Sunday, July 22, 2012

The State Department’s Divided Loyalties

IICWC logo

Michele Bachmann and four other congressional representatives have been taking a lot of flak in the press in recent days for their criticism of Muslim Brotherhood penetration at the highest levels of the Obama administration. In particular, they are being savaged for pointing out the family connections of Huma Abedin, one of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aides, with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Their concerns are disparagingly referred to as the “new McCarthyism”. However, whatever one might think of Sen. Joe McCarthy, the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s proved that he was right: the United States government, especially the State Department, had been penetrated at the highest levels by agents of the Soviet Union.

Congress was right to be concerned about Communist infiltration in 1949, and it is right to be concerned about Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in 2012.

The Center for Security Policy has done some research into the MB activities of Huma Abedin’s mother, and they are disturbing indeed. Below is a press release on the topic issued earlier today by CSP.


Center Report Reveals Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official Huma Abedin’s Mother

WASHINGTON, D.C.: A book published and translated by the mother of Obama administration State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin provides fresh evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aide has deeply problematic foreign associations that could, in violation of departmental guidelines, “create… a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”

In light of the escalating controversy over the role being played in U.S. security policy-making by Ms. Abedin and others with personal and/or professional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Part 8 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), the revelations contained in a new Center report — Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother (pdf) — could not be more timely, or important.

The Center’s report excerpts and analyzes relevant passages from a book published and translated by Saleha S. Mahmood Abedin called Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations by Fatima Umar Naseef. Naseef is a past head of the “women’s section” and professor of shariah at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where Dr. Abedin is also on the faculty. The book was published in 1999, the same year Dr. Abedin founded Dar Al Hekma, a university for women also in Jeddah, that Secretary Clinton visited and spoke admiringly of with Huma Abedin in February 2010. [See Remarks on that occasion by Mrs. Clinton, including her comment that Huma holds a “very sensitive and important position” in her department, and those by her hosts.]

Excerpts from Women in Islam in Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother (pdf) include Islamic shariah justifications for the following:

  • Stoning for Adultery when Married; Lashing for Adultery when Unmarried
  • No Death Penalty for the Murder of an Apostate
  • Freedom of Expression Curtailed to What Benefits Islam
  • Women’s Right to Participate in Armed Jihad
  • Social Interaction Between the Sexes is Forbidden
  • Women Have No Right to Abstain from Sex with their Husbands
  • A Woman Should Not Let Anyone Into the House Unless Approved by Her Husband
  • Female Genital Mutilation is Allowed
  • Man-Made Laws “Enslave Women”

The organization responsible for the publication of Women in Islam was the International Islamic Committee for Woman & Child (IICWC), chaired at the time by Dr. Abedin. IICWC misleadingly describes itself as “an international organization of concerned women who are committed to improving the condition of women and children around the world.” In fact, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League (MWL) and other Islamist organizations with which it is associated, the IICWC is committed to eviscerating the rights of women and children by imposing everywhere shariah, a code that denies them fundamental — and, in the United States, constitutional — liberties.

Specifically, the book published by Dr. Abedin wholeheartedly affirms: limits on women’s free expression; the permissibility of stoning as a punishment for adultery, killing of apostates and female genital mutilation; the contention that “man-made laws” enslave women; and more. It also endorses women’s right to fight in armed jihad. Women in Islam is available online and sold at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist organization co-founded by Huma Abedin’s mother and her late father, Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin.

On July 21, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy posted an essay at National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone commenting on the request by five Members of Congress led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota for Inspector General investigations of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government. In it, he observed that the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs “was backed by the Muslim World League. As the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran relates, the MWL was started by the Saudi government in 1962 ‘with Brotherhood members in key leadership positions.’ It has served as the principal vehicle for the propagation of Islamic supremacism by the Saudis and the Brotherhood.”

Mr. McCarthy notes that:
The five House conservatives… are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?

Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman — a convicted terrorist and clerical inspiration for jihadists worldwide, whose release from federal prison at the insistence of Muslim Brother and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been the subject of discussions within and enabled by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department — goes on to observe that:

The State Department is particularly wary when it comes to the category of ‘foreign influence’ — yes, it is a significant enough concern to warrant its own extensive category in background investigations. No criminal behavior need be shown to deny a security clearance; access to classified information is not a right, and reasonable fear of “divided loyalties” is more than sufficient for a clearance to be denied. The [Department’s own security] guidelines probe ties to foreign countries and organizations because hostile elements could “target United States citizens to obtain protected information” or could be “associated with a risk of terrorism.” Note: The Brotherhood checks both these boxes.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, said upon the release of the Center’s new report, Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother:

In the interest of informing the debate about the need to investigate Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda, and those of others shaping policy in the Obama administration, the Center for Security Policy offers in Ties That Bind? further cause for such an investigation. That includes, for instance, evidence of Dr. Saleha Abedin’s personal involvement with the International Islamic Committee on Woman and Child’s affiliated organization, the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR). The IICDR was banned in Israel in 2008 for its collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s Union for Good in the funding of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, Hamas. In the United States, the Union for Good was designated a terrorist entity in late 2008.

This further documentation of Dr. Abedin’s positions on shariah law, her leadership of the IICWC and its affiliation with a designated terrorist entity such as the IICDR makes plain that a thorough investigation is fully justified regarding her daughter’s access to classified information and policy-influencing role. In particular, in connection with the latter, Ties That Bind powerfully reinforces the Center’s earlier warning that the IICWC is currently advocating for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to shariah. Americans want no part of such an agenda. They should they have no reason for concern that senior officials in their government are stealthily encouraging it.

3 comments:

Nemesis said...

Hilary Clinton is a smart woman, she is well educated and well connected. Is is possible for people like Mrs. Clinton to be completely oblivious to the background of those who work with them in such a sensitive area? Maybe, but I would also add, that as Secretary of State, her position makes it mandatory upon her that she have those with whom she chooses to work with fully vetted through the system.

Was this done, or was the process bypassed on Mrs. Clinton's, or someone else's OK?

An underlying aspect to what is now occurring on Capitol Hill is that no one appears to recognize, particularly in the GOP, that the current administration, and the Democratic Party in general, is behaving like a bunch of communists. This would have been so easily identified just thirty years ago, yet no one with any clout in the media, even Fox, will speak about it.

The Clinton's are Democrat Heavy and Mrs. Clinton has identified herself as being a Progressive.

Well, we all know what a Progressive is today don't we! She is also about to sign the U.S. onto the U.N. small arms treaty which will eventually see the confiscation of firearms belonging to ALL American citizens by their own government.

How could people like Ms. Abedin and her son come to be working in sensitive areas of the federal government, when anyone who is familiar with Islam knows that the Muslim who self identifies as such, should not be trusted, especially if they have an 'iffy' background.

So, what exactly does Mrs. Clinton know about those who work in her department and who she readily defends when questions are raised about their suitability to be in such sensitive areas of the American Government?

Anonymous said...

I'll take a blind guess, and say that the biggest problem with Huma Abedin is not her promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood Agenda. The present administration seems more than willing, without covert prodding, to support any movement transferring power from traditional Middle Eastern despots to Muslim Brotherhood surrogates. The Republicans offer no significant opposition to this tact.

I think Abedin's primary function is to smooth the way for the Saudi Arabian government to penetrate the US government in more traditional ways: provide secret US information to Saudi intelligence, and promote friendly relations between the US government, and the Saudi regime which is presently very dependent on US military support and economic ties.

Bill Clinton is heavily funded by Saudi money in his consulting and foundation work, as the George Bushes were in their business undertakings. I would guess that the last thing Saudi intelligence would do would be to use Abedin in any sort of heavy "pressuring" to lobby for Muslim Brotherhood advancement. She is much more useful as a "fix-it" aide, through whose hands secrets and information flow freely.

Anonymous said...

Smart analysis Ronald B.


Anyways, the old fool McCain has attacked Bachmann and others.

And so has Keith Ellison (for those who dont know the first and only Muslim US Congressmen) who is knee deep in Muslim Brotherhood mutual support.

Keith Ellison rewrites history on his Muslim Brotherhood ties


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