by: AAron Klein
Hillary Clinton’s chief-of-staff, Huma Abedin, worked on the
editorial board of a Saudi-financed Islamic think tank alongside a
Muslim extremist accused of financing al-Qaida fronts.
The extremist, Abdullah Omar Naseef, is deeply connected to the Abedin family.
Naseef is secretary-general of the Muslim World League, an Islamic
charity known to have spawned terrorist groups, including one declared
by the U.S. government to be an official al-Qaida front.
Democrat and Republican lawmakers have rallied to Huma Abedin’s
defense since five GOP Congress members, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of
Minnesota,
sent letters last month to the inspector generals at the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State asking that they investigate Muslim Brotherhood influence on U.S. government officials.
The lawmakers noted Huma Abedin “has three family members – her late
father, mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood
operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access
to the secretary and to policymaking.”
Last week, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, who admitted
he hadn’t read the letters, defended Abedin, and Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz., called the accusations “sinister” and “nothing less than an
unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated
American and a loyal public servant.”
WND was first to report Huma’s mother, Saleha Abedin, was the official representative of Naseef’s terror-stained Muslim World League in the 1990s.
Aaron
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Also,
Huma’s father, Professor Syed Abedin, was the founder of the Institute for Minority Affairs, a Saudi group that reportedly had the quiet, but active, support of Naseef.
Saleha is currently the editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, the publication of Syed’s Institute.
The institute bills itself as “the only scholarly institution
dedicated to the systematic study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim
societies around the world.”
Now it has emerged that Huma served on the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs’s editorial board from 2002 to 2008.
Huma Abedin
Documents obtained by author Walid Shoebat reveal that Naseef served on the board with Huma from at least December 2002 to December 2003.
Naseef’s sudden departure from the board in December 2003 coincides
with the time at which various charities led by Naseef’s Muslim World
League were declared illegal terrorism fronts worldwide, including by
the U.S. and U.N.
The MWL, founded in Mecca in 1962, bills itself as one of the largest Islamic non-governmental organizations.
But according to U.S. government documents and testimony from the
charity’s own officials, it is heavily financed by the Saudi government.
The MWL has been accused of terrorist ties, as have its various
offshoots, including the International Islamic Relief Organization, or
IIRO, and Al Haramain, which was declared by the U.S. and U.N. as a
terror financing front.
Indeed, the Treasury Department, in a September 2004 press release,
alleged Al Haramain had “direct links” with Osama bin Laden. The group
is now banned worldwide by United Nations Security Council Committee
1267.
There long have been accusations that the IIRO and MWL also repeatedly funded al-Qaida.
In 1993, bin Laden reportedly told an associate that the MWL was one of his three most important charity fronts.
An Anti-Defamation League profile of the MWL accuses the group of
promulgating a “fundamentalist interpretation of Islam around the world
through a large network of charities and affiliated organizations.”
“Its ideological backbone is based on an extremist interpretation of
Islam,” the profile states, “and several of its affiliated groups and
individuals have been linked to terror-related activity.”
In 2003, U.S. News and World Report documented that accompanying the
MWL’s donations, invariably, are “a blizzard of Wahhabist literature.”
“Critics argue that Wahhabism’s more extreme preachings – mistrust of
infidels, branding of rival sects as apostates and emphasis on violent
jihad –laid the groundwork for terrorist groups around the world,” the
report continued.
An Egyptian-American cab driver, Ihab Mohamed Ali Nawawi, was
arrested in Florida in 1990 on accusations he was an al-Qaida sleeper
agent and a former personal pilot to bin Laden. At the time he was
accused of serving bin Laden, he also reportedly worked for the
Pakistani branch of the MWL.
The MWL in 1988 founded the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation,
developing chapters in about 50 countries, including for a time in
Oregon until it was designated a terrorist organization.
In the early 1990s, evidence began to grow that the foundation was
funding Islamist militants in Somalia and Bosnia, and a 1996 CIA report
detailed its Bosnian militant ties.
The U.S. Treasury designated Al Haramain’s offices in Kenya and
Tanzania as sponsors of terrorism for their role in planning and funding
the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa. The Comoros
Islands office was also designated because it “was used as a staging
area and exfiltration route for the perpetrators of the 1998 bombings.”
The New York Times reported in 2003 that Al Haramain had provided
funds to the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah, which was
responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people. The
Indonesia office was later designated a terrorist entity by the
Treasury.
In February 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department froze all Al
Haramain’s financial assets pending an investigation, leading the Saudi
government to disband the charity and fold it into another group, the
Saudi National Commission for Relief and Charity Work Abroad.
