known details are that Qatanani arrived in the United States in 1996 to take over the ICPC, one of the largest mosques in the state. Housed in a former synagogue, the ICPC was founded in 1989 by Imam Mohammed El-Mezain, a convicted Hamas operative and fundraiser who publicly boasted of raising close to $2 million for the organization. In 1996, Qatanani arrived to succeed El-Mezain.
Given the mosque’s affiliations, it’s not surprising that Qatanani also has a background littered with terrorist associations. He was arrested and convicted in Israel in 1993 as a self-admitted member of Hamas. As a Muslim Brotherhood operative, he had provided financial support for terrorist activities and continued to send large cash transfers to the West Bank once he arrived.
These activities raised suspicions by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which in 2006 began attempts to deport Qatanani for failure to disclose his 1993 arrest in Israel for involvement with a terrorist group. Despite the charges for his terrorist activities and very real security concerns about the Hamas-affiliated imam, a spokesman for Qatanani, Aref Assaf, called the deportation effort “vindictive,” implying that the investigation was ill-conceived and baseless.
Then, then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie came to the aid of the imam. In response to a 2008 DHS court filing, Christie defended the imam as a “man of great goodwill” and sent his assistant U.S. attorney, Charles McKenna, to court to serve as a character witness. As a result of Christie’s efforts, Qatanani was granted legal permanent residency.
Christie & Sohail Mohammed
In 2011, as governor, Christie aggressively endorsed and appointed Qatanani’s lawyer, Sohail Mohammed, as a New Jersey Superior Court judge. Some speculated that the post was a payoff to Imam Qatanani for ICPC and Muslim community support for his gubernatorial campaign.
Sohail Mohammed is a board member and general counsel of the American Muslim Union (AMU), an organization co-founded by a former executive for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front and unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history. Several AMU executives have held leadership positions at the Hamas-linked ICPC. Sohail Mohammed publicly defended convicted terrorist and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian and criticized the U.S. government for shutting down the Holy Land Foundation for its support of Hamas.
During the trial of the Fort Dix Six, who conspired to attack U.S. military personnel at the base, Mohammed was quoted as stating, “If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But when the government says — ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous. Don’t equate actions with religion.”
But such statements are not a reasoned plea for objectivity and independent thought; rather, they are simply subterfuge and whitewashing of Islam. That’s because Koran-sanctioned terrorism or jihad is an integral, doctrinal part of Islam. In the name of Islam, more than 20,000 deadly terrorist attacks have been committed worldwide since 9/11, underscoring that it is not individuals, but the essence of Islamic militant beliefs that sparks terrorism.
In other disturbing actions, Mohammed had criticized the television series 24 for depicting Muslims as terrorists. In 2005, he called for a “bias crime” investigation of the Coptic community for its anti-Muslim sentiment following the slaying of a Coptic family in Jersey City. As an American lawyer no doubt familiar with the Constitution and the First Amendment, Mohammed doubtless knew that his request constituted a threat to the Coptic community’s freedom of speech by attempting to muffle their vocal suspicions of Muslim involvement in the crime.
Christie & Muslim Outreach Committee
In 2012, Gov. Christie called for an investigation into the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism procedures. He objected to their surveillance of mosques and a Muslim Brotherhood-sponsored student group, the Muslim Student Association (MSA). When the New Jersey attorney general concluded that the NYPD had acted lawfully in pursuing terrorist activities, Christie formed the Muslim Outreach Committee, an effort to mollify the outrage expressed by local Muslims. All the individuals chosen for the committee who were to act as liaisons between the Muslim community and state officials, including top security personnel, were associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, including the beleaguered Imam Qatanani.
Clearly, support for a known Hamas operative like Qatanani is a serious threat to national security. According to a report by the Investigative Project for Terrorism, Qatanani publicly supported payments to families of suicide bombers and condemned Christians to “eternal hellfire.” As a former prosecutor, Christie must have had access to this information.
That same year, Christie hosted a Ramadan dinner at the Governor’s Mansion and invited Imam Mohammed Qatanani, referring to him as a “friend,” “a force for good in his community,” and someone who has been helpful to New Jersey law enforcement. No mention was made of the imam’s extensive terrorist ties, radical sermonizing, and law-breaking activities.
In an interview with The Blaze in 2013, Qatanani called for limits on free speech to protect Islam from criticism. Expressing views in accordance with Islamic blasphemy laws or sharia, Qatanani stated that although Americans have freedom of speech, they “have no right to [talk about Muslim] holy issues” because to do so will incite “hatred or war among people.” He went on to explain that criticizing Islam poses a national security threat to the United States and recommended that those responsible be investigated by the DHS. He advocated Islamic blasphemy laws that criminalize criticism of Islam and maintained that mocking Jesus or Moses is acceptable for Americans, but it is forbidden to mock Mohammed.
