‘In a Dec. 9 article on Al-Arabiya titled “Details of calls to attack Trump by U.S. ‘Muslim Sisters’ allied to [Muslim] Brotherhood,” by Hudah Al-Saleh, criticized Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, “with roots in Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations known as CAIR,” and reviewed her activity over the years.
MEMRI has released two clips of Ms. Sarsour; in one, dated June 30, 2017, she says that ISIS is the product of a politicized foreign policy of war on our people, and in the other, dated September 8, 2018, she calls for voting against Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the upcoming midterm elections, questions the faith of Muslims who defend the police, and says she doesn’t care “what [any] young black person did before he got shot.”
“However, the Democrats’ battle against the Republican control of the U.S. Congress led to an alliance with Political Islamist movements in order to restore their control on government, pushing Muslim candidates and women activists of immigrant minorities onto the electoral scene.
“The common ground between Congresswomen Omar and Tlaib is that both are anti-Trump and his political team and options, especially his foreign policy starting from the sanctions on Iran to the isolation of the Muslim Brotherhood and all movements of political Islam. Those sponsoring and supporting the two Muslim women to reach the U.S. Congress adopted a tactic to infiltrate through their immigrant and Black minority communities in general, and women’s groups in particular.
“One example of that is the Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour with roots in Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations known as CAIR.
‘Who is Linda Sarsour’?
“The name of the Palestinian Linda Sarsour (38) appeared in the public scene, when Barack Obama took office in 2008 as President of the United States. Since then, Sarsour became a familiar face in the White House. I have been invited at least to seven meetings in the White House since April 2010,’ she has been quoted [as saying].
“This culminated in [her] receiving the ‘Champion of Change’ award from President Obama in 2012. A social media site still carries a previous U.S. Department of State promotional tweet, published in July 2014, saying: “Share with Mrs. Linda Sarsour about Islam in America.”
“The paradox here is that the description of the ‘Obama’ award is similar to the title of ‘Youth and Change,’ the first book taught by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin—the spiritual leader of Hamas, the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine—to Muslim women, according to Rajaa Halbi, an officer in the women’s movement in Hamas, and who personally learned from this book directly from Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Yassin.
“What we know about Linda Sarsour is that she was born in 1980 in Brooklyn, New York, from Palestinian parents from Al-Bireh in the West Bank in Occupied Palestine. In recent years, she took part in protests and anti-Trump demonstrations. She has been employed as the president of the Arab American Association of New York, which was created by Palestinian Ahmed Jaber, a member of the Qatar International Foundation responsible for funding the association.
“Linda Sarsour and her husband, Maher Jouda, who is also a Palestinian from Al-Bireh, were investigated and placed under observation by U.S. federal authorities in 2004 on their suspicious relations with extremist elements. Also, the New York Police Department opened an investigation into the Arab American Association of New York for its links to terrorism and extremism, especially its links with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
‘Activities with the Muslim Brotherhood’
“One of the activities in which Linda Sarsour participated was an annual meeting of the International Network of Muslim Brotherhood in North America and Canada in 2016, which lasted for three days, from December 26-28, organized by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). Also participating in this conference was the Muslim Students Association (MSA), which was established in 1979 by a women’s group called The Sisters of Success which is affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Palestinian Executive Director and co-founder Nihad Awad.
At that event, appearing next to Linda Sarsour was Samah Safi Bayazid, a Jordanian film director, accompanied by her brother and cameraman, Mohammad Safi Bayazid, who were responsible for filming and producing a show called “Noor” for Saudi cleric Salman Odeh, who is detained in Saudi Arabia.
“Samah posted on her Twitter account the picture with Linda at the event. She had also posted a photo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and her brother, in addition to another picture of her participating in ALSHARQ FORUM managed by Palestinian Waddah Khanfar in Turkey.
“Among the speakers at the conference were: Siraj Wahhaj, who is described by his supporters as a pioneering Islamic preacher in New York and a hero of social community work; Jasser Auda, who is a founding member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, president of Maqasid Studies in London, and professor of Islamic studies at Carlton University in Canada, member in the European Council for Fatwa and Research and a former member of Qatar Foundation; and Jamal Badawi, a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and a founding member of CAIR.
