Linda Sarsour has a list and she’s checking it twice. What is Sharia Claus up to this time? Preparing to sue all those who’ve “defamed” her by accurately representing her barbaric positions.
Just know that I am taking names of those who have lied about me to defame my character. I may be quiet now but not for long. I am working.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 11, 2017
I can't put a price tag on the trauma that these propaganda campaigns have put on my family. People will pay w/ their pockets.
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) July 11, 2017
It will be interesting to see if accurately reporting on the fact that Linda Sarsour enthusiastically shared the stage with an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings just a few months ago will get a cease and desist.
Let’s see, shall we?
As you can find on Facebook, back in April Sarsour spoke at a banquet with Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Prior to giving her now-infamous speech calling for “jihad” against the Trump administration, she thanked her “favorite person in this room…Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has been a mentor, motivator, and encourager of mine.”
So let’s review a handful of Siraj’s views. I (Matt Palumbo) had been familiar with the kook because I devoted some time to him in examining the radical ties of CAIR in my book “A Paradocial Alliance:”
According to CAIR Minnesota’s website, “Siraj Wahhaj is one of the most admired Muslim leaders and speakers in America. He is the imam of Al-Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, NY and serves on the executive committee of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). He previously served on the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.”They also note that in 1991, Wahhaj made history as the first Muslim to offer the opening prayer at the U.S. House of Representatives. They don’t mention that a mere four years later, he was among the 170 people identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Despite never being charged, he did defend the convicted bomb plotters, and called the FBI and CIA the “real terrorists.”
But let’s get back to 1991. That was also the year that he preached that “wherever you came from, you came to America. And you came for one reason and one reason only — to establish Allah’s deen.” And what does that entail? The creation of an Islamic State, of course. “There will never be an Islamic State, never, until there’s first an Islamic State of mind” he said, continuing that one shouldn’t get involved in politics because it’s “the American thing to do,” but rather that “you get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”
In an 1992 address to an Islamic gathering in New Jersey, Wahhaj expressed his desire to have Muslims seize control of the United States and replace the country’s constitutional government with an Islamic caliphate. “If we were united and strong,” Wahhaj said, “we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him…[T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”
And it should go without saying that he’s even more enthusiastic about Sharia law than Sarsour is. According to him, “If Allah says 100 strikes, 100 strikes it is. If Allah says cut off their hand, you cut off their hand. If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it’s the obedience of Allah and his messenger—nothing personal.” Well, thank God it’s not personal!
And, while Sarsour claims she was talking about jihad as a “personal struggle” against the Trump administration, as Discover the Networks noted, “in a 1992 sermon, Wahhaj emphasized the importance of jihad to his Al-Taqwa mosque congregation: “I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’ The violence has to be selected…Islam is the only answer because it is only Islam that we do it for Allah…[We are] commanded to do jihad…[W]hen Allah commands us to fight we are not stopping, no one will stop us.”
If this is who Sarsour’s mentor is, she knew very well what she was implying when she called for “jihad.”
[Note: This post was written by Matt Palumbo. He is a co-author of the new book A Paradoxical Alliance: Islam and the Left, and can be found on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]
