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Wednesday, December 6, 2006
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<hr size=1 width="100%" noshade color="#aca899" align=center>
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Doubts grow over Muslim lawmaker's loyalty
Keith Ellison tied to group that holds Quran as highest legal authority
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Posted: December 6, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
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size=1 width="100%" align=center>
C 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Keith Ellison
The first Muslim member of Congress is linked to a radical Islamic school of
thought that requires loyalty to the Quran over the U.S. Constitution, WND
has learned.
Rep.-elect Keith (Hakim-Mohammed) Ellison, D-Minn., has drawn fire for
asking to take the constitutional oath on the Quran rather than the Bible at
a swearing-in ceremony next month.
The Constitution specifies that members of Congress shall be bound by an
oath to support the constitutional law of the land. In the oath, Ellison
will be required to swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic ... without any
mental reservation or purpose of evasion."
(Story continues below)
Critics argue he has conflicting loyalties, while Ellison insists he's a
patriot.
But within days of being elected, Ellison held a workshop on politics for a
group closely affiliated with a radical Islamic school that preaches no
Muslim can pledge loyalty to the Constitution or make laws outside the laws
of the Quran, which the school's leaders assert is the "supreme law" of the
land, trumping all man-made laws including the U.S. Constitution.
During a 1998 police protest in Minneapolis, then-civil-rights lawyer Keith
Ellison, a former acolyte of Louis Farrakhan, distributes copies of the
Nation of Islam leader's paper, "The Final Call." (Photo: Minnesota Daily)
A black convert to orthodox Sunni Islam, Ellison spoke to the North American
Imams Federation, or NAIF, at the group's Nov. 19 conference in Minneapolis.
His talk flowed into a breakout session listed on the agenda simply as
"American Open University," according to the conference program. It turns
out the university is a "distance-learning" center based in Alexandria, Va.,
and known to local law enforcement as "Wahhabi Online."
Later that day, Ellison met with NAIF's president, Omar Ahmad Shahin, who
lectures at the same American Open University. <http://www.aou.edu/> (He
also met at the time with New York imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted
co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.) The radical Islamic
school trains many of NAIF's more than 150 members, who control mosques
across America.
American Open University supports Sharia, or Islamic law. And its founder
and chairman, Jaafar Sheikh Idris <http://www.jaafaridris.com/English.htm> ,
has denounced the U.S system of democracy as "the antithesis of Islam" and
argued no man has the right to make laws outside Allah's laws expressed in
the Quran.
"There is a basic difference between Islam and this form of democracy," he
says. "The basic difference is that in Islam it is [Allah's] law as
expressed in the Quran and the Sunna that is the supreme law within the
limits of which people have the right to legislate.
"No one can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone
has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to that divine
law," Idris adds. "Examples of such violations include the legalization of
alcoholic drinks, gambling, homosexuality, usury or interest, and even
adoption."
Conversely, laws prohibiting polygamy and domestic violence also violate the
Quran.
Further, he maintains that no Muslim elected to Congress or the White House
can swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution and still be a Muslim.
"No Muslim could become president in a secular regime, for in order to
pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of
his belief and embrace the belief of secularism - which is practically
another religion. For Muslims, the word 'religion' does not only refer to a
collection of beliefs and rituals, it refers to a way of life which includes
all values, behaviors and details of living," Idris says. "Separation of
religion and state is not an option for Muslims because it requires us to
abandon [Allah's] decree for that of a man."
He further explains: "Islam cannot be separated from the state because it
guides Muslims through every detail of running the state and their lives.
Muslims have no choice but to reject secularism for it excludes the laws of
[Allah]."
Also, he asserts that "there is absolutely no compromise: Any belief that
contradicts Islam is false."
Backed by CAIR
Ellison's campaign was backed by the Washington-based lobby group Council on
<http://www.cairnet.org/> American-Islamic Relations, a partner
organization to American Open University-affiliated NAIF. CAIR held
fundraisers for Ellison, a civil-rights lawyer and one-time acolyte of Louis
Farrakhan who admits to making anti-Semitic remarks in the past (under
various alias including Keith Hakim, Keith Ellison-Muhammad and Keith X
Ellison).
