This is a guest post by Beeman
This week is the “53rd Annual ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) Convention”. ISNA, for those who aren’t aware, is an organisation which has rarely been far away from controversy. Despite denying ever having connections, they are understood to have founding origins tightly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder Hassan al-Banna they glorified back in their 1999 magazine article titled “martyr of our times”.
Furthermore federal prosecutors listed ISNA on a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Additionally in 2009 a federal judge concluded that there was “ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, Islamic Association for Palestine and Hamas”.
In the past ISNA has hosted dozens of horrendous Islamists at their convention, including for example Tunisian Islamist leader Rachid Ghannouchi (only last autumn they posted a picture of themselves grinning alongside him). Their upcoming conference also will feature numerous speakers who are regulars on the US Islamist circuit (the full list is available here).
Prominently featuring at this event for five talks is Tariq Ramadan, one of the best known Islamists from the Western world. A useful collection of some of his sexist, homophobic, theocratic views can be viewed here.
Another well known Islamist to speak will be Yasir Qadhi from the notoriously hardline Al Maghrib Institute. He has expressed numerous vile views including killing gays, blasphemers, adulterers etc. He has appeared at the last dozen ISNA conventions, and is advertised as a star turn on their promo video for this upcoming event where he is doing eight talks. Incidentally one of those talks Qadhi is participating in is titled “Addressing LGBTQ Issues”.
Then there is Nouman Ali Khan from the Bayyinah Institute. Khan, although his is a comparatively soft, apologist voice, still offers justification for physical punishment for adultery and fornication and complains that counsellors and psychologists aren’t allowed to tell homosexuals “there’s something wrong with you”. Also Khan has posted grinning selfies on his Facebook page with the likes of Ismail Menk, whose vile views got him banned from his UK speaking tour in 2013, and with Zakir Naik, a man banned in numerous countries for extremism.
Also speaking is Dalia Mogahed, who once repeatedly praised Sharia Law in an interview with Hizb ut-Tahrir members, and is another frequent speaker at events involving this sort of company.
Ramadan, Qadhi, Mogahed and Khan together are listed as the four panellists for the headline Saturday night talk “Carpe Diem: A Call to Action”. Listed beside those four as “Honorary Guests”, are Gold Star parents Ghazala and Khizr Khan, who leapt to prominence after their eloquent speech at the DNC which Donald Trump took exception to.
That the Khan family has been persuaded by ISNA to star at this event is one of the most disappointing things about it. Following their DNC speech, genuine anti-Muslim bigots from the nutjob Alex Jones conspiracy sector of the internet desperately tried to maliciously and falsely smear the Khan family with links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now they are set to appear at a convention by an organisation with well documented Muslim Brotherhood links, and do so being photographed and featured on the same poster alongside some of the most notorious Islamists around like Ramadan and Qadhi.
Surely the Khan family has been misled to appear at this convention as many of the speakers at this event directly contradict the values they stood for. Just take for example Zahra Billoo, Executive Director of CAIR-SFBA.
Unlike the Khan family who expressed their gratitude for American democracy and freedom, Billoo is an open Muslim Brotherhood supporter who constantly expresses hatred for America and particularly their armed forces. For each of the past three Memorial Days, she has spat upon the troops saying they shouldn’t be supported, and this year specifically took aim at Muslims serving in the military. She also equates the US military to terrorists including all of the Pakistan Taliban, ISIS and Al-Qaeda. However she is far more sympathetic to Hamas and equates criticism of their terrorism to “blaming a woman for punching her rapist”, she calls Sami Al-Arian and the Holy Land 5 “personal heroes”, and also supports convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, asking who “where is the outcry” over her sentencing? Another speaker will also be Imraan Siddiqi, Chairman of CAIR-AZ, who has also retweeted inflammatory messages about the troops on Memorial Day calling them “an occupying army”. It would be very surprising if the Khan family, who expressed completely opposite values, would want to share the stage with these people if they knew some of their views.
Meanwhile several of the other “featured speakers” ISNA are promoting are known Islamists. One being Jamal Badawi, who has praised Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna as “inspirational”, and stated his belief in Islam’s superiority to “man-made” law. He has also praised Palestinian terror, and was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas financing trial.
Another is Muzammil Siddique, who holds many dubious views, and has written in the past “that Allah’s rules have to be established in lands, and all our efforts should lead in that direction” or of his desire to see “the implementation of the Shari’a in all areas”.
Also speaking will be Abdul Nasir Jangda, another from the Al Maghrib Institute, where he defends Islamic slavery and portrays it warmly as something where slaves “were given ample opportunity to lead a free lifestyle”. He also teaches that people drinking alcohol publicly should be beaten; thieves have hands cut off, and advises on when adulterers or apostates should be killed. A third Al Maghrib instructor, Waleed Basyouni, will also be present.
One other speaker is Sherman Jackson, an apologist for Sharia law who in a chapter of an online book published in 2000 (co-authored alongside a friend of Louis Farrakhan) advocated the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America”. On the topic of “stoning, flogging and amputation”, Jackson wrote that “notions of what is draconian are a function of culture, not law” and that “only through changes in American culture that attitudes towards such things are likely to change” and that “may God grant us the vision to rise to the task before us”.
Another “featured speaker” is Linda Sarsour, who is doing eight talks at the convention. She has put forward wild anti-American conspiracies such as the “underwear bomber was the CIA all along”, and was another who defended Aafia Siddiqui after her conviction for terrorism. Also just last week after rapper Talib Kweli slandered Sam Harris (plus anyone else who dared disagree with him) as “white supremacists” and sent barrels of abuse towards Maajid Nawaz calling him a “fuck boy” and a “coon”. Sarsour (who views herself as fighting bigotry) reacted to this by tweeting “shoutout to my bro @TalibKweli who keeps the white supremacists and fake Muslim reformers in check. We appreciate ur truth telling” and herself call Nawaz “a disgrace to Muslims” and “on the payroll of white supremacists & right wing Zionists”.
And of course another “featured speaker” is US fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, who as previously mentioned in this article, has been attending and speaking at these sorts of events and offering warm praise for numerous Islamist speakers for some years.
Meanwhile Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera will appear at the ISNA convention for a third year in row, and is doing a talk titled “Positive Thinking in an Age of Islamophobia”. He took exception to being referenced by Nick Cohen as “from the Islamist religious right”, yet he doesn’t seem to mind retweeting, appearing alongside, or working for a media company owned by them. This isn’t the only ISNA event Hasan is doing this year; he’s also listed to appear on the “Striving for Justice Tour” alongside Jamal Badawi one of the most hardline Islamists of this convention.
Others listed to speak at the convention include Saffet Catovic who has been recorded in the past saying “we as Muslims of course long range would like to have the Caliphate back”, or Tayyab Yunus who reportedly encouraged parents to send their children to fight jihad in Chechnya back in 2000.
Also doing four talks is long time anti-Israel activist and ISNA convention veteran Hatem Bazian, who in 2004 called for an “intifada” in the United States similar to that of Palestine. More recently Bazian has written articles supportive of Sami Al-Arian, and here he is speculating that Benjamin Netanyahu may have been behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
Another speaker is Dawud Walid, who blames “Islamophobia” and Muslim problems on the “pro-Israeli occupation lobby” and also endorsed an ancient 627 AD slaughter of the Jews. He also uses the epithet “Zio” on social media, a term commonly associated with followers of some of the most virulently unpleasant ideologies around, and even frowned upon by Jeremy Corbyn.
Meanwhile obviously the man giving the “State of ISNA Address” is their President Azhar Azeez, who along with seven other speakers at his event, signed a condemnation of ISIS that stated “a Caliphate is an obligation upon the Ummah” and endorsed “hudud punishments”, instead merely stating ISIS were enforcing it incorrectly.
Despite that though, they’ve had some notable recent success in getting politicians’ notice. Barack Obama gave them a friendly recorded message to play at their 2013 and 2015 conventions (incidentally ISNA also have posted a few times about meeting Obama at the White House, and have publicly lobbied for him not to say “radical Islam” and claimed credit for him visiting a mosque).
Jimmy Carter also spoke there in 2014, whilst at the same convention notably Governor of Michigan Rick Snyder accidentally caused uproar for saying “Israel has the right to exist”, which prompted furious Facebook messages from other speakers at the convention, and an official “ISNA Action Alert” asking “the American Muslim community” to contact him over his “insensitive remarks”.
Khizr Khan said in one interview that “among us hides the enemies of the value system of this country. And we need to defend it. And if it means ratting out the traitors who hide behind an American passport, that’s what we need to do”. Surely people supporting any form of theocracy in the world, or spewing hatred for the US armed forces, defending, acting as an apologist or even funding for their foes, all qualify as “enemies of the values system of this country”. Hopefully somebody alerts Khan to all this as there’s quite a few people in attendance to his speech who by his criteria may need “ratting out”.
