American Muslims for Palestine has added four more Islamists to their lineup of speakers for their conference near Chicago on November 22-25 (not to be confused with the another Islamist conference, the 11th annual convention of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America in Chicago on December 22-25).
The program for the event also reflects an Islamist agenda, including a session that legitimizes Palestinian terrorism. And most disturbingly, there’s a session about how to teach these beliefs to children.
AMP recently condemned Israeli strikes on terrorist targets in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and demanded an end to U.S. foreign aid to Israel, but did not even mention the more than 200 rockets and missiles that Hamas has fired at Israeli cities since November 10.
The original lineup included at least nine Islamists that RadicalIslam.org reported earlier in our article Brotherhood/Hamas-Linked Activist in Illinois for Extremist Event.
The additional four are as follows:
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who unsuccessfully sought the Egyptian presidency. He wanted the constitution to have Sharia and its principles as the main source of legislation, though he said this may not include its criminal law. Fotouh was a Muslim Brotherhood member since the early 1970’s, serving in a senior leadership capacity from 1987 to 2009 in the Guidance Bureau. His membership was suspended when he ran for president against the Brotherhood’s wishes. At the time, the Brotherhood said it would not seek the presidency but later reversed course and won.
Abdelfattah Mourou
Abdelfattah Mourou is a co-founder of the Islamist Al-Nahda political party of Tunisia. Another founder is Rachid Ghannouchi, a supporter of Hamas with a history of very extreme preaching.
Imam Zaid Shakir
Imam Zaid Shakir is no stranger to readers of RadicalIslam.org. We’ve documented his ongoing extremist preaching. He says that Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 was not a terrorist attack, writes anti-American poems and told the New York Times in 2006 that “he still hoped that one day the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.” In one lecture, he legitimized a potential hijacking of airplanes transporting U.S. soldiers.
Shiekh Mohammad al-Hanooti
Shiekh Mohammad al-Hanooti was President of the Islamic Association of Palestine from 1978 to 1990, an organization that was a Muslim Brotherhood front that rallied support for Hamas. The Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that he attended a secret meeting of Brotherhood and Hamas supporters in Philadelphia in 1993 that was wiretapped by the FBI. Al-Hanooti was named a “possible unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and also was an imam at two other prominent mosques linked to Hamas and the Brotherhood: The Islamic Center of Passaic County (1990 to 1995) and Dar al-Hijrah (1995 to 1999).
The recently published AMP program shows numerous Islamist themes. One session claims that the Arab Spring was inspired by “decades of Palestinian resistance.” Critics of the Islamist network in America are attacked in a session about “Islamophobia.”
The conference also ridicules U.S. counter-terrorism efforts and blasts “U.S. policies that are working to reduce Palestinians as a people, both physically and morally.” The program claims “solidarity work for Palestine is being criminalized more every day,” a reference to the prosecution of Muslim activists like Sami al-Arian and the five Holy Land Foundation officials for their involvement with Palestinian terrorist groups.
One session, titled, “The dialectic of occupation and right of resistance,” sounds like it will be a legitimization of terrorism disguised as an intellectual discourse. It will feature activists engaged in “peaceful resistance” and experts who will “put this into context of the greater picture of the internationally guaranteed right to resist occupation.”
Developing interfaith alliances is a focus of the AMP conference. As mentioned in our original report, Reverend Donald Wagner of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding will be a featured speaker. The conference program states, “It makes sense to join forces to fight the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
(The Islamists are making inroads into the Christian community. The Islamist-allied EMEU put on a "24-Hour Middle East Leadership Briefing" on November 8-9 at Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center.)
Another session, dedicated to teaching these Islamist beliefs to young children, is titled “Nurturing our kids with faith and Palestine.” It says that, “It is our religious duty to make sure our children understand the importance of Palestine in our faith and why, as Muslims, we must work to help bring justice to Palestine.”
Considering the extremist preaching of the event’s speakers, this is especially disturbing. The AMP’s agenda includes making sure the Islamist struggle is continued by the next generation.
The AMP's conference is being held (Nov 22-25) at the Oak Brook Hills Marriott Resort in Oak Brook, IL. Americans who want to contact the hotel to express their opinions regarding its hosting of this conference can do so at the following telephone 1-630-850-5555 or fax 1-630-850-5569.
Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org's National Security Analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.