CAIR's founder has argued the Quran
<http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32341> should replace the
Constitution as the highest authority in the land. The group's director of
communications, moreover, has expressed his desire to see the U.S. become an
Islamic state. CAIR is an offshoot of the Islamic Association for Palestine,
a suspected front for the terrorist group Hamas.
Pundit Dennis Prager and other critics have demanded Ellison take the
constitutional oath on the Bible, arguing the constitution derives its
authority from the Bible, not the Quran. If Ellison puts his hand on the
Quran, Prager says he would be in effect nullifying his oath and undermining
"American civilization."
"He should not be allowed to do so," he asserted in a recent column.
<http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53122>
Another critic, Glenn Beck of CNN, questioned Ellison's loyalties. "Sir,
prove to me that you are not working with our enemies," he asked Ellison on
a recent show.
"There's no one who is more patriotic than I am," Ellison replied. "And so,
you know, I don't need to prove my patriotic stripes."
Others point out Ellison has shown a pattern of disrespect for U.S. laws,
raising the question whether he's qualified to make law. Failure to pay his
taxes resulted in liens on his home. Failure to pay more than 40 parking and
traffic tickets has twice led to suspension of his Minnesota license. He's
also racked up hefty fines from campaign finance violations and defended the
leader of a cop-killing gang.
Constitutional scholars say Congress is under no obligation to seat Ellison
as a new member of the 110th Congress.
"The Senate and House have the power to seat new members," says Mark Levin
of the Landmark Legal Foundation in Washington. "They could say, 'Nope,
sorry, we're not swearing you in, and we don't care how many citizens voted
for you."
But that is unlikely to happen, he says, "because they would never challenge
the electorate," even in time of war.
Levin adds that the legislative branch is entering uncharted waters.
"A Muslim congressman with access to U.S. secrets is a situation we haven't
yet faced," he said. "But it's one that would certainly raise issues of
loyalty and trust."
Members of Congress are not required to undergo FBI background checks before
gaining access to classified information.
Red flags
In addition to CAIR, the NAIF-affiliated American Open University, however,
has raised a number of red flags at the FBI, including the fact that:
* It's founder and chairman, Jaafar Idris, is a Sudanese radical on
the Saudi payroll who was recently deported for visa fraud and spreading
extremism in America. Idris, like NAIF's Shahin, studied Islam in Saudi
Arabia and Sudan and says he has "great respect" for the father of the
purist Wahhabi movement followed by Osama bin Laden - Saudi theologian
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
* A co-founder of the school, Salah As-Sawi, is a professor at
Al-Azhar in Egypt, a bastion of the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood, which gave
rise to Hamas and al-Qaida. In fact, American Open University is a fully
accredited satellite campus of Al-Azhar. As-Sawi worked with Idris at the
Institute of Arabic and Islamic Sciences in Washington, a propaganda center
set up by the Saudi Embassy to spread Wahhabism in America. It was raided
after 9/11 and is still under surveillance by federal authorities.
* Alumni of the "university" include convicted members of the Virginia
Jihad Network, who trained to kill American troops overseas.
* The school has received funding from a suspected al-Qaida front that
has expressly advocated suicide attacks and using airliners as weapons. The
Islamic Assembly of North America, or IANA, is bankrolled by the Saudi
religious minister who stayed at the same Washington-area hotel as the
hijackers the night before they attacked the Pentagon. (He feigned a heart
attack when FBI agents tried to question him and was subsequently evacuated
with other Saudi officials on White House-approved escape flights after
9/11.)
A former CAIR official, Bassem Khafagi, headed IANA. He pleaded guilty to
<http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52443> terror-related charges
and was deported after 9/11.
Last month's NAIF conference program outlining Ellison's session, titled
"Imams and Politics," says Muslim involvement in Western politics is a
"sensitive" issue.
"Imams must be able to provide Muslims with the proper guidance and educate
them on the etiquettes [sic] of any political involvement within the Islamic
context," the program says. "Questions also arise on whether imams and
Islamic centers should be involved in politics at all and what the extent of
this involvement should be."
Transcripts of his talk and the subsequent breakout session on American Open
University were not made available to the public.
_____
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