http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=197853By Art Moore
© 2010 WorldNetDaily
Imam Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation (MAS Freedom), holds up a copy of the U.S. Constitution as he speaks about the proposed cultural center and mosque to be built near Ground Zero in New York during an inter-faith news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on August 17, 2010. UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg Photo via Newscom
A newly posted video shows a Muslim adviser to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist hosting a fundraiser in Orlando for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Imam Muhammad Musri – who serves on Crist's Faith-Based and Community Advisory Council and was appointed by the governor to his 2010 Sunshine Census Committee – was raising money in June 2009 at his Al-Rahman mosque. The cash went to Hamas leadership through Viva Palestina, an organization led by controversial former British parliamentarian George Galloway, reports Patrick S. Poole at BigPeace.com.
Crist is an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, was joined at the Orlando event by Galloway and Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, who were keynote speakers.
Galloway and Bray raised $55,000, promising it would be sent straight to Gaza.
According to press accounts, the cash was part of more than $1 million in aid sent to Hamas in July 2009. Along with Musri's Orlando event, funds also were raised in Kansas, New York and Illinois.
Poole noted Galloway's material support for Hamas is well known. In March 2009, Galloway was videotaped by Al-Jazeera giving a duffel bag full of cash to Hamas social minister Ahmad Kurd, who called the British lawmaker "a hero."
The U.S. government designated Kurd a global terrorist in August 2007.
The Middle East Media Research Institute provided a transcript from the Al-Jazeera tape of Galloway flouting international sanctions:
We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of the contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say: We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine. Just in case the British government or the European Union want to face me in any court, let me tell them live on television: I personally am about to break the sanctions on the elected government of Palestine … But I, now, here, on behalf of myself, my sister Yvonne Ridley, and the two Respect councilors – Muhammad Ishtiaq and Naim Khan – are giving three cars and 25,000 pounds in cash to Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Here is the money. This is not charity. This is politics.
Poole said Canada banned Galloway from entry later that month because of his open funding of Hamas, prompting him to turn to Musri to help take up the fundraising slack.
MIAMI - AUGUST 12: Florida Governor Charlie Crist attends a Back to School Sales-Tax Holiday launch event at a Macy's department store August 12, 2010 in Miami, Florida. Earlier this year, Governor Crist signed legislation designating a three day sales-tax holiday from August 13 through 15, 2010, on school supplies, books, clothing, and footwear. The Governor is in a tight race for the Florida Senate seat. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A July 26, 2009, article posted on the Muslim American Society website confirmed the supplies were shipped by container from Orlando. The article was scrubbed from the site, however, after Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade, demanded an investigation into Galloway and Viva Palestina's U.S. fundraising for Hamas.
In December 2007, federal prosecutors in the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance trial in Dallas identified Bray's Muslim American Society as "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America."
The prosecutors presented evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood's "100-year plan" to gradually destroy the U.S. and Western civilization from within "so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
One of the Brotherhood's prime strategies to help achieve its supremacist aim is to spin off groups that attempt to give Islam a positive face, such as the Muslim American Society and the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR,
MAS and CAIR, casting themselves as human rights organizations, have often been called on by government and media to represent Muslims in the U.S. But their origin as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood are now widely documented, including in the WND Books best-selling expose "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America"
Hamas itself was formed in 1987 as part of the Muslim Brotherhood's strategy to advance the movement by spinning off new organizations
One FBI official quoted in "Muslim Mafia" says CAIR and the other Muslim Brotherhood front groups differ from al-Qaida only in their methods.
"The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics," the official explained.
CAIR, meanwhile – which has more than a dozen former and current leaders with known associations with violent jihad – is trying to keep alive a lawsuit against WND and two investigators behind "Muslim Mafia."
As WND reported in November 2007, amid a robust exchange over whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, Galloway abruptly booted WND's Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein and radio talk-host Rusty Humphries from his London office and handed them over to Parliament police, claiming the two were Zionist operatives who had breached security by falsely presenting themselves as reporters.
Topic: Charlie Crist adviser raised funds for Hamas (Read 2328 times)