CONNECTING THE DOTS TO THE TEXAS GUNMEN
Their Phoenix mosque maintains Shariah-compliant support for jihad
Washington Times, By Clare M. Lopez Clare M. Lopez is vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy.
– – Tuesday, May 5, 2015:
Both gunmen identified in the May 3 attack against the “Draw Muhammad” event at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, attended the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix, according to news reports. Elton Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, both were known to mosque leadership dating from 2006, although Usama Shami, chairman of the mosque’s board of trustees, claimed they stopped attending recently.
Interestingly, the imam at the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix (ICCP) is Sheikh Mahmoud Abdul-Aziz Ahmad Sulaiman, one of the so-called “flying imams,” who filed suit in March 2007 against US Airways officials for allegedly showing discrimination in removing them from a flight after the imams’ suspicious behavior raised alarm among crew and passengers. That behavior included loud praying at the gate area prior to boarding, refusal to sit in assigned seats, requests for seat belt extensions that were unnecessary and unused, and travel on one-way tickets with no checked baggage.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was demonstrated in federal District Court to be affiliated with Hamas (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a designated terrorist organization as listed by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), and its attorney, Omar Mohammedi, a former president of CAIR’s New York chapter, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the six imams, including Imam Sulaiman.
The Egyptian-born Imam Sulaiman has served since 2002 as the imam at the ICCP, which was founded in 1982 and received its tax-exempt 501(c)3 status as a religious establishment. The ICCP website openly identifies the mosque as Shariah-compliant, with reference on its donations page to paying the “zakat,” an obligatory annual tax for all Muslims that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, and of which one-eighth must go to support jihad. According to its website, the ICCP’s property is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). The trust is yet another Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, as confirmed in a 2009 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division, which identified the trust as a Hamas associate.
Imam Sulaiman is a member of the Washington, D.C.-based North American Imams Federation, whose board of trustees include the Jordanian-born Imam Omar Shahin (another of the so-called “Flying Imams” and former imam of the Islamic Center of Tucson, Ariz.) and Imam Siraj Wahhaj, whose name appeared on a U.S. government list of unindicted co-conspirators for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Imam Sulaiman is a 1992 graduate of the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, where he received his doctorate with a specialization in the hadith, the accounts of the life and deeds of Islam’s founder, Muhammad. He memorized the Koran at the age of 11 and overall, has spent some 33 years in the study of Islam. Given this background, Imam Sulaiman is a very senior cleric, whose authority projects influence in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately, in April 2004, when Zuhdi Jasser, the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, organized a Muslim Rally Against Terrorism, Imam Sulaiman and other imam members of the Valley Council of Imams refused to lend their support because they refused to condemn terrorism in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Although not yet confirmed, it’s likely that the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was the mosque where Texas gunman Elton Simpson, born in 1991 in Illinois before moving to Phoenix, was converted to Islam, reportedly while attending high school, 2005-09. It was, however, about 2006 when he began discussing the Muslim’s obligation to engage in jihad in telephone conversations recorded by the FBI. Due to the court’s apparent ignorance of the fact that the only kind of jihad discussed anywhere in Islamic Law is “war against non-Muslims,” the government failed to convict him of anything beyond making a false statement about his intention to go to Somalia to participate in jihad. Further, according to published media reports, it was in 2006 that Usama Shami, the ICCP mosque president, dates his own relationship with Simpson, who would have been converted to Islam at about that time.
The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix’s Facebook page has posted links to both the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Muslim American Society and the Islamic Community Center of Tempe (or Tempe Masjid). Although not an event linked by the ICCP, the Tempe Masjid’s Facebook page currently contains an announcement for a May 15-17 course titled “Dawn of Mercy: The Messenger in Mecca.” One of the featured speakers for that event is Siraj Wahhaj, whose name appeared on a U.S. government list of unindicted co-conspirators for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Finally, in April 2015, Imam Sulaiman figured among other local imams who condemned the Islamic State and its barbarity as somehow divorced from Islamic doctrine and singled out Fox News, which he claimed was “paid to create an animosity between people.”
At least in the case of these two jihadi gunmen, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, the formative influence of a mosque like the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix and its clerical leadership must not be overlooked, especially when their affiliations, leadership and programs are as troubling as these.
• Clare M. Lopez is vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy.
SHOCKER: Texas Jihadis Trained at Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Community Center of Phoenix
Islamic Community Center of Phoenix (ICCP)
UTT, Understanding The Threat by John Guandolo, May 5, 2015:
As in nearly every jihadi attack in America since 9/11 – those thwarted and those which succeed in their evil plans – the jihadis were trained at a Muslim Brotherhood organization, the FBI is still looking for a motive, anti-American groups like the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center take sides with the terrorists, the media focuses on ensuring Muslims are not offended and turns to Hamas (doing business as CAIR) for advice, and the root of the problem is – yet again – ignored.
One Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leader in Phoenix, Arizona – Usama Shami – confirmed the two jihadis who were killed in Garland, Texas attended Shami’s MB Islamic Community Center of Phoenix (ICCP). Shami specifically stated he knew both shooters well, especially Elton Simpson, and that Simpson had attended the ICCP for over ten years.
The property for the ICCP is owned by the bank for the Muslim Brotherhood in North America – NAIT (North American Islamic Trust). NAIT was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood entity and a financial support organization for Hamas (a designated terrorist organization) in the largest terrorism financing and Hamas trial ever successfully prosecuted in American history (US v Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Dallas, 2008).
Click here for U.S. Government filing in HLF regarding NAIT (specifically pages 7, 12, 13).
The FBI was investigating NAIT back in the 1980’s for being a part of the Ikhwan (MB) in America.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Arabic website says it is waging a “Long and unrelenting jihad” against the West. Their strategic document for North America – “An Explanatory Memorandum” – says “their work in America is a kind of grand jihad and calls for “Civilization Jihad” to “destroy Western civilization from within.” The Muslim Brotherhood’s By-Laws state the MB “is an international Muslim body which seeks to establish Allah’s law (Sharia) in the land…” and call Muslims to “be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing the Islamic state.”
The MB’s strategic documents also says that MB Islamic Centers are the “axis” of their Movement to “supply (their) battalions.” They go on to say their Islamic Centers are like the first Mosque in Medina which Mohammed established. That mosque was where they stored food, water, ammunition and weapons. It is where jihadis lived and trained. It is where battles were planned, and was the place from which battles were launched. The MB states this is the function of their Islamic Centers in America.
Reminder: Hamas IS the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
We have the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix owned by the MB bank and two of its longstanding members committing jihad against non-Muslims in accordance with Sharia. What else would you expect?
The ICCP’s President Usama Shami said in a news interview that “All of the teachings in this mosque is against those actions (taken by Simpson and Soofi)…both of them were never engaged in any politics or any extreme views or extreme opinions.”
It is interesting that when he spoke with the LA Times Shami said he had not seen Simpson in a month, but later in the above video interview that time was extended to two to three months. Lie much?
Will we believe him or the doctrine the MB states his Islamic Center adheres to?
This is an interesting contrast to Simpson’s attorney who said: “He was very devout. He was very vocal about being devout…I know that some of the statements he made like if you die on the battlefield then you get, whatever, you get the wives…that’s a belief of the Muslim faith.”
Nearly every jihadi who has launched an attack on U.S. soil since and including 9/11/2001, as well as those attacks which were thwarted by law enforcement, has been “radicalized”, trained, funded, and/or supported by one of the thousands of Muslim Brotherhood organizations across the United States. From the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the Islamic Societies, Islamic Centers, Muslim American Society, and so many others, jihadis are launching jihad on our home turf and the very organizations and individuals leading those organizations are getting a free pass.
When will the arrest warrant for Usama Shami be issued for material support of terrorism? How about shutting down the ICCP, seizing its property, taking its money, and bulldozing it to the ground?
How bad will it have to get before you decide enough is enough America?
