The developer of the controversial proposed Islamic center and mosque near the Sept. 11 Ground Zero site will address the annual fundraising banquet of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the D.C.-based group designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator.
CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad announced developer Sharif El-Gamal will speak at the group’s 16th annual fundraising banquet Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va., the Associated Press reported.
A CAIR staffer confirmed to WND that El-Gamal is a listed speaker.
The plan to build the mosque near the Ground Zero site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by Islamic terrorists has prompted nationwide protest. In a recent poll of likely New York City voters, a majority said they wanted the mosque built elsewhere.
The high-profile leader of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has insisted the site was chosen as a gesture to promote “healing.” But many of his documented remarks have cast doubt on his self-proclaimed role of interfaith bridge-builder, including his refusal to affirm the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization or call the Muslim Brotherhood extremist.
U.S. counterterrorism officials regard CAIR as a front group for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the spawn of most of the major Islamic terrorist groups, including Hamas and al-Qaida.
The CAIR event is part of the organization’s leadership conference titled “Defining Our Faith, Defending Our Rights.”
El-Gamal is not mentioned on CAIR’s Web promotion for the banquet. The featured speakers are Tariq Ramadan – who was banned from the U.S. by the Bush administration for alleged terror ties – retired White House correspondent and noted Israel critic Helen Thomas, and Muslim comedian Mo Amer.
Ramadan was a speaker at an April banquet hosted by CAIR’s Chicago branch.
Meanwhile, CAIR is suing a father-and-son team that conducted an undercover probe that came up with 12,000 pages of internal documents confirming the Islamic organization’s role as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the U.S. The findings were published in the WND Books best-selling expose “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America”
CAIR and some of its leaders were confirmed by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, which was convicted of helping fund Hamas. An FBI letter to lawmakers in April 2009 explained the bureau suspended all formal contacts with CAIR because of evidence the group was founded as a front in the U.S. for Hamas. Among numerous government relationships, CAIR leaders had regular meetings with top FBI brass on security issues and helped lead FBI Muslim “sensitivity training” sessions.
At the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI presented a transcript from a wiretap of a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia in which Hamas supporters sought to establish Muslim organizations in the U.S. “whose Islamic hue is not very conspicuous.” CAIR was soon founded by two Palestinian participants in the Philadelphia meeting, current executive director Awad and Omar Ahmad.
CAIR has more than a dozen former and current leaders with known associations with violent jihad.
Islam expert Robert Spencer, director of the website JihadWatch and author of the book “Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,” told WND in August he believed the Ground Zero site was chosen to create a triumphal “victory mosque,” like the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque on the site of the Temple Mount and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria.
Spencer notes that Rauf, himself, has said the site has iconic status in relation to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Rauf several times has blamed U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and refused to admit Muslims were responsible.
Referring to the Sept. 11 attacks, Rauf told CNN, “U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We (the U.S.) have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.”
El-Gamal, who runs the real-estate firm Soho Properties, is being evicted from his New York City offices because of $39,000 in back rent, the New York Daily News reported earlier this month.
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Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham