Jihadi Du Jour: America's Imamania

America's Muslim holy men beyond reproach?

From Miss Kelly:

More from an Indian newspaper on the connection between the two arrested Boston imams and the founder of a notorious Pakistani terrorist group, reported by Amir Mir:

"The Pakistani authorities have confirmed the American findings that the imams of three mosques arrested on November 15 in Boston happen to be the close relatives of the founder of the deadly Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who now heads the Jamaatul Daawa. Pakistani interior ministry sources said ....they have informed the American authorities that while Hafiz Muhammad Masood and Hafiz Hamid happen to be the real brother of Saeed, Hafiz Muhammad Hannan is his brother-in-law.

"The sources say although the three imams have been released on bail, they are still facing legal proceedings and there are chances of their being deported to Pakistan especially after their family relations with Hafiz Saeed have been confirmed. Both Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jamaatul Daawa are generally considered to be pro-Osama and an anti-US groups which have been banned by the US State Department in 2002 and 2006 respectively."

Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is "one of the largest and most active Islamic terrorist outfits in South Asia." LeT is responsible for:

the Suicide bombing of the Indian Parliament in 2001 (12 dead, 22 injured),
the 2005 Delhi bombings in a crowded market (62 dead, 210 wounded),
the Mumbai train bombing in July 2006 (163 dead, 460 wounded), and plenty more.

LeT's explicitly stated goals are to destroy the Indian republic, to annihilate Hinduism and Judaism, and to restore Islamic rule over all parts of South Asia, Russia and even China. Hafiz Saeed himself has called for the assassination of Pope Benedict. Jamaat ud Dawa is a "humanitarian organization" set up as a front by LeT.

From Wiki: "The declaration of LeT (and Jamaat ud Dawa) as a terrorist organization by the United States Secretary of State in 2003 preserves the U.S. Government’s ability to take action against them in accordance with the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act, making it illegal for persons in the United States or subject to U.S. jurisdiction to provide material support to this terrorist groups. It requires U.S. financial institutions to block assets held by them; and it enables them to deny visas to representatives of this group."
Question: Have any of the mosques of Imams Masood (ICNE Sharon), Hannan (ISGL) and Hamid (ISGW) raised money for Jamaat ud Dawa?

More IMAM-a-Jammin' from Minneaoplis, MN:

Suspicion about the Flying Imams grows as terror links pile up...

The grounded imams incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been a public relations coup for the imams, their supporters and their claims that the group's only suspicious activity was saying evening prayers.

US Airways continues to defend its crew's decision to pull the imams off a plane last month, saying they took the seating configuration used by 9/11 hijackers, requested seat-belt extensions that could be used as weapons and otherwise raised concerns.

Who are the parties involved here, who seem so interested in linking airport security with racial bigotry?

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the imams' legal representative, is an organization that "we know has ties to terrorism," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in 2003. And the Muslim American Society, which is also supporting the imams? It's the American arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Chicago Tribune, which called it "the world's most influential Islamic fundamentalist group."

How about Omar Shahin, the imams' spokesman and also president of the North American Imams Federation? He is a native of Jordan, who says he became a U.S. citizen in 2003. From 2000 to 2003, Shahin served as president of Islamic Center of Tucson (ICT), that city's largest mosque.

The ICT is well known. The mosque has "an extensive history of terror links," according to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who testified about terrorist financing before the Senate Banking Committee in July 2005.

The Washington Post described these links in a 2002 article. "Tucson was one of the first points of contact in the United States for the jihadist group that evolved into al Qaeda," the Post reported. And the ICT? It held "basically the first cell of al Qaeda in the United States; that is where it all started," said Rita Katz, a terrorism expert quoted by the Post.

ICT members have included high-profile terrorists. Wael Hamza Jelaidan, the mosque's leader in the mid-1980s, was identified by the U.S. government as a " 'co-founder' of al Qaeda and its logistics chief," the Post reported.

Another former member, Wadi Hage, served as Osama bin Laden's personal secretary after leaving Arizona, the Post said, attributing it to government sources. Hage established a bin Laden support network in Arizona and "this network is still in place," Emerson wrote in his book "Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S.," citing a 2002 Senate Intelligence Committee Report. In 2001, Hage was convicted of plotting the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The best-known terrorist with apparent (according to the Post and Emerson) connections to the ICT is Hani Hanjour, who piloted the plane that flew into the Pentagon on 9/11. Hanjour took aviation lessons in Tucson in the late 1990s.

Shahin has downplayed the ICT's connections to terrorism. The mosque should not be held accountable for former members who may have engaged in terrorism after they left Arizona, he told the Post in 2002. Al-Qaida nests in America? "All of these, they make it up," he told the Arizona Republic shortly after 9/11.