The Muslim-outreach coordinator to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama has resigned amid questions about his involvement in an Islamic investment fund and various Islamic groups.
Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, appointed national coordinator for Muslim American affairs by the Obama campaign on July 26, quit Monday after an Internet newsletter wrote about his stint on the board of directors of the fund, which also included a fundamentalist imam, and the Wall Street Journal asked some questions.
On July 30, he posted an introduction to himself on the Obama website. Some excerpts:
Assalamu-Aleikum. My name is Mazen Asbahi and I've been blessed and privileged to be serving the Obama for America Campaign as the National Coordinator for Muslim American Affairs. I'm also coordinating Arab American matters....
In order to get Senator Obama elected, the Campaign needs all of you to continue your support and if possible to take it to another level.... We need Muslim Americans to get excited about the Campaign, and there's a lot to get excited about!
Sure, there have been mis-steps. And of course there are added sensitivities with our faith given the "smear" campaign trying to paint the Senator as too exotic and too un-American to be President.
If you have not plugged into the Campaign, please do. The Campaign makes it very easy to do....
Please feel free to contact me with ideas, critiques and suggestions for improvements on our outreach strategies. (Please keep in mind that I?ve just signed on
).
Well, apparently Asbahi got some ideas, critiques and suggestions which made him think twice.
"Mr. Asbahi has informed the campaign that he no longer wishes to serve in his volunteer position, and we are in the process of searching for a new national Arab American and Muslim American outreach coordinator," spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
Asbahi tendered his resignation after he and the Obama campaign received emailed inquiries about his background from The Wall Street Journal. He did not respond to the email or a message left at his law office; the campaign released a letter in which Mr. Asbahi said he did not want to be a distraction.
"We need Muslim Americans to get excited about the Campaign, and there's a lot to get excited about!" Mr. Asbahi wrote in a statement posted on a blog when he was appointed. "Sure, there have been mis-steps," he added.
In 2000, Mr. Asbahi briefly served on the board of Allied Assets Advisors Fund, a Delaware-registered trust. Its other board members at the time included Jamal Said, the imam at a fundamentalist-controlled mosque in Illinois.
"I served on that board for only a few weeks before resigning as soon as I became aware of public allegations against another member of the board," Mr. Asbahi said in his resignation letter. "Since concerns have been raised about that brief time, I am stepping down...to avoid distracting from Barack Obama's message of change."
The eight-year-old connection between Mr. Asbahi and Mr. Said was raised last week by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, published by a Washington think tank that tracks the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, a world-wide fundamentalist group with strong terror ties based in Egypt. Asbahi is a frequent speaker before US groups that scholars say are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to the Wall Street Journal, The Justice Department named Mr. Said as an unindicted co-conspirator in the racketeering trial last year of several alleged Hamas fund-raisers, which ended in a mistrial, and has been name a leading member of the group, listed as a terror group by the US government, in news reports going back to 1993.
Mr. Said is the imam at the Bridgeview Mosque in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb. He left the board of the Islamic fund in 2005, Securities and Exchange Commission filings state. A message left by the Wall Street Journal for Mr. Said at the mosque was not returned.
Allied Asset Advisors is a subsidiary of the North American Islamic Trust, supported financially by the government of Saudi Arabia, with title to many mosques in the U.S. It promotes Saudi-style fundamentalism and the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Again no suprise here
Topic: Obama's Muslim outreach director quits after being outed for terror ties (Read 1038 times)