Obama’s Radical [Muslim] Guests-You learn a lot about a President by who he invites to dinner

Frontpagemagazine ^ | 8-19-10 | Joseph Klein

[SJackson]

With all of the hubbub surrounding President Obama’s apparent endorsement of the Ground Zero mega mosque and community center complex at last week’s White House Ramadan dinner, none of the cable talk shows that I have watched have bothered to examine the guest list. I think that is a mistake because the guest list gives some insight into what Obama really believes.

Amongst all of the ambassadors and other dignitaries, two “community” leaders with a radical Islamic agenda stand out.

The first was Dr. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

ISNA was named as an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, an Islamic “charity” which was convicted in 2008 by a federal jury for giving more than $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

One month after 9/11, Dr. Mattson described the extremist Wahhabism ideology that inspired the 9/11 terrorists this way:

It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European Protestant Reformation.

In a September 2002 interview with PBS, Mattson stated that she did not see “any difference” between Christian leaders criticizing Islam or al Qaeda on the one hand, and Osama bin Laden citing “Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans” on the other.

And apparently, President Obama is following Mattson’s advice in purging the phrase “Islamic terrorism” from his administration’s lexicon. Is it any wonder that she was on Obama’s guest list for the Ramadan dinner?

The second radical Islamic White House dinner guest was Salam Al-Marayati, a co-founder and director of  the Muslim Public Affairs Council. This is an individual who likes to speak about building bridges and inter-faith dialogue, but only as a cover for his more radical views. What Islamists such as Al-Marayati like to do is invert the meaning of American ideals and history to suit sharia (Islamic law) and the Islamic narrative of the oppressed victim. For example, he said that:

When Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’  that statement epitomized jihad [Islamic holy war].

Al-Marayati has also excused Palestinian terrorism and condemned Israeli acts of self-defense. Back in 1996, for example, a Palestinian named Muhammad Hamida shouted  Allahu Akbar (Allah is Great) as he drove his car intentionally into a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem, killing one Israeli and injuring 23 others. He was shot dead before he could wreak any further mayhem.

Who did Al-Marayati choose to condemn? Not the terrorist, but rather the person or persons who ended his rampage, whom Al-Marayati demanded be extradited to the United States for trial in an American court on terrorism charges!

This so-called “moderate” was so bad that in 1999 then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri decided to withdraw his nomination of Salam Al-Marayati to the 10-member National Commission on Terrorism that was being formed.

It gets even worse. Al-Marayati’s Muslim Public Affairs Council has issued policy papers which argue for the removal of Hezbollah and Hamas from U.S. terrorist designations.

And on the very day of the horrific 9/11 attacks, on a Los Angeles radio program al-Marayati said

If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.

Now, this same Salam Al-Marayati is a guest in President Obama’s White House along with his fellow radical Islamist Dr. Ingrid Mattson.

You can learn a lot about someone by the company he keeps – or, in President Obama’s case, the people he invites to dinner at the White House.

[SJackson]

INGRID MATTSON

• President of the Islamic Society of North America

Ingrid Mattson is the President of the ’s (ISNA) United States office. She is also a professor at the MacDonald Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, where she serves as Director of Islamic Chaplaincy.

Mattson was born in 1963 in Ontario, Canada, to Roman Catholic parents. She abandoned her Christian faith as a teenager. In the 1980s she attended the University of Waterloo, Ontario, where she studied philosophy. There she befriended a group of Muslims and converted to Islam. Following her graduation in 1987, Mattson relocated to Pakistan, where she worked with Afghan refugee women. In 1995 she served as an advisor to the Afghan delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women. In 1999 she earned her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago.

In a talk she delivered at a 2000 ISNA Conference in Canada, Mattson the work of Islamic revivalist and jihadist Maulana Abul A'la Maududi, an author who , approvingly, in his 1980 book Jihad in Islam: 

“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it … Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.” In 2001 Mattson was elected Vice President of ISNA; five years later she was elected President.

