Terrorisim fatwa denounced as ‘bogus’

Pakistan Daily Times reported The fatwa against terrorism issued here on Thursday by the Fiqh Council of North America has been denounced as “bogus.”

I welcomed the "fatwa", but I admit that I was somewhat skeptical. However I am equally skeptical by it being denounced in the Pakistanian press

According to Steven A Emerson, executive director of the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, the fatwa is “bogus” since it does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. “In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate,” he added. He said the Fiqh Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the two bodies behind the production of the fatwa,

I have never heard of Fiqh council, but I am definitely skeptical about CAIR

have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organisations. One of them is an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a current terrorist case, another previous a financier to Al Qaeda. He quotes Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, as maintaining that the fatwa is a “vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements.” Emerson said officials of both groups have been linked to various terrorist organisations:

The Chairman of the Fiqh Council, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the alleged North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose trial began in June 2005 in Tampa, Florida. Alwani has been named in court documents as an official of several entities in northern Virginia suspected of being connected to terrorist financing. Documents released in the Al Arian trial show that Alwani funded the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa. Another past trustee of the Fiqh Council, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, he pointed out, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for illegal financial dealings with Libya and immigration fraud, who has admitted to his part in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince. In 1998, Fiqh Council member Sheikh Muhammad al-Hanooti, Emerson alleged, gave a speech calling for jihad against the United States and the United Kingdom, saying that “Allah will curse the Americans and British” and “Allah, the curse of Allah will become true on the infidel Jews and on the tyrannical Americans.” Additionally, Hanooti is strongly linked to Hamas,

Fiqh Council chairman Muzammil Siddiqui,, Emerson continued, told a rally in Washington on 28 October 2000, “ America has to learn - if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.” Emerson also attacked CAIR, charging that in the past four years, several CAIR officials have been convicted of or charged with various terrorism-related offenses. CAIR, he added, had also championed and defended officials of Islamic terrorist groups as well as attacked the prosecutions of Islamic terrorists arrested and/or convicted since 9-11. It had and attacked the government’s freezing of Islamic terrorist fronts as part of a “war against Islam” by the United States .

Emerson alleged that another signatory, the Muslim American Society, is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, whose publications have repeatedly supported suicide bombings.

Andrew Cochran blogged The American Islamic Leaders' "Fatwa" is Bogus

MarkInMexico blogged Cair's problems have been well documented as both present and past CAIR officials have many ties to terrorist organizations. Visit The Counterterrorism Blog - there is a lot of there, there.