Holder invites terror co-conspirator to conference
Meetings on 'post 9/11 backlash,' criminalizing criticism of IslamOctober 22, 2011
A year after honoring the prosecutorial team that implicated the Islamic Society of North America in a criminal scheme to finance terrorism inside America, Attorney General Eric Holder invited the leader of the alleged schemers to a Justice Department-sponsored conference on "post-9/11 discrimination."
Top Justice Department officials Wednesday convened a meeting in Washington in which ISNA President Mohamed Magid joined other invited Islamic activists to lobby for cuts in counter-terror programs and funding. The Muslim groups' demands also included censorship of references to Islam in FBI training materials and the criminalization of criticism of Islamist groups and Islamic law.
The Justice Department named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial – the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.
Holder last year awarded the Justice Department's second-highest honor to the team of prosecutors and investigators that put away the Holy Land terrorist front group and its leaders. Holder presented the award to lead U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks, among several others, at the 58th Annual Attorney General Awards Ceremony.
"They have safeguarded our homeland," Holder said in a speech.
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Jacks identified ISNA as a U.S. front group for Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that gave rise to al-Qaida and Hamas.
In a post-trial opinion, a federal judge ruled prosecutors provided "ample evidence" to support ISNA's involvement in the conspiracy to underwrite terrorism, and he refused ISNA's petition to remove its name from the list of co-conspirators.
Now critics say Justice empowered the group by inviting its top official to speak on the topic of "Islamophobia" this week. ISNA's Magid was an honorary guest at the department's "Confronting Discrimination in the Post-9/11 Era" conference held at George Washington University Law School.
At the event, assistant Attorney General Tom Perez walked across the stage and embraced Magid. Magid asked Perez to change the government's rules governing terror probes and reprogram FBI agents to de-link Islam from terrorism, while curbing investigations of terror suspects in the Muslim community. He also asked Perez, the civil-rights division chief, to make criticism of Islam a hate crime.
Another top Justice official, James Cole, assured Magid and the Muslim panel that the department has already ordered the FBI to "re-evaluate their training." Another official asserted that any training materials that portray Islam as having even "a tendency towards violence ... will not be tolerated."
Magid, a native of Sudan, argued that "teaching people that all Muslims are a threat to the country is against the law and the Constitution." He did not cite the training material that allegedly makes such sweeping generalizations.
Magid's father, a Cairo-educated Muslim Brotherhood scholar, has served as grand mufti of Sudan, an al-Qaida hotspot.
Earlier this year, White House deputy National Security adviser Denis McDonough spoke at imam Majid's Northern Virginia mosque during a Muslim outreach event.
During his speech at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Va., McDonough singled out Magid for praise.
"Thank you, imam Magid, for your very kind introduction. I know that President Obama was very grateful that you led the prayer at last summer's Iftar dinner at the White House," he said. "Thank you, also, or being one of our nation's leading voices for the values that make America so strong, especially religious freedom and tolerance."
Speaking of the ADAMS Center, McDonough said, "This is a typically American place."
However, FBI investigators say Magid's mosque is a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled property. It has been cited for distributing hate literature and oppressing women. The leadership pens female members in a separate area of the worship hall and has them cover their heads with scarves.
Last decade, ADAMS was singled out by the Freedom House as one of the top distributors of Saudi-sponsored anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.
The mosque's board of directors includes key Muslim Brotherhood figures in America. Its chairman of the board is Ahmed Totonji, one of the original Muslim Brothers leaders in the U.S.
According to the book "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington," federal investigators have uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks endorsed to ADAMS by Brotherhood leaders and entities whose offices were raided after 9/11.
The book quotes a longtime ADAMS Center member who said that all Muslims are united in a kind of blood pact under the "ummah," the worldwide community of Muslims.
"If you hurt one Muslim anywhere in the world," the man said, "it's like hurting all Muslims." And the Brothers will respond in kind, even if that means self-immolation on the streets of America, he said.
"Muslims are not afraid to die, you know," he added, according to "Infiltration." "We are not afraid to die."
Magid and ADAMS have also been recognized by the FBI and Homeland Security as outreach partners.
FBI sources say the partnership was originally established by the head of the FBI's Washington field office, Joseph Persichini, whom they say was trying to impress judges in a "community policing" awards contest.
In his application for the 2009 IACP Community Policing Awards competition – a copy of which was obtained by WND – Persichini cites imam Majid as a "key community partner," who "represented the voice of moderate Muslims."
Later that year, Persichini took early retirement from the FBI after the Justice Department's inspector general caught him cheating on an important bureau test.
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