Dishonest Local Press Incites Hate & Fear About ABUAJ’s Peaceful Ride for National Security Past Islamberg— ABUAJ’s Exclusive Response & Report

The April 12th oped is even further reaching when it states that ABUAJ’s claims are “tired” and derived from “arch-conservative videos and articles found online.” Does the fact that information may or may not be obtained from a conservative source or the “far-right-wing media,” as the oped implies, make it any less true and substantive?

“And it is our hope,” the oped contends, while lodging what could be perceived as a veiled threat at our group,

that anyone else who stands with Islamberg will be waiting for the American Bikers United Against Jihad when their ‘Ride for National Security’ pulls up to the gates of the hamlet.

It is our hope that this protest against what can only be described as a peaceful enclave is greeted with a counter-protest demonstrating that the people of our area, particularly those in Hancock and Deposit, stand with Islamberg.

There is still some good that could come from this whole thing. If the riders who might travel to Delaware County in May have the opportunity to see for themselves that Islamberg is not the bogeyman depicted by the far-right-wing media, perhaps they will leave with a more enlightened view of the whole thing.

Are the FBI and State and Justice Departments far right-wing, arch-conservative sources, since there is an abundance of primary source records from them that substantiates both CAN’s and our reports, but The Daily Star must not have bothered to check first.

Of course, the best defense is always a better offense, as is exhibited in a 2013 MOA propaganda video, Targeting Islam and Muslims in America, which accuses “front organizations” for Israel (a code word for Jews)  — such as Martin Mawyer’s organization CAN and the Klu Klux Klan — of spreading “Islamophobia” and conspiring to destroy Muslims, among other things.

It is also plausible to surmise that Mahoney’s false portrayal of us has unduly provoked the involvement of the NAACP, which will be busing protesters from Oneonta to Islamberg for our ride. According to Mahoney, a retired political science professor at the State University College at Oneonta, has been “working with the Oneonta chapter of the NAACP in countering the biker [ABUAJ’s] rally.”

This is further elaborated upon in The Daily Star’s May 1, 2016 “news” story, “Islamberg Spokesman: Stand Up Against Hate,” by Jessica Reynolds, who reported on an event that was held at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Oneonta and hosted by officials of the local chapter of the NAACP to “dispel” misconceptions about MOA and “show support for area Muslims.” Unlike Mahoney, she never approached us for comments, but — quoting Rashid (“Carl”) Clark, the mayor of the Muslim enclave, Islamberg, and the statements of NAACP officials — she echoes the same “tired” details about Doggart and unfounded claims about us and our ride . . .

The biker group has asserted that Islamberg is a training site for those aspiring to wage jihad, and says the rally is intended to be ‘educational.’

But people should not be singled out and targeted for who they are or what they believe in, according to Regina Betts, vice president of Oneonta’s chapter of the NAACP. Because of this, Betts said, plans are in the works for area supporters to assemble alongside members of Islamberg on May 15 so that the bikers will see a peaceful and united front as they drive by.

‘We’re doing this in order to assure our neighbors in Islamberg that we are not going to be silent, and that we are not going to tolerate hatred,’ Betts told the audience. ‘The main thing is that we fight discrimination and that we do it peacefully.’

[…]

‘There are more children than there are adults on Islamberg,’ Clark told the audience Sunday. ‘So when people [like Doggart] threaten to come and chop us up with machetes, they’re mainly threatening children. …On May 15, when the bikers claim they’re going to drive by, we hope to stand against hate.'”

It is important to note that our ride is not a “rally” or “protest,” as it has been improperly dubbed by The Daily Star. ABUAJ is comprised of law-abiding individual American bikers and citizens — most of whom are parents, veterans, and professionals with children, families, and jobs to uphold — and our message too is of peace through national security. Mahoney, Reynolds, and, respectively, The Daily Star have unnecessarily put them at risk by stoking the flames of hate, anger, and fear with their own glaring bias and propaganda.