In September 2004, the U.S. designated Al-Haramain a terrorist organization.
In June 2008, the Treasury Department applied the terrorist designation to the entire Al-Haramain organization worldwide
Bin Laden’s brother-in-law
In August 2006, the Treasury Department also designated the
Philippine and Indonesian branch offices of the MWL-founded IIRO as
terrorist entities “for facilitating fundraising for al-Qaida and
affiliated terrorist groups.”
The Treasury Department added: “Abd Al Hamid Sulaiman Al-Mujil, a
high-ranking IIRO official [executive director of its Eastern Province
Branch] in Saudi Arabia, has used his position to bankroll the al-Qaida
network in Southeast Asia. Al-Mujil has a long record of supporting
Islamic militant groups, and he has maintained a cell of regular
financial donors in the Middle East who support extremist causes.”
In the 1980s, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s
brother-in-law, ran the Philippines offices of the IIRO. Khalifa has
been linked to Manila-based plots to target the pope and U.S. airlines.
The IIRO has also been accused of funding Hamas, Algerian radicals,
Afghanistan militant bases and the Egyptian terror group Al-Gamaa
al-Islamiyya.
The New York Post reported the families of the 9/11 victims filed a
lawsuit against IIRO and other Muslim organizations for having “played
key roles in laundering of funds to the terrorists in the 1998 African
embassy bombings” and for having been involved in the “financing and
‘aiding and abetting’ of terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing.”
‘Saudi government front’
In a court case in Canada, Arafat El-Asahi, the Canadian director of
both the IIRO and the MWL, admitted the charities are near entities of
the Saudi government.
Stated El-Asahi: “The Muslim World League, which is the mother of
IIRO, is a fully government-funded organization. In other words, I work
for the government of Saudi Arabia. I am an employee of that government.
“Second, the IIRO is the relief branch of that organization, which
means that we are controlled in all our activities and plans by the
government of Saudi Arabia. Keep that in mind, please,” he said.
Despite its offshoots being implicated in terror financing, the U.S.
government never designated the MWL itself as a terror-financing
charity. Many have speculated the U.S. has been trying to not embarrass
the Saudi government.
Huma’s mother represented Muslim World League
Saleha Abedin has been quoted in numerous press accounts as both representing the MWL and serving as a delegate for the charity.
In 1995, for example, the Washington Times reported on a United
Nations-arranged women’s conference in Beijing that called on
governments throughout the world to give women statistical equality with
men in the workplace.
The report quoted Saleha Abedin, who attended the conference as a
delegate, as “also representing the Muslim World League based in Saudi
Arabia and the Muslim NGO Caucus.”
The U.N.’s website references a report in the run-up to the Beijing conference that also lists Abedin as representing the MWL at the event.
The website posted an article from the now defunct United States
Information Agency quoting Abedin and reporting she attended the Beijing
conference as “a delegate of the Muslim World League and member of the
Muslim Women’s NGO caucus.”
In the article, Abedin was listed under a shorter name, “Dr. Saleha
Mahmoud, director of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.”
WND has confirmed the individual listed is Huma Abedin’s mother. The
reports misspelled part of Abedin’s name. Her full professional name is
at times listed as Saleha Mahmood Abedin S.
Tied to Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood president
Last month,
Shoebat reported
that while she acted as one of 63 leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood, the
de facto female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleha Abedin served
alongside Najla Ali Mahmoud, the wife of Mohammed Mursi, Egypt’s new
president.
Clinton met with Mursi earlier this month.
Saleha Abedin and Mursi’s wife both were members of the Sisterhood’s Guidance Bureau, Shoebat found.
Hillary praise
Saleha Mahmood Abedin is an associate professor of sociology at Dar
Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which she helped to create.
She formerly directed the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs in the
U.K. and served as a delegate for the Muslim World League, an Islamic
fundamentalist group Osama bin Laden reportedly told an associate was
one of his most important charity fronts.
In February 2010, Clinton spoke at Abedin’s college, where she was
first introduced by Abedin and then praised the work of the terror-tied
professor:
“I have to say a special word about Dr. Saleha Abedin,” Clinton said.
“You heard her present the very exciting partnerships that have been
pioneered between colleges and universities in the United States and
this college. And it is pioneering work to create these kinds of
relationships.
“But I have to confess something that Dr. Abedin did not,” Clinton
continued, “and that is that I have almost a familial bond with this
college. Dr. Abedin’s daughter, one of her three daughters, is my deputy
chief of staff, Huma Abedin, who started to work for me when she was a
student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.”
With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott
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