In the course of our correspondence, Azhar was unusually candid in describing her and her group’s goal of creating a new America and bringing her brand of Islam to the masses. Recently, I had the opportunity to communicate with another young female involved with MAS. Her responses were as disturbing as Azhar’s, if not more so.
On June 12, 2009, I received the following from an individual going by the name Sabrena Hamdan, concerning the website of our group, Americans Against Hate (AAH): “Dear whom ever this is addressed to, I have recently seen your website and really am taken aback. Not in a good way no no. More like a ‘stricken how can a human being be this dishonest’ sort of aback. 99.9% OF THE THINGS ON YOUR WEBSITE ARE NOT EVEN REAL FACTS.”
Without offering any specifics to back up her accusation, she then listed six quotes that she found on our site, quotes that we had previously used as evidence of the violence and hatred being propagated by the Muslim American Society (MAS), an organization that Hamdan later said she was involved with. They were:
The Holy Prophet (and through him the Muslims) has been reassured that he should not mind the enmity, the evil designs and the machinations of the Jews...”
“In view of the degenerate moral condition of the Jews and the Christians, the Believers have been warned not to make them their friends and confidants.”
“If you gain a victory over the men of Jews, kill them.”
“The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’”
“May Allah destroy the Jews, because they used the graves of their prophets as places of worship.”
“A Muslim must always worship Allah and wage jihad until death in order to reach his ultimate goal… Regularly make the intention to go on jihad with the ambition to die as a martyr.”
Hamdan wrote that “these so called ‘quotes’ are unbelievable.” She said that “most of them came from a Muslim [who] does not follow Islam.” She claimed that “the Quran says to be friends with the people of the book [Jews and Christians] and respect them.” She called the quotes “lies.” Yet, every one of the quotes was located on the official website of the Minnesota chapter of MAS.
I showed her proof that MAS published the quotes on its site, but she still questioned why I would consider MAS to be an “extremist group.”
She wrote to me, “I am involved with MAS. It is utterly harmless.” Either it was Miss Hamdan who was, herself, lying, or she was completely ignorant of the bigotry being spread by the organization she purported to be a part of. Indeed, even with the subject of “friendship” in the Quran, MAS-Minnesota has quoted the text three different ways, each one stating, “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends.”
In follow-up e-mails, Hamdan’s ignorance/denial continued, except no longer was it regarding religious texts. Soon it revolved around support for terror.
In her sixth e-mail to me, Hamdan sent me a link to a MAS page attacking me for attempting to get a 2006 MAS New Year’s youth retreat (previously known as “jihad camp”) shut down for having, as its featured speaker, Youth Director of MAS-New Jersey and member of MAS’s Board of Trustees, Mazen Mokhtar. Like Hamdan’s calling the MAS-Minnesota quotes “lies,” MAS stated that I “falsely accused” Mokhtar of “having ties to al-Qaeda.”
According to the U.S. government, Mokhtar was the “U.S.-based administrator” for qoqaz.net (Jihad in Chechnya), a website that was raising funds and recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda and the Taliban shortly before and after the 9/11 attacks. The site was a project of Azzam Publications, an organization named for Osama bin Laden’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam. Mokhtar created and operated “mirror sites” for Qoqaz out of his North Brunswick, New Jersey home.
When I informed Hamdan of this and the fact that Mokhtar had stated on a number of occasions his support for Hamas and suicide bombings, she came back at me with a statement that could only be viewed as bizarre. She wrote, “But that’s not the point is it? He is doing something very nice enough to create these activities for youth. Am I right, he is not terrorizing us is he? No he helps me give the service hours for high school and to teach my sister relig[i]on. He gets muslim girls and boys together.”
When I asked her how she could describe someone who actively supports terrorism overseas as being “very nice,” she told me, in her final e-mail, that Mokhtar “puts an effect on the whole muslim community.”
Mokhtar certainly has put an affect on her – to the point where she blindly ignores the terrorism, as she has ignored MAS’s dissemination of hate.
Who has allowed this young girl to fall prey to such a warped environment as this? And how many more young minds have been “affected” by Mokhtar’s and MAS’s “kindness”? Where are the elders to step in and say “enough”?
Sadly, they sit in silence, if not contributing, to this Islamist child abuse.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.