At an October 2001 open forum sponsored by CNN, Mattson was asked by a participant to comment on Wahhabism, an extreme, intolerant form of Islam with myriad to Saudi Arabia and Islamic terrorism. Mattson : 

“No, it’s not true to characterize Wahhabism that way. This is not a sect. It is the name of a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European Protestant Reformation…. [T]he Saudi scholars who are Wahhabi have denounced terrorism and denounced in particular the acts of September 11.” In 2002 Mattson authored a chapter, titled “Stopping Oppression: an Islamic Obligation,” in the book September 11: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences. She : 

“… Muslims perceive that Israeli aggression against Palestinians continues without American sanction; indeed, enormous financial and military support for Israel has continued. It seems that any Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is termed ‘terrorism,’ and is responded to with overwhelming force. The result is the Palestinians themselves are increasingly showing less restraint in the force they employ to defend their families and lands.”   

Mattson went on to American foreign policy as a force of evil not only in the Middle East, but all over the world:

“The American government has not criticized sufficiently the brutality of the Israeli government, believing that it needs to be ‘supportive’ of the Jewish state. The result is that oppression, left unchecked, can increase to immense proportions, until the oppressed are smothered with hopelessness and rage…. So often we have to tell other Muslims throughout the world, that America is not as bad as it appears. We tell them, ‘These policies (support for oppressive governments, enforcement of sanctions against Iraq, lack of support for Palestinians) contradict the true values of America’ … The critical situation we find ourselves living in today is the result, to a great extent, of allowing injustice and oppression to continue unchecked.” 

In a September 2002 interview with , Mattson stated that she did not see “any difference” between Christian leaders criticizing Islam or on the one hand, and citing “Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans” on the other. That is, she believed that the Christians were inciting terrorism in a manner not unlike bin Laden.

At the opening of ISNA’s 43rd annual convention in 2006, Mattson expressed her dismay that the phrase “Islamic terrorism” had gained such wide popular currency. “I’m convinced that it is not only inaccurate, but unhelpful,” Mattson , suggesting that U.S. officials should simply refer to “terrorism, crime, [or] violence,” with no mention of any religious connection.

Mattson was an for a 2006-2007 public opinion survey on the demographics, attitudes, and experiences of Muslim Americans. Among her fellow Board members were: (a) , who is affiliated with the , the , and the ; and (b) , Project Director for the .

In a 2007 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Mattson that Americans were unduly judgmental of Muslims generally, and that their fear of Islamic terrorism had been blown out of all proportion: “There’s a prejudgment, a collective judgment of Muslims, and a suspicion that, well, ‘you may appear nice, but we know there are sleeper cells of Americans,’ which of course is not true. There aren’t any sleeper cells.”

Speaking at ’s Kennedy School of Government in March 2007, Mattson : “Right-wing Christians are very risky allies for American Jews, because they [the Christians] are really anti-Semitic. They do not like Jews and [they harbor the] fundamentalist belie[f] that it would be desirable for all Jews to return to Israel.”

Not limiting herself to speaking out exclusively on matters related to religion and international relations, Mattson on occasion has taken up the cause of environmental activism. In 2003, for instance, she was a to a letter titled “Global Warming: An Interfaith Call for Repentance and Renewal,” which specifically blamed the U.S. for the proliferation of global greenhouse emissions and advocated the creation of “a sustainable economy” that might help to heal “earth’s wounds.” Other signers included , , and .

In August 2008 Mattson was a keynote speaker at an interfaith gathering held at the National Convention.

In addition to her role with ISNA, Mattson serves on the Board of Directors of the Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois, an institution that has from the .

In January 2009, Mattson a prayer at the National Prayer Service, one of the events associated with the inauguration of President .

, Obama advisor invited Mattson to work on the White House Council on Women and Girls, which Jarrett leads.

Mattson formerly served, along with ISNA’s past President , on the Board of Trustees of the , which has had close ties to both the and the now-defunct .

 

SALAM AL-MARAYATI

• Founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
• Accused Israelis of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks
• Hamas and Hezbollah sympathizer

Salam Al-Marayati is the founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Los Angeles-based Islamic advocacy group that defends Muslim extremist violence. MPAC has condemned the anti-terrorism measures of both the U.S. and Israel, and has called for a repeal of the Patriot Act.

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, Al-Marayati used a Los Angeles talk radio program as a forum in which to accuse the Israelis of responsibility for that morning's attacks on New York and Washington. Al-Marayati has also called for the U.S. government to unfreeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Global Relief Foundation and the Holy Land Foundation, that were shut down by the government because of funding they had given to terrorist organizations.