Christie & Sharia
Besides actively seeking political and personal working relationships with Muslims linked to terrorism, Gov. Christie has ignored concerns about the application of sharia, or Islamic law, in the United States. In the face of findings by an in-depth 2011 study initiated by the Center for Security Policy to the effect that 23 states had already used sharia as a factor in their deliberations, and despite the fact that sharia contradicts the U.S. Constitution, requires gender and religious apartheid, denies freedom of speech and religion, and promotes cruel punishments, Christie has state that “[t]his sharia-law business is crap…and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”
This, even though in 2009, the year Christie was elected governor and after he spent six years as U.S. attorney in New Jersey, a New Jersey judge actually referenced sharia law in his decision. The case involved the judge’s refusal of a temporary restraining order for a divorced Muslim woman who had been raped and assaulted by her ex-husband, who maintained that Islamic doctrine requires wives to comply with all of their husbands’ sexual demands. Under current New Jersey law, non-consensual sex between married persons is considered rape. Fortunately, the decision was overturned 13 months later, but no thanks to any action by Christie.
In another instance, Christie placed the sensitivity of Muslims above the constitutional rights of a New Jersey Transit worker. When Derek Fenton was fired by the transit authority for burning pages of the Koran at the planned site of the Ground Zero mosque on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, Christie approved his termination. Fenton, who was not in uniform and was on his own time, was clearly exercising his constitutional rights. But Christie dismissed the ACLU’s criticism of Christie’s utter disregard for the First Amendment, saying of Fenton’s actions, “That kind of intolerance is unacceptable.”
The significance of Bridgegate, however extensive, pales in comparison to Christie’s deeply troubling relationships with terrorist-sympathizers and supporters in the New Jersey Muslim community. He has sheltered known Islamists from law enforcement, excused their hateful rhetoric, ignored threats to national security, criticized legitimate law enforcement activities, and dismissed constitutional rights — all to pander to a Muslim constituency.
That someone of Christie’s leanings could wield the power of a U.S. attorney and then a governor is concerning enough. To imagine him at the helm of the country is a frightening prospect.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2506/gov-christie-strange-relationship-with-radical#
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's nomination of Sohail Mohammed to be a state judge shows the governor's tin ear for radical Islam. Not only did he appoint a longtimemouthpiece for radical Islamists to be a judge, but Christie has also turned a blind eye to the activities of one of Mohammed's clients – radical imam Mohammed Qatanani, head of one of New Jersey's largest mosques.
Qatanani has a history of Hamas support and was related by marriage to a leading Hamas operative in the West Bank. This fall, Qatanani will return to a New Jersey immigration court, where the Department of Homeland Security is fighting to have him deported. In his initial application for a green card filed in 1999, government lawyers say Qatanani failed to disclose a conviction in an Israeli military court for being a Hamas member and providing support to the terrorist group.
Oddly, Christie – a Republican who was then the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey –sided with Qatanani against DHS, allowing a top lieutenant, Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna, to testify as a character witness at Qatanani's first immigration trial, and publicly embracing the imam at a Ramadan breakfast at his mosque. Christie later appointed McKenna as New Jersey's head of homeland security..
As general counsel to the American Muslim Union (AMU), Mohammed often represented clients subject to government allegations concerning terrorists. The AMU often is highly critical of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.
One online newsletter even included a claim that a "Zionist commando orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks" and shows support for a "Rabbi" from the extremist Jewish organization Neturei Karta, which denies the right of Israel to exist and supports its dismantling.
The AMU has criticized some of the response to the September 11 attacks, especially regarding the PATRIOT Act. Explaining why the AMU had become more politically active and was holding voter registration drives, one employee of AMU said: "Right now, the Patriot Act—basically it's unconstitutional…I believe it targets Muslims unfairly. If someone's going to come out with a bill that's discriminatory, I'm not going to vote for them."
As general counsel, Mohammed bucked several high-profile terror support prosecutions. After authorities shut down the Holy Land Foundation near Dallas for alleged Hamas support in 2001, Mohammed told the Record of Bergen County, N.J., that the government was unjustly singling out Muslim organizations."People see this as another example of how heavy-handed the administration has been thus far," he said.
The move was newsworthy in New Jersey because an HLF officer, Mohammed El-Mezain, preceded Qatanani as imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County. El-Mezain and four fellow defendants were convicted of illegally routing millions of dollars to Hamas in 2008.
During a lecture given a year earlier, Qatanani included the HLF defendants in a prayer for relief from oppression. "Oh Allah assist our brothers and sisters in Philistine [Palestine], and Iraq and Chechnya," he said. "O Allah remove occupation and oppression and o Allah improve the matters of our community … to assist our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land Foundation, ask oh Allah … to assist them and to remove the difficulty that they have been inflicted with all of the brothers and sisters in this country, oh Allah to prove them non-guilty."
Additionally, Mohammed publicly defended Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian following a 2003 indictment which alleged he was a North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Appearing on MSNBC, Mohammed criticized the fact that it took years of investigation before the indictment was issued. "It all points out to the distrust that the Muslim community have, which is this is nothing but a witch-hunt," he said. "This is nothing but a politically motivated indictment, and all you are waiting for is the right opportunity to indict the person, the climate is right."