Granted, Mahoney’s recent story is less inflammatory than his first, “Biker Group Plans Rally Against Local Muslims,” but both essentially cover the same erroneous grounds, and he misleads the public about the nature and goal of our ride by stating in both that “[t]he group has been . . . billing [emphasis added] it as a ‘Ride for National Security.’”

It first must be said that our group is not “against” Muslims, as the above title denotes, which sets the overall tone, once again suggesting Mahoney’s own inherent bias, not that of ABUAJ. Nowhere in any promotions about our ride do we subscribe to this view, and we are not merely “billing” it as a “Ride for National Security.” It is a ride for national security.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which was removed from the U.S. State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups after 2000, has been linked to dozens of murders, assassinations, and bombings across the U.S. and abroad, including the 1993 planned World Trade Center bombing, the shoe bomber Richard Reid, the convicted D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad, and a hotel bombing in Portland, Oregon.

Although the MOA compounds are not identified by name in the Patterns of Global Terrorism report, a 2005 Homeland Security report directly links it and its compounds to Jamaat ul-Fuqra. This was further confirmed during the 1993 trial of Glen Ford, an ul-Fuqra terrorist involved in a 1991 bomb plot in Canada who testified that Gilani convinced the U.S. branch to change its name to MOA.

Similarly, a 2006 intelligence report by the Regional Organized Crime Information Center (ROCIC), which was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, makes no distinction, stating that Jamaat ul -Fuqra receives significant funding for terrorist operations from MOA and its offshoot, IQOU, which, like MOA, was founded by Gilani as a U.S. nonprofit organization.

As illustrated by the ROCIC report tables above, white-collar crimes, as well as drug trafficking of narcotics, are major sources of revenue for Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s terrorist activities, and front companies, such as Professional Securities International (PSI), are established to launder and transfer funds to Jilani in Pakistan.

When Gilani first formed Jamaat ul-Fuqra in 1980, he reportedly began “preaching against Western culture” at Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York, and “primarily targeted black American Muslim converts from the inner city, mostly those with criminal backgrounds.” According to the ROCIC report, there are currently at least 35 suspected Jamaat ul-Fuqra communes with over 3,000 members throughout the U.S. Islamberg in Hancock, New York, is identified as the first of them to be established by Gilani and his American recruits. Their structure is described as typical of “classically structured terrorist cells” and its members as terrorist extremist — but more on this later and back to our ride and Mahoney’s first hit piece on us . . .

Again, our May 15th Ride for National Security passed Islamberg is not a “protest” or “rally,” as it has been falsely and unfairly dubbed by The Daily Star. It is one of many other peaceful and lawful methods that ABUAJ has chosen to educate the American public about the ever-increasing threat of terrorism in America and abroad, and, in this particular case, to proactively advocate for the State Department to reclassify groups such as Jamaat al-Fuqra as foreign terrorist organizations to safeguard our homeland and Americans of all stripes — Muslims and non-Muslims included.

To be fair, it would be remiss not to mention that Mahoney included most of our initial email to him in his first story about our ride. Nevertheless, by taking our statements out of the proper context — juxtaposing them to his statements about Doggart, as is done in all four of The Daily Star pieces about us — he has distorted our genuine intentions, inflaming an undeserved climate of hate and fear. His titles alone connote bias, conjuring pejorative stereotypical images of American bikers and fueling the flames of animus for future relations between us, the Hancock community, and American Muslims in general.

Obviously, our group and our ride are not against Muslims, local or otherwise. Rather, we stand in solidarity with American Muslims and non-Muslims alike against the very real threat of terrorism, which is an issue that should concern and unite every American.

Mahoney later contends that the organizer of the ride “sought to put distance between the organization and Doggart,” when, in reality, the need to do so would not even be an issue if he had not brought up the subject himself to begin with, most egregiously placing ABUAJ in the same context and light as Doggart. Like the gift that keeps giving, it is a theme that he and his newspaper resound each and every time the topic crops up.

