CAIR: 'Reformed Terrorists' Preach Christ to College Kids
Source: Village Voice
Author: Maria Luisa Tucker
The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs came under fire earlier this month for inviting to a conference on terrorism three men who make questionable claims to being former terrorists, and whose message was more about religious conversion than counterterror strategies.
Claiming to be reformed Muslim jihadists who have since embraced evangelical Christianity, the three men are being criticized for telling a gathering of cadets and other students that one way to fight terror is by converting the planet's Muslim population—about a fifth of the world's people—to Christianity.
Among the surprised recipients of that message were 18 New York–area college students, some from Columbia University.
Omar Khalifah, a Columbia student who is studying Asian and Middle Eastern languages and culture, was among more than 200 international students and Air Force cadets who attended the four-day conference. Khalifah, who is from Jordan, says he was shocked and offended by the proselytizing he saw. "We left our study for one week to try to find solutions, not to listen to a person who is speaking as a preacher, as if he is in a church," Khalifah says.
Critics question whether the three speakers—Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem, and Zachariah Anani—really engaged in the terrorist activities they claim. Shoebat says he's a former PLO operative who terrorized Jews, gave his ex-wife "Muslim-style beatings," and planted a bomb in a bank. Saleem, a Christian minister, says he was a PLO child soldier who transported weapons into Israel via underground tunnels. Anani says he's killed at least 223 people and was "almost beheaded" in Lebanon for converting to Christianity.The three were paid $13,000 to explain the terrorist mind-set at the conference, which was co-sponsored by the American Assembly, a policy forum affiliated with Columbia University. But instead of educating their audience, Khalifah and other grad students say, the speakers denounced Islam and promoted Christianity.
Khalifah and other New Yorkers say they were initially annoyed at the trio's alarmist rhetoric, including claims that jihadist ideology is being taught in 90 percent of American mosques, and the characterization of Islam as an inherently violent religion. But they were truly offended by Shoebat's announcement that converting Muslims to Christianity was a good way to defeat terrorism. . .
But questions about the credibility of the three men's terror claims aren't going away. The New York Times pointed out that the FBI is actively seeking anyone with a history of terrorist activity in the U.S., but the Times called the bureau and confirmed that there were no warrants out for any of them. But even if law enforcement doesn't appear to be taking their claims very seriously, that hasn't kept Shoebat, Saleem, and Anani from being in demand as speakers on CNN and Fox, and at universities and synagogues.
Muslim groups have repeatedly complained about their rhetoric. The Council on American-Islamic Relations accuses them of inciting hatred against Muslims. Last year, Shoebat's speaking engagements prompted protests by student groups at both the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Wisconsin. When Columbia University hosted Shoebat and Anani in 2006, university officials were so afraid of protesters that they barred 100 guests from the auditorium where the two men spoke. Shoebat's spokesman says he has also spoken at Yeshiva University and has recently been courting NYU to host him.
Academics have challenged several of Saleem's claims, including his statement that he is a descendent of "the grand wazir" of Islam, which is a nonsensical title. (Saleem says he made up the term "grand wazir" to obscure, for safety reasons, the real title and location of the cleric that he's actually related to.) In Canada, where Anani lives, a terrorism expert has publicly expressed doubt that Anani could have been a Muslim terrorist in Lebanon in 1970 or 1971, since the fighting there didn't begin until 1975. Shoebat's claim that he belonged to a U.S. sleeper cell in the early 1980s, described in his book Why We Want to Kill You.
This is another episode in the long play (titled "Deception, Lies & Fabrications") authored and produced by the Zionist Jews, the U.S. government and the Zionist christianist evangelical establishment to convince weak uneducated Muslims as well as the world that jihad against aggression and resistance to occupation of Muslim lands do not stem from faith, religious or national obligation. They want to show the world that the Mujahideen can be easily convinced to abandon resistance and be swayed away from their Deen to embrace Christianity!
They cross the seas and the oceans to invade, kill, destroy and occupy sovereign nations, and call that heroism and patriotism! At the same time, they do not want to recognize the inherit right or any motivation for the people of those nations to resist and repel their aggression.
How do these stray Crusadist's plan to convert the planet's Muslim population to Christianity? By deception and the bomb as their more recent ancestors have been doing, or by the sword as their more distant ancestor crusadists did centuries ago?
These people stop at nothing. They possess weapon of mass destruction for the body and the soul. I believe satan can learn from them!
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