Al-Marayati refuses to call Hezbollah a terrorist group. "I don't think any group should be judged 100% this or that," he says. "I think every group is going to have . . . its claim of liberation and resistance." He has similarly justified Hamas' existence as a political entity that promotes social programs and "educational operations." "Yesterday's terrorists in the Middle East are today's leaders," he says. "The PLO is the number one example of this . . . The PLO 35 years ago was considered a terrorist organization, nobody should deal with them . . . But they became the people in authority, in Palestine, today. So Hamas today, the way it's being viewed, is exactly how the PLO was viewed 30 years ago. And in fact, even Hamas in terms of its social and educational operations is doing exactly what the PLO was doing 35 years ago, as well as its quote unquote military operations."

During a 1997 speech he delivered at the University of Pennsylvania, Al-Marayati equated the concept of jihad to the statements of the eighteenth-century American statesman Patrick Henry. Said Al-Marayat, "[T]he person who we think in America would epitomize jihad would be Patrick Henry, who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' That is a way of looking at the term jihad from an American perspective."

[bestintxas]

This Obama has soiled all the esteem we Americans have had for the office of the President.

And I though Clinton had desecrated the Oval Office with Monica.

Clinton was having fun. Obama is overseeing the destruction of our very institutions by inviting enemies inside to attack us.

Like a true adherent to the Koran would do, I might add.

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[freebird5850]

Shame is only the few of us feel that way. The dims around me just keep reverting to Bush whenever I say something about it.

[Matthew James]

OK, people, we all need to plan trips to New York, pay homage to the Ground Zero site, and toss a raw pork-chop into the planned site of the mosque.

Imagine thousands of pork-chops showing up every day where they want to build this thing! If they want to deface our hallowed ground this way, then we can play at that game, too!

[FrdmLvr]

We need to show up in droves to the sharia mosque protest at ground zero on 9-11. My husband and I are planning to go.

[rawcatslyentist]

It's so bad they even had to hide it from the People!

Pic from last weeks Ruinadumbodingdong party.

[CitizenM]

The fact that he hosted this dinner, and invited these people...when...he didn't allow the National Day of Prayer breakfast in the White House infuriates me. Oh, yes, he issued a National Day of Prayer proclamation...but he did not attend the breakfast, nor host it in the WH as did his predecessors. I would not be surprised if he cancels Christmas in the White House next.

I don't know if he is a true Muslim or what. He certainly does not openly practice Christianity or Islam. He surely has shown more concern for Islam than Christianity. But his exact "religion" is a question. Truly, I don't think Obama believes in God or Allah. I think he only adores himself and anti-American, anti-White religious leaders who follow and practice some contrived religion of hated that is a mixture of racism, terrorism, Marxism, and resentment.

[massgopguy]

How much you want to bet that she’s not allowed back in Canada?

[onyx]

Obama is not hiding his allegiance anymore. He has his lame stream media in his pocket. Cowards all. I am convinced they’re afraid of the Muslims.

[tutstar]

I wonder if they snuck in Osama?

[tutstar]

you might be interested in this article

[tutstar]

bump

[the lone haranguer]

Our first president said it best: “Associate with men of good character, for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

[Karliner]

Wel I do remember he said in one speach he was going to paint the White House black. And he has, black with eveil, they might have to raise it because fumigation may not work once this closet muzzie is out of there. Soon he’ll be on another vacation, Martha’s Vineyard now; the guy thinks he’s reached the pinnacle and deserves to live like the “new money” riche old money folks frown upon.

[tutstar]

fyi...

birds of a a feather flock together

[Larousse2]

My Note: Wayne Masden is former U. S. Navy Intelligence Officer. He is now an Investigative Journalist.

Bombshell: Barack Obama conclusively outed as CIA creation

http://www.infowars.com/bombshell-barack-obama-conclusively-outed-as-cia-creation/

[MrB]

That’s the biggest part of it - they are afraid of the Muslims.

This is why we cannot name our enemy, those who seek our destruction and enslavement.

[MrB]

by their fruits you will know them

Matt 7:15-20