Suffice it to say, Mahoney and his colleagues and friends at The Daily Star seem to have had their own agenda in mind all along — to instill in the people of Hancock, New York, a sense of unwarranted fear with a fallacious, hate-filled message about ABUAJ and our ride and with a not-so-subtle association between us and Doggart, when no such connection exists.

“Muslims of America,” Mahoney goes on to write in his first story, “in announcing the lawsuit against Doggart, noted that 2015 was ‘a violent year for American Muslims amid increased Islamophobia.’” No doubt it was, but it had little to do with a rise in “Islamophobia.”

While the statistical verdict is still out for 2015, the latest FBI hate crime statistics from 2014 show that the largest group of victims from religiously motivated hate crimes was Jewish, making up 56.8 percent of the total victims compared to 16.1 percent of religiously motivated crimes against Muslim victims, which is a 40.7 percent difference. Unfortunately, MOA leaders have a long, documented history of promoting such hate against Jews themselves (also see here and here). This is aptly conveyed in a September 2002 MOA propaganda video, which was written by Sheikh Gilani, produced by IQOU at Islamberg, New York, with the Directorate of Information of the MOA, and later obtained by The Clarion Project.

As depicted below, MOA accuses the “Zionist media” of “releasing a reign of media terror to destroy the American Muslims” and of a conspiracy to destroy the world. In other MOA and IQOU literature and propaganda, which are documented in official law-enforcement reports, the Jews are compared to “Satan,” and Gilani has been caught on film at what was referred to in one official report as a “roundtable of terrorists” that included Osama Bin Laden chanting, “down, down with the USA! Down, down with the CIA,” and “death to the Jews” (see here, here, and here for examples). The film now remains in the CIA’s possession as part of the dossier on bin Laden, which is known as the “Alex File.”

Screen-captured Images of the Last Few Clips of MOA’s Propaganda Video

Either way, violent Islamic terrorist attacks against Muslims and non-Muslims alike have risen exponentially throughout the world, and MOA is correct to point out that Muslims make up the majority of its victims. The National Counterterrorism Center found that in 2011 alone Muslims themselves suffered between 82 and 97 percent of the fatalities related to Islamic terrorism, but that figure is significantly higher than recorded in most other and more recent reports (see here, here, and here). Figures on Islamic terrorism against Muslims, or any other religious group for that matter, are somewhat sketchy, since reporting methodologies and data collection are generally based on news reports and aggregated according to geographical regions and terrorist groups rather than by religion.We also are in full agreement with Mahoney when he relays a March 21 statement by MOA, noting that “Muslims of America declared: ‘We must use all legal means available to stop the terrorization of people based on their faiths for any reason.'” This is precisely the same reason ABUAJ is hosting a ride that focuses on national security — to improve upon law enforcement’s ability to uphold and enforce our nation’s laws. In fact, to assure the safety and peace of mind of everyone concerned — so that no faith or group from either ABUAJ or the community of Hancock at large feels the slightest bit threatened — we have been in direct communication with the local New York State Police department, who will be present during our ride passed Islamberg.

Even before the second hit piece about us was released by The Daily Star, we had already posted and promoted guidelines for our May 15th ride. As is illustrated below, our ride is not a rally or protest but for educational purposes only. ABUAJ will be riding passed Islamberg on a public state road that runs perpendicular to Muslim Lane, where the complex is located, but we will neither be stopping at its entrance nor trespassing on its property. We have instructed all participants that Islamberg is a private, gated commune and that women and children reside there and to be mindful and respectful of that.

Posted Guidelines for ABUAJ’s May 15, 2015 Ride for National Security

Up to this point, Mahoney might have had one or two valid points, but his argument goes sorely awry as he continues,

Muslims of America describes itself as a population of primarily African American Sunni Muslims. the group says it has a long history of fighting against disinformation about its activities.

