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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bela_ghoulashi who wrote (80118)	3/7/2003 7:02:00 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

The majority of Mosques in this country are run by Waahabi Clerics. How long are we going to put up with the actions of these people without a major outcry? Sorry facts and apologies for the truth Diana West The Washington Times Published March 7, 2003 This is a tale of two news stories. They both pertain to Islam and the post September 11 world of culture clash, but they take place in parallel universes: the first in a world where hard facts are prized like battle stars, the second in a milieu where reality's sharper edges require plenty of padding. The first story is big stuff: The federal government is making the case that a prominent Yemeni cleric used the Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn to help funnel millions of dollars to al Qaeda ? $20 million to Osama bin Laden personally, according to what the cleric himself, Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad, is said to have told an FBI informant. (Incidentally, Al Farooq mosque is also where Egyptian radical Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman ? convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center that killed six and wounded more than 1,000 ? served briefly as imam.) As the New York Times put it, federal authorities see the Yemeni imam's arrest as one of the major financial busts since September 11 "in terms of both the amount of money involved and the direct connection alleged to Mr. bin Laden himself." Rita Katz, a specialist in terrorism finance, explained the case's significance this way: "It shows that Islamic clerics are having a lot to do with funding and assisting al Qaeda." They are? To be sure, the government says that this particular cleric has. Have others? And what about the worshippers at Al Farooq? Do some number of them support l Qaeda in particular, or just "jihad" in general? Or were they all duped into scraping together hundreds of thousands of dollars for some unknown cause? These and other questions remain not only unanswered but unasked, unspeakable ciphers on the boundaries of acceptable national discourse. No help in sight from Brooklyn mosque officials, of course, who profess to be "very, very, very surprised" by the government's charges. Meanwhile, Yemeni leaders huffily point to Mr. al-Moayad's respected role as a charitably inclined imam who works in the Yemeni ministry that oversees mosques. (This last bit is not necessarily confidence-building, given a recent government-broadcast out of Yemen's Grand Mosque: "O God, destroy the unjust sons of Zion and the arrogant Americans. O God, shake the ground under them, instill panic into their hearts and disperse them. O God, destroy them, for they are within your power.") Which leaves us exactly where? Left to wonder why the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States fail to rejoice in a successful government sting operation against what certainly appears to be an unholy holy man who gives Islam a bad name. And, we're left to wonder why Islamic moderates remain incapable of bringing off a good, old-fashioned schism to divide their peaceable selves from their violent-minded co-religionists. Do such moderates attend the Dallas Central Mosque, where a fund-raiser for five brothers charged with doing business with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was held last month? How about the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland, where mosque officials have decided to retain an imam linked by reports to the federal indictment against suspected Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian? One has uncomfortable questions, too, about the moderation of worshippers at the Islamic Community of Tampa Bay, where Mr. Al-Arian remains imam and president.<<<<<< dynamic.washtimes.com