By now you’ve seen Rep. Keith Ellison’s crockadile tears today at a hearing on radicalization in the Muslim American community. It was fake and and a disgrace. But that aside he ought to be crying. In fact perhaps the hearings should be about him for his background with radical islamic groups since his youth, a well documented fact.

“Muslim American Society: Ellison’s connections to other groups such as the Muslim American Society (MAS) reinforce questions about where he stands. MAS was founded in 1993 following an arrangement reached between Muslim Brotherhood leaders in America and Egypt. MAS is, in fact, the Brotherhood’s American chapter.[55] That the Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) represents a significant threat to Western civilization is made clear from this excerpt from a 1991 briefing captured by the FBI:

The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a “Civilization-Jihadist” process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all religions. … It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.[56]

In December 2002, for example, MAS used its website to denigrate non-Muslims, speaking of “the degenerate moral condition of the Jews and Christians” and declaring: “If you gain a victory over the men of [the] Jews, kill them,” and “May Allah destroy the Jews.”[57] It also issued statements endorsing terrorism and praising Hamas.[58] According to an extensive dossier prepared by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, MAS has links to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Its websites have praised Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and godfather of modern Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and provided links to several extremist and terrorist organizations. Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation and the public face of the society, has claimed that the United States is engaged in a war against Islam and has defended a long list of terrorism-linked organizations and individuals. The MAS magazine, The American Muslim, often contains references to suicide bombings as “martyrdom operations” and to terrorists as “freedom fighters” while condemning U.S. antiterrorism actions. At MAS conferences, extremist speakers address their audiences while Islamist and jihadi literature is on sale.[59]

It is, then, disturbing to see that one year after his first election to Congress, Ellison was the keynote speaker at MAS-Minnesota’s fourth annual convention in May 2007.[60] The following spring, Ellison was again the keynote speaker at the MAS-Minnesota convention, appearing alongside Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted coconspirator of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.[61]

Islamic Society of North America: Ellison also enjoys a relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that has been linked by several agencies to support for terrorism. In December 2003, U.S. senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance formally identified ISNA as one of twenty-five American Muslim organizations in a probe into groups that might “finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.”[62] More recently, in July 2008, Federal prosecutors in Dallas filed documents showing a link between ISNA and Hamas.[63] In an account of the 2008 conference, Dave Gaubatz, coauthor of Muslim Mafia, writes:

In 2008, ISNA had several booths with anti-American slogans on shirts, along with pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel garments … It was easy to find DVDs, books, manuals, and pamphlets calling America a terrorist organization and for the destruction of our country and Israel. It was very easy to find material calling for killing innocent men, women, and children in American [sic] who did not believe in an Islamic Ummah (Nation) worldwide and under Sharia law. … If you wanted Muslim Brotherhood material, this was the location to obtain the intelligence you desired.[64]

Despite these troubling connections, Ellison has spoken at ISNA’s 2007, 2008, and 2009 conventions, events estimated to be the largest annual Muslim gatherings in the Western hemisphere.[65] In 2008, Ellison spoke on “mobilizing the Muslim political machine.”[66]

Muslim Public Affairs Council: Ellison also spoke in December 2006 to the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),[67] a seemingly moderate body that seeks to conceal its strong anti-Semitic,[68] pro-Hamas, and pro-Hezbollah views.[69] Again, he addressed a town hall forum during MPAC’s “Activate ’08 Election Campaign,” at one of the Council’s “Rock the Muslim Vote” events.[70]

North American Imams Federation: He also addressed the North American Imams Federation (NAIF) at their November 19, 2006 conference in Minneapolis.[71] Many of NAIF’s imams, in charge of mosques across the United States, are trained through an institution called the American Open University (AOU), a distance-learning medium for Muslims wishing to train as clergy. The AOU is a radical school that emphasizes the paramount role of Shari’a law in an American context. Its chairman Jaafar Sheikh Idris regards democracy as “the antithesis of Islam,” arguing that human beings have no right to make their own laws. “No one,” he claims, “can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to the divine law.”[72] He also declared that no Muslim elected to Congress can swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution and remain a Muslim “for in order to pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of his belief and embrace the belief of secularism—which is practically another religion.”[73] That Keith Ellison supports an institution linked to someone who holds views in such deep conflict with normative American values is deeply troubling.”

All during my blogging career I’ve masked myself in order to join groups to be privy to their internal communications. Today CARE sent out an email detailing specific push back against the hearings calling them “Dangerous to our internal mission”. One could guess what that is. Specifically Ellison is mentioned as a “key force” in the push back and even goes as far as to choreograph his appearance today on the hill.

The email indicates that the entire charade was staged and that his selection of Salman Hamdani as an example of “loyal” American muslim was chosen after careful deliberation.

I’ve forwarded the emails to Rep. Peter King who is chairing the meetings.