Following the assault on various sites in Paris last November, the head of Muslims of America, Hussein Adams, issued a statement declaring his group has no affiliation with the Islamic State and condemned its activities.

‘Muslims are not terrorists, we are the No. 1 victims of terrorists,’ Adams said then.

‘Muslims are being slaughtered by these people who are perpetrating their devastation in the name of Islam in order to instigate chaos in the world. And yet, here at home in America, Islamophobes are wasting time harassing American Muslims who have not harmed anyone. The American Muslim community has co-existed here peacefully for decades.’

It is here where both Mahoney and the head of MOA, Hussein Adams — as well as MOA’s Mayor, who Reynolds’ quotes in her story — begin to whitewash some of the more painful realities of terrorism, jihad in America, and the history of MOA itself. We cannot overlook this without correcting the record.

First, as noted above, we understand and agree that Muslims are the primary victims of Islamic terrorism, which, based on terminology alone, discredits the notion proclaimed by MOA that Muslims are not terrorists. Second, ABUAJ never once associated MOA with ISIS, which makes its above-quoted contention an irrelevant, mute issue. Third, we reject the entire premise of Islamophobia, which is akin to the pot calling the kettle black after MOA’s long, sordid history of hatred towards other groups.

Yet, it stands to reason that MOA also would casually wave around and promote the term like CAIR. After all, its general counsel, Tahirah Amatul Wadud, was recently appointed to the board of the Massachusetts chapter of CAIR. As reported by Ryan Mauro, National Security Analyst for The Clarion Project,“Islamophobia” is a term that was first derived and promoted in the early 1990s by the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), a front group of the Muslim Brotherhood. As the think tank Discover the Networks explains in “Politics of ‘Islamophobia,’” the term was expanded upon and promoted after 9/11 by groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist fundraising trial in U.S. history, U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development et al — and has been used “as a weapon to advance a totalitarian cause by stigmatizing critics and silencing them.” Its suffix, “phobia,” connotes an unwarranted, exaggerated sense of fear, but, in this instance, the realities of Islamic terrorism are not based on either unfounded fear or the discrimination of Muslims.

Wadud reportedly posted an article by MOA’s Pakistan-based leader, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, on her Facebook claiming the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) is a puppet of the British government and a Jewish conspiracy perpetrated the attacks on Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001 [sic] The Clarion Project was the first to report on the inflammatory article.“

‘There was no need for America to go to war against Hitler. Hitler was not the enemy of America or the American people. There was a mutual animosity between Hitler and the Jews. So, the American people paid a very heavy price for fighting someone else’s war,’ Gilani wrote.

It is unconscionable that MOA  — with a Judeophobic leader who reduces the Holocaust to an anti-Semitic Jewish conspiracy based on his own hatred and unrealistic fear of the Jewish people — would have the temerity to cast stones, when its own counsel and representative parrots the same toxic venom as him at the Jews.

Our group, on the other hand, does not discriminate on the basis of religion. The focus of our Ride for National Security passed Islamberg is not against Muslims. It is about Islamic terrorism, and we are against the actions of the individuals and groups who carry it out. Needless to say, not all Muslims are terrorists, and our focus would be exactly the same if Jamaat ul-Fuqra was a Nazi organization comprised of mainly Christians, Buddhists, and Jewish members, white supremacist members of the Klu Klux Klan, or, as it is in this case, Muslim members.

As a matter a fact, over a dozen North American Muslim organizations joined The Clarion Project to urge the U.S. Department of State to designate Jamaat ul-Fuqra a foreign terrorist organization, stating,

As Muslims concerned about Islamist terrorism, we urge the U.S. State Department to label the Pakistani militant group, Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. We are alarmed that this group, operating under various names like Muslims of the Americas (MOA), says it has 22 “Islamic villages” in the U.S. and Canada.

