Muslim U.S. House rep to speak at conference of Hamas-linked Islamic Society of North America

The establishment media will care nothing about this. It isn’t as if Donald Trump were appearing with someone who had been tarred as an “Islamophobe.” There would be a massive uproar over that. But links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood? Who cares? There is simply no concern on the left for Islamic jihad and its enablers. Jihad does not exist; only “Islamophobia” does.

“The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was established in July 1981 by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood with a background as leaders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA). As author and terrorism expert Steven Emerson puts it, ISNA “grew out of the Muslim Students Association, which also was founded by Brotherhood members.” Indeed, Muslim Brothers would dominate ISNA’s leadership throughout the Society’s early years. Striving “to advance the cause of Islam and serve Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life,” ISNA was highly dependent upon Saudi funding during its early years.” — from Discover the Networks

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

In its latest filing before the federal district court in Dallas on behalf of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and its affiliate organization, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) in the Hamas-terrorism financing case, the ACLU has made a noteworthy admission.

Rather than deny that there is copious evidence tying ISNA and NAIT to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the brief argues that such evidence is merely dated. In a curious footnote on page 7, the reply states:

Assuming the authenticity of documents’ dates, the most recent documents to mention either ISNA or NAIT are dated 1991, Gov. Exhs. 3-3 and 3-85, but the majority of the documents are older. Almost all of the numerous exhibits that purport to show financial transactions and that contain any mention of ISNA or NAIT are dated 1988 and 1989 (there are two dated 1990), almost a decade before the majority of the overt acts the government alleges in support of its conspiracy charges against the HLF defendants.

So ISNA and NAIT are not saying that the documents tying their organizations to Hamas are “inauthentic,” but that the problem with the evidence is just that it is old. Then, even more curiously, the reply goes on to argue something that the government has not even alleged:

Even if the “evidence” provided some basis for alleging criminality against petitioners, the government’s discussion of it shows the government utterly fails to grasp the singular weight and consequence that an official accusation of criminal conduct carries in our criminal justice system and in our society.

But, of course, the government has not charged ISNA or NAIT with criminal conduct, or the two groups would be indicted in their own right, rather than un-indicted co-conspirators who worked with the Holy Land for Relief and Development (HLF), the defendant and alleged Hamas-front. The reply brief then, as Shakespeare might write, “doth protest too much.”

“House Dem To Speak at Anti-Israel Conference With Holocaust Denier and Ex-Hamas Member,” by Chuck Ross, Washington Free Beacon, June 28, 2024:

Rep. André Carson (D., Ind.) will speak at the annual convention of an Islamic group linked to Hamas, along with one imam convicted in Israel of serving in terrorist groups and another who has denied the Holocaust, praised Adolf Hitler, and more recently said he doesn’t care about the October 7 attack.

Carson, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, is slated to speak at the Islamic Society of North America’s convention in Dallas on a Sept. 1 panel with Mehdi Hasan, a journalist formerly with MSNBC and the Qatar-funded network Al Jazeera.

Many of Carson’s fellow speakers at the events have preached anti-Israel rhetoric for years. Yasir Qadhi, who will appear on a panel with Hasan and socialist presidential candidate Cornel West, once claimed that “Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews” and has called the Holocaust a “hoax.” He expressed ambivalence about the October 7 attack at a campus rally last month, telling students, “I don’t care about that one particular day.”

Mohammad Qatanani, who will speak on the panel “Standing in Solidarity with the Victims in Gaza & Palestine,” reportedly faced deportation proceedings in the United States for failing to disclose that an Israeli court convicted him for providing material support to Hamas, “as well as his membership in the terror organization,” according to Canary Mission.

The imams’ appearance at the conference is perhaps no surprise given the Islamic Society of North America’s longstanding ties to Hamas. Federal prosecutors in a 2007 terrorism finance investigation labeled the organization an “unindicted co-conspirator” of Hamas….