Al-Arian, a longtime professor at the University of South Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide goods and services to the PIJ. In sentencing him, a federal judge said the evidence made it clear he was "a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You were on the board of directors and an officer, the secretary. Directors control the actions of an organization, even the PIJ; and you were an active leader."
In addition to defending accused terrorists, Mohammed is defensive about acknowledging their motivations. He was critical of a case brought by Christie's office when the governor was U.S. Attorney. The Fort Dix defendants were accused, and later convicted, of plotting a mass casualty attack on the New Jersey military base as an act of jihad. Dix. Mohammed objected to the use of the phrase "Islamic militants" in the government's case.
"Don't equate actions with religion," he said.
Then there's this exchange with MSNBC's Chris Matthews about two months after 9/11. Mohammed bristled at Matthews' reference to the "Islamic terrorists" behind the attacks:
MATTHEWS: What else do they have in common, the people who blew up the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon? What else do they have in common?MOHAMMED: All male.MATTHEWS: Keep going.If you're a policeman, you have got to use your brain here. What else do they have in common? They all come from Middle Eastern countries. They're all Islamic zealots.MOHAMMED: Well, you cannot call them -- and anybody who professes or who says that he believes in a religion, a peaceful religion, cannot take the banner and crash a plane, and you blame every single person who follows this faith.
Even while fighting to stay in the country, Mohammed's former client, Qatanani, has participated in radical rallies and programs. During a rally in New York last March, demonstrators repeated a chant that subtly calls for Israel's destruction. "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
It's a familiar chant at pro-Palestinian rallies. A Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea would cover all of what is now the state of Israel. In his remarks, which came after the chant, Qatanani expressed his agreement.
"Palestine will be free one day," he told the rally. "And we will see it very soon by your actions, by your standing for justice, justice, freedom, the liberation of the land will be very soon."
Just before the 2008 ruling in Qatanani's favor was issued, and while he was still the U.S. attorney, Christie praised the imam at a Ramadan breakfast held at Qatanani's mosque. "My view is he's always had a very good relationship with us, and he's a man of great goodwill," Christie said, reportedly embracing him.
The U.S. Attorney's office was not a party to the case, Christie said, and his praise for Qatanani was not meant to be "a commentary on the dispute between the imam and DHS" but after 9/11, he found the imam "to be a constructive force in attempting to strengthen our relations with that community."
During the original immigration trial, one of Christie's assistant U.S. attorneys, Charles B. McKenna, testified as a character witness for Qatanani. In his ruling, Immigration Court Judge Alberto Riefkohl said he was particularly impressed by "law enforcement officers that took time from their respective duties to appear before the Court" on Qatanani's behalf. Other supportive testimony came from the sheriffs of Bergen and Passaic counties and U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-Paterson.
Qatanani's visa application was prepared by Mohammed's law firm and Mohammed sat with his client during an interview with DHS and FBI agents in 2005, immigration court records show. "QATANANI advised that he trusted his attorney, Sohail Mohammed, so he signed the I-485 form."
During the interview, Qatanani admitted having spent three months in an Israeli prison but he did not disclose that on his application for permanent residency. He also admitted being in the Muslim Brotherhood, but said he left the group in 1991 when working and going to school while raising a family left him with no time.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a global religious and political movement that seeks to spread Islamic law. In a 1991 document, a member of the American branch explained that the group's goal was " a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
An immigration judge ruled in Qatanani's favor in September 2008, saying the Israeli government documents and the testimony of U.S. law enforcement officials were not credible. However, the Board of Immigration Appeals sent the case back to the original judge in October 2009, finding that Judge Riefkohl committed a series of errors in downplaying the Israeli evidence and the agents' testimonies. The appellate panel found that the Israeli evidence was "properly authenticated and that there was no adequate basis for the Immigration Judge to give them 'very low evidentiary weight."
The judge's assessment of the law enforcement agents' testimony was "clearly erroneous," the board's decision said.
In his original immigration trial, government attorneys presented Israeli court records showing Qatanani was convicted by an Israeli court in 1993 of being a Hamas member and of providing support to the terrorist group.
When he applied for a new visa, Qatanani marked "no" to questions about whether he had ever been "arrested, cited, charged, indicted, fined, or imprisoned for breaking or violating any law or ordinance" in other countries.
"An alien who has provided material support to a terrorist organization is inadmissible to the United States," government attorneys wrote. "Therefore, by answering the questions in the negative, the respondent cut-off a line of inquiry relevant to his eligibility for adjustment of status."
Immigration officials have successfully used similar misrepresentations to deport people tied to terrorist groups.
Christie's support for Islamists such as Qatanani and Mohammed betrays either naivete or calculation. Either is troubling.
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2506/gov-christie-strange-relationship-with-radical#
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