Saturday, July 18, 2009

Some More About That Khilafa Conference

My previous posting on this topic is HERE.

From this recent essay by Steven Emerson:
...In California, a small group of Hizb ut-Tahrir cadres began recruiting in the early 1990s. They set up an organization in Walnut, (located in eastern Los Angeles County) called the Islamic Cultural Workshop (ICW). The organization published Khalif'ornia magazine, which later became Khalif'ornia Journal. Although ICW and the Khalif'ornia publications are no longer in existence, their writings offer the closest thing to a comprehensive body of ideological and religious literature produced by HT's American supporters.

The publications devote considerable attention to translations of HT literature on everything from "Separation of Church and State" to "A draft Constitution of the Islamic State."

The Khalif'ornia Journal states that its "direct objective" is to teach Muslims "that we must reestablish the Khalifah in the Muslim World, where Islam will be applied in every aspect of life and be carried to the world." The publications devote considerable attention to translations of HT literature on everything from "Separation of Church and State to "A draft Constitution of the Islamic State." Jews and Christians are depicted as inferior beings and the United States is portrayed as constantly conspiring against Muslims.

[...]

HT supporters also formed a group called the Workshop for Awareness on Islam and Enlightenment (WAIE). It had a Washington, D.C. mailing address and telephone contact numbers in Northern Virginia. Its Internet domain was registered by a software developer named Adil Elkiyari whose Maryland-based company, transinfocom, is no longer in business.

WAIE had a booth at the August 31-September 2, 2002 conference staged by the Islamic Society of North America at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

WAIE also sponsored several lectures at the University of Maryland College Park together with the Muslim Students Association. A flyer advertising a February 6, 2002 address by Ossama Hazim, WAIE president, declared that "The Islamic State's foreign policy is the call to Islam. As such, it does not recognize so-called International Law, United Nations or other International Organizations that contradict Islam." A "State may not be partly Islamic. Gradual implementation of parts of Islamic Law is not acceptable."
These caliphate-yearning Moslems have been here in America for a long time and remained relatively quiet until now. Why the new boldness? What has [cough] changed?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rot. Global. Systemic.

Damien said...

Always On Watch,

I think that what has changed is that they are sensing a change in the political landscape and the more people cave to them, the more emboldened they will become.

Anonymous said...

Emerson was one of the first to report on the Islamic threat in America - prior to 9/11. Here is a summary of Christmas convention he stumbled upon in Oklahoma City -
HOW I MADE “JIHAD IN AMERICA” AND LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT

IN DECEMBER 1992 I was a staff reporter for CNN, covering what I consider one of the worst stories imaginable — a press conference for pool reporters.
In this case the conference was given by Lawrence Walsh, the former special prosecutor for the Iran-contra affair, who was issuing a statement in reaction to then-President George Bush’s pardon of former secretary of state Caspar Weinberger. It was the kind of situation where more than a dozen reporters ask the same question over and over, then go back and write the same story.
In short, I was bored. In Oklahoma City, I found myself with nothing to do on Christmas Day. As I walked around looking for a place to eat, I passed a large group of men dressed in traditional Middle Eastern clothing.
These men had congregated outside of the Oklahoma City Convention Center. I realized there was some kind of convention going on. Drawn to the scene, I wandered inside and found a bazaar of vendors hawking all kinds of radical material. There were books preaching Islamic “Jihad,” books calling for the extermination of Jews and Christians, even coloring books instructing children on subjects such as “How to Kill the Infidel.” It was a meeting of the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), an umbrella group that included many smaller groups.
When I asked admittance to the main meeting hall, I was told that as a non-Muslim I couldn’t enter. But I found my way into a group of “recent converts” where I was befriended by a man who sponsored my admission. I ended up sitting through the entire program. It was a shocking experience. Given simultaneous translation by a jihadist next to me, I was horrified to witness a long procession of speakers, including the head of Hamas, Khalid Misha’al, taking turns preaching violence and urging the assembly to use jihad against the Jews and the West. At times spontaneous shouts of “Kill the Jews” and “Destroy the West” could be distinctly heard. I had heard such declamatory speakers many times in the Middle East, but it was astonishing to hear it all being preached here in a Middle American capital such as Oklahoma City.
"
continues below

Anonymous said...

continued from above

"I had some contacts in the FBI at this point and called one to see if he knew that all of this was going on. He said he didn’t. Even if the FBI had been cognizant, however, there wouldn’t have been much they could do about it, owing to the FBI’s mandate to surveil criminal activity and not simply hateful rhetoric.


Just how far behind the FBI had fallen in keeping abreast of these potentially dangerous subversive groups became clear a year later when I attended a five-day Muslim conference in Detroit in December 1993. This annual gathering featured speakers and representatives from some of the world’s most militant fundamentalist organizations, including Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and many others. After five days of listening to speakers urging Muslims to wage jihad, I was startled to hear that a senior FBI agent from the Detroit office would be making an unscheduled appearance on the program. Sure enough, the official showed up. After making some perfunctory remarks about civil rights, the official asked for questions from the visibly hostile audience. A series of scornful responses followed, including that of one audience member who asked, tongue in cheek, if the agent could give the group any advice on “shipping weapons” overseas to their friends. The FBI official said matter-of-factly that he hoped any such efforts would be done in conformance with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms guidelines.


Returning to Washington again, I asked FBI officials if they knew that their Detroit colleague had spoken at this radical gathering. They assured me it was impossible. After checking, however, they admitted within a few hours that their man had indeed been there, mistakenly thinking it was “some kind of Rotary Club.”


Emerson's film "Terrorists Among Us, Jihad in America" remains a must see video.