This is just a reminder that the GOP terror donor scandal is a great opportunity to remind folks about a much larger scandal involving Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff’s colleague David Safavian directing a Saudi-financed GOP Get out the Vote effort for the American Muslim in the 2000 election with members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the grand-daddy of all Sunni Islamist militant groups, the Muslim Brotherhood. This scandal doesn’t simply highlight the duplicitous nature of the people running GWOT, but it’s also reflective of a real split within the GOP between the hard-right Likudnik-types (bomb! bomb! bomb!), and those that want us to ally with the Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-Right Islamists across the Middle East. Bringing this older scandal up within the context of this new, unfolding GOP terror-financier scandal might help further that schism and weaken the warmongers.
This is just a reminder that GOP terror donor scandal is a great opportunity to remind folks about a much larger scandal involving Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff’s colleague David Safavian directing a Saudi-financed GOP Get out the Vote effort for the American Muslim in the 2000 election with members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the grand-daddy of all Sunni Islamist militant groups, the Muslim Brotherhood. This scandal doesn’t simply highlight the duplicitous nature of the people running GWOT, but it’s also reflective of a real split within the GOP between the hard-right Likudnik-types (bomb! bomb! bomb!), and those that want us to ally with the Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-Right Islamists across the Middle East. Bringing this older scandal up within the context of this new, unfolding GOP terror-financier scandal might help further that schism and weaken the warmongers.
To get acquainted with what we’re talking about here, let’s take a look at an excellent 2003 St. Petersburg Times article:
Friends in high places
Sami Al-Arian isn't the only prominent Muslim leader who posed for chummy pictures with President Bush. Many conservative Republicans are uneasy at the way GOP power broker Grover Norquist curries support from the Muslim community.
By MARY JACOBY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 11, 2003
WASHINGTON -- The rumpled, balding figure was spotted darting into the offices of Republican power broker Grover Norquist last July. When Sami Al-Arian emerged more than two hours later, someone was waiting for him.
Conservative activist Frank Gaffney, whose think tank on national security issues has offices on the same floor, was eager to confirm a tip that the suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative was next door.
...
As part of Norquist's well publicized strategy to mine the Muslim community for GOP votes, Al-Arian had campaigned for Bush in 2000, posed for a photo with the candidate at Plant City's Strawberry Festival and boasted publicly that Muslims in Florida may have tipped the close presidential election to Bush.
Now, Al-Arian was visiting the Islamic Institute, a Muslim outreach group co-founded by Norquist and housed within his office suite.
...
Norquist and Saffuri founded the Islamic Institute in 1999 with seed money from Qatar, Kuwait and other Middle Eastern sources. Among the contributors, records show, was Saffuri's former boss, a Muslim charity director and founder of the American Muslim Council, Abdurahman Alamoudi.
The records show Alamoudi gave at least $35,000 to the institute, although Alamoudi said in a written statement he did "not recollect having been quite that generous."
[Also funding the institute were two Virginia-based nonprofit organizations. The Safa Trust donated at least $35,000, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought gave $11,000, the records show.
Last March, federal authorities raided those groups and others in Operation Greenquest, a major assault on suspected terrorist financial networks.
...
Being a Norquist outfit, it’s not surprising that the full name of the Islamic Institute is the Islamic Free Market Institute (the Muslim Brotherhood is generally pro-free markets, making it that much more attractive to Western interests). And given Norquist’s old ties to Jack Abramoff, it’s not surprising that Abramoff’s buddy, David Safavian, was also a co-founder of the Islamic Institute (he’s was later sentenced to prison over his behavior as the Federal government’s procurement chief). And while the Islamic Institute may have received some money from the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the Safa Trust (formerly known as the SAAR network), their ties go far deeper than a some donations, and are, in fact, beachheads for the far-Right Islamist/Wahhabist Muslim Brotherhood and its Saudi and Gulf monarchy backers. In addition to being long-time US allies, the Muslim Brotherhood and the House of Saud are aggressive promoters Wahhabism and have long-standing and ongoing ties to terror financing.
Sami Al-Arian was later sentenced to 18 months in prison in a plea bargain where he confessed to being a PIJ operative. Somewhat reminiscent to a day of testimony where he plead the Fifth Amendment ninety-nine times regarding his involvement with the PIJ in a related trial, al-Arian recently has refused to testify against the International Institute of Islamic Thought, arguing both that it would go against his plea bargain, and that his life would be in danger if he did testify. He appears to be carrying out a hunger strike at the moment.
Interestingly, the IIIT was co-founded by a fellow named Jamal Barzinji. Barzinji also set up Nada International, named for Youssef Nada, a key figure in the far-Right-infested al-Taqwa network. And the al-Taqwa network is a major component of the Muslim Brotherhood’s international financial network. Another major component, the Saudi-royalty-backed DMI, recently came under investigation.
In addition to running the Islamic Free-market Institute, Grover and David Safavian co-founded the Janus-Merritt lobbying firm. One of their clients was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who used to run the military’s muslim chaplain program, before he was sentenced to 23 years for plotting to assassinated the then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah King of Saudi Arabia in a bizarre plot with Libya that was designed to look like an al-Qaeda attack (Alamoudi apparently bites the hand that feeds him). In 2001, Janus-Merritt changed their records to indicate that their lobbying client was not Alamoudi, but instead Jamal Barzinji. This was a year before Barzinji was named in a search warrant for the Operation Greenquest terror-financing investigation.
While we've seen some of these figures go to prison, the Operation Greenquest investigation died a bureaucratic death after getting folded in the Department of Homeland Security, leaving much of this stuff largely unresolved. These unresolved questions include questions about the investigation into P-tech, a software firm with
hired to conduct "risk assessment" for government agencies included the FBI, the Department of Energy, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Navy, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. House of Representatives, the White House, and that's just where the list beings. P-tech was heavily financed by accused al-Qaeda financier Yassin al-Qadi (who was also subject to an investigation in the 90's that led to an FBI whistle blower coming forward), and Yaqcub Mirza, one of the figures that set up many of the SAAR network entities targeted in the Operation Greenquest raids. Yacqub Mirza is also a figure that may still have business ties to a company involved in developing US weapons systems.
And this is all just the tip of the iceberg of a Muslim Brotherhood network that has quite close to both key point-men in the GOP’s own far-Right agenda and terror-financing. So while the GOP/Alishtari terror-financing story is quite interesting, we have to keep in mind that this story is an opportunity to bring up the much bigger story of the the GOP’s profoundly disturbing ties to financiers of terror.