We stand in solidarity with them. If MOA has no connection to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as it has repeatedly claimed, it has no reason whatsoever to feel harassed and discriminated against and should in fact welcome and join our May 15th ride to designate it as a foreign terrorist organization and stand in solidarity with us, The Clarion Project, and the other North American Muslim groups.

ABUAJ recognizes that the majority of Muslims are peaceful. We also understand that Muslims are by far the largest victims of not only Islamic terrorism but also of subjugation and abuse. Regardless, the risks remain the same. Today, the largest worldwide terrorist threat that we face comes from Islamic terrorism. Whether it be from many or just a few, the number is inconsequential. It is not in America’s interest to ignore and fail to raise public awareness about it, and we believe it is our human obligation to shed light on this highly serious topic, albeit often unpopular and politically incorrect.

We therefore welcome and urge American Muslims to take a stand against hate and terror and to join us in raising awareness about American safety and peace through strong homeland security. Unless the U.S. State Department reclassifies Jamaat ul-Fuqra as an international terrorist organization, the FBI is unable to act proactively and protect all Americans from the threats that it may pose to our safety.

Islamic Terrorist Networking Map | Credit: US Centers for Islamic Activity

At the time of ROCIC’s 2006 intelligence report, there were at least 35 suspected Jamaat ul-Fuqra communes, along with Islamberg, and at least a dozen members of the organization had been convicted of terrorism, including conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, and gun smuggling. Its members also are suspected in 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 bombings that have occurred since 1980.

There is strong evidence to support that Jamaat ul-Fuqra communes in North America and Canada have been used for covert paramilitary training and activity, including the Muslim enclave of Islamberg in Hancock, New York. According to ATF Special Agent Thomas P. Gallagher’s September 28, 2001 court testimony, “Individuals from the organization [MOA] are trained in Hancock, N.Y., and if they pass the training in Hancock, N.Y., are then sent to Pakistan for training in paramilitary and survivalist training by Mr. Gilani. . . . “

This is further confirmed by raw footage, Jihad USA: Muslim Terror Training, Hancock, New York, which was obtained by The Clarion Project from a law-enforcement source and produced and released in 2009 by PRB Films and the CAN. It is believed to be from the year 2000.

In October 2013, The Clarion Project released two more videos, Guerilla Training of Women at Islamberg, Hancock, N.Y., headquarters of Muslims of the Americas, which is believed to be from January 28, 2000, and Gilani’s 2002 MOA propaganda video, Muslims of the Americas Propaganda: America is a Muslim Country, as shown earlier above. Their titles are self-explanatory.

As a matter a fact, Mauro of The Clarion Project recently appeared on The O’Reilly Factor and highlighted a clip from the first.

A groundbreaking 2009 documentary, Homegrown Jihad, which has been deemed as an “arch-conservative source” by The Daily Star, features an ul-Fuqra recruitment and training video from the 1980s that captures Gilani himself boasting about the success of his international organization, “Soldiers of Allah” (SOA), and its 22 U.S.-based MOA compounds. This rare footage also shows his followers on behalf of MOA training in Islamic guerrilla warfare, including tactical training in firearms, kidnapping, murder, and explosives, and its American members receiving instructions to “Act like you are a friend, and then kill him, just like from the book [the Quran].”

This sharply contrasts Mahoney’s denial when he quotes MOA’s attorney, Tahirah Clark, stating,

‘[T]he assertions by the biker group that Islamberg is a training site for those aspiring to wage jihad is consistent with “the false statements that are prevalent on the internet,” and claiming himself that it is in “direct contradiction of assurances from law enforcement officials that there is no known evidence of any paramilitary training taking place at Islamberg, located near Hancock.”

The same claim is made in the April 12th oped, when the unidentified author writes, “. . . we do not have to make that judgment for ourselves. Local law enforcement officials and a representative of the FBI have affirmed that there is no evidence of terrorist activity at Islamberg.” This has not always been the case.