“Wahhaj, whom Linda Sarsour has admired and who in turn influenced her, was back in the national spotlight when his son Siraj Ibn Wahhaj was arrested in Aug. 2018 and jailed on a Georgia warrant alleging child abduction. Law enforcement officers searching a rural northern New Mexico compound for a missing 3-year-old boy found 11 children in filthy conditions and hardly any food, and weapons where Wahhaj was allegedly training them how to execute mass shootings in America’s schools.
“As for Jasser Auda, he is a founding member of the International World Union of Muslim Scholars, sponsored and chaired by extremist cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, and author of the book ‘Disrupting the Domineering Systems: Jihad and the Folly of State Sovereignty,’ published in 2017, in which he called on Islamic entities to think strategically to restore the concept of true jihad and its institutions to the life of the nation and that it should not be repelled by the current political and media situation, no matter how urgent.
“His book also emphasizes that Islamic entities, and even honest humanity in general should begin to think about the coarse means the Islamic societies and humanity itself could use to eliminate those gangs and to disintegrate the tyrannical entities.
“Jasser Auda’s book also preaches that: ‘The concept of state sovereignty is one of the greatest lies and myths. It is the disaster of the idea and politics that have afflicted humankind in our time, which are being invested by tyranny and gain huge gains on the ground, especially in the eradication or distortion of jihad in Islam or damaging its image to serve their interests.’ ”
‘Declaration of Jihad’?
“From all that is mentioned, we can touch the influence of Muslim Brotherhood in shaping the thoughts of American activist Linda Sarsour and consequently her declaring her ‘Jihad’ against U.S. President Donald Trump, in addition to her call for the application of ‘Sharia,’ the rule of Islam in the United States of America, during a speech at the annual meeting of the San Francisco branch of CAIR. These are terms used by Muslim Brotherhood teachings and in the views of Sayyid Qutb, a scholar and co-founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, as well as from Abul A’la Maududi’s books Islam and Ignorance and Fundamentals of Islam. These terms are used and preached also by Al-Qaeda terrorist organization and the ISIS extremist group.
“In her speech, Linda Sarsour said: ‘God is waiting for us to stand up to those who are oppressing our societies, not only in the Middle East and abroad, but also here in the United States, and this is a kind of jihad, where you have fascists, white supremacists and Islamophobes. We have to remain angry. Those who are currently sitting in the White House are not normal. Normal citizens should not be among this administration. If something terrible happens, you will be responsible for that. You have no choice but to be politicized, engage and be part of the resistance to defend our right to be Muslims in the United States. Opposition is the highest form of national expression in a country like the United States,’ she said.
“Despite the claims of Islamist activist Linda Sarsour that her speech, which was about human rights, was taken out of its context, but according to some observers, that her defense is just only one of the tactics of the Muslim Brotherhood and their dodgers in the use of the terms of jihad, as they are afraid to say the word openly, as the collective memory of the West in general, is still tense toward events blamed on extremists, so the Muslim Brotherhood resorts to political terms away from its militant tones when using the Jihad word.
“What Linda Sarsour has said is not far from those of Zainab Al-Ghazali, one the most prominent women of the Muslim Brotherhood who said in her book My daughter: the love of jihad: ‘The nation is subjected to many hardships, but the most difficult is to abandon the breeding of jihad and love of death for the sake of God. … And my daughter’s role is to awaken the spirit of jihad and love of martyrdom in your husband and your daughter and this is your role, which I ask you and the whole nation awaits.’
“Linda Sarsour made headlines once against when she called for ‘jihad’ against Trump and his administration in 2017. However, Political Islamists—the masterminds behind the so-called “Arab Spring”—have said time and again that the word ‘jihad’ could not be re-interpreted in any other sense except in the meaning of ‘physical fighting’ against the rulers through a coup or revolution against them.
“As she said in one of her conversations with the Arab Muslim community in New York via Skype: ‘What happened in the Middle East revolutions inspired the Arabs in the United States,’ adding: “After the Arab Spring, we worked harder than the last four decades, because in this country there are rights and freedoms which do not exist in the Arab countries. We began to exercise our rights here. The Arab Spring encouraged us to be involved in the political life—you gave us courage.’ ”
Read rest of report at MEMRI.