Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
When ISNA, an Islamic group accused of supporting terrorists, announced a presidential forum for ISNACON 2019, the expectations were low. The Islamic Society of North America had been created by Muslim Brotherhood members and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas Holy Land Foundation trial.
And even if the 2020 Democrats were willing to overlook the minor matter of murdering Jews, which they usually are, Muzammil Siddiqi, ISNA’s former president who chairs its Fiqh Council, which dispenses Islamic sharia law, has assented to the death penalty for homosexuality.
At the 2019 ISNA convention, Siddiqi spoke on “Strengthening Our Connection with Allah.”
Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing, was there at an Imam Round Table. Wahhaj has repeatedly endorsed violence against non-Muslims. That wouldn’t bother Democrats, but Wahhaj has also declared that “masculine women” are “cursed”, claimed that the “feminist movement” is headed by “lesbians” and then offered a reminder of Islam’s LGBT position.
“And you know, brothers and sisters, you know what the punishment is, if a man is found with another man? The Prophet Mohammad said the one who does it and the one to whom it is done to, kill them both,” Imam Wahhaj said.
(Meanwhile a social justice interfaith panel at the convention included ‘Rabbi’ Marissa Elana Singer, a lesbian anti-Israel activist with the T’ruah hate group, who works for Beit Simchat Torah, a gay temple.)
What kind of presidential candidate would attend a convention featuring support for killing gay people?
Either a very desperate candidate or an extremely radical candidate.
When ISNA finally held its Evening With Presidential Candidates, there were more moderators than candidates. The only two candidates who showed up were Julian Castro, who’s desperate enough to speak at a Pizza Hut or the Church of Satan, and Bernie Sanders, who keeps sinking to new lows.
The ISNA presidential forum was moderated by Salam Al-Marayati, the head of MPAC, who had defended Hamas and Hezbollah, and justified Hezbollah’s mass murder of Marines in Lebanon.
“I believe in the concept of solidarity,” Senator Bernie Sanders began his speech to an unindicted co-conspirator in funding the murder of Jews. He vowed that he would “forcefully combat this virulent ideology of racism and hatred” at a convention with speakers who had endorsed the murder of gays.
But Bernie was obviously speaking about President Trump and Republicans, rather than his own hosts.
“When radical extremists conduct violence in the name of Islam, I know that the overwhelming majority of Muslims and all of those in this room condemn that violence,” he falsely claimed.
His own moderator had described Hezbollah’s Islamic terrorism as “legitimate resistance”.
“I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’ The violence has to be selected,” Imam Wahhaj, an upcoming panelist, had preached. “[W]hen Allah commands us to fight we are not stopping, no one will stop us.”
Bernie Sanders falsely accused Trump of harboring an “affection for authoritarian regimes around the world” while speaking at an event filled with speakers who support and endorse Islamic theocracy.
After his usual spiel about corporations and the wealthiest Americans, a group that includes the socialist candidate, he began serving up red Halal meat to the Islamists, denouncing China for fighting terrorism, and condemning India for attempting to protect Kashmir from Pakistani terror (Pakistani boss Imran Khan, who runs a brutal theocracy and terror state, was a featured speaker at the convention).
Then, to loud cheers from his Islamist audience, Senator Sanders called for “ending the Israeli occupation”.
What was Sanders doing at the Islamist convention of an unindicted co-conspirator?
Sanders was introduced by his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir. Shakir, a veteran of the failed ThinkProgress blog, had repeatedly attacked Israel and had been a member of the Harvard Islamic Society. HIS’s Islamic Awareness Week, which Shakir co-chaired, included a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation. ISNA’s unindicted co-conspirator status is based on the Holy Land Foundation. HLF was a pipeline funneling money to Hamas terrorists. Hamas believes in killing Jews in and out of Israel.
Why would Bernie Sanders attend the same event as Imam Wahhaj, who had preached, “If Allah says cut off their hand, you cut off their hand. If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death”?
Bernie’s campaign surrogate is Linda Sarsour who, had addressed a previous ISNA convention by calling Wahhaj her “mentor” and “favorite person in the room”.
Bernie’s pro-Islamist foreign policy was shaped by a team of foreign policy advisors who include Robert Malley, the Soros employee whom the Obama campaign dumped over his contacts with Hamas (before bringing him in and elevating him to the highest levels of the administration’s food chain). Malley had repeatedly encouraged and defended the idea of dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood terror group.
These days, aside from advising Sanders, Malley heads the Soros-linked International Crisis Group.
Another of Bernie’s foreign policy advisors, Suzanne DiMaggio, is one of the co-founders of the Quincy Institute, an appeasement think tank funded by George Soros. Also advising Sanders is Joseph Cirincione, the head of Plougshares, the pro-Iran deal lobby which shares a common funding source with BDS groups. Valerie Plame, a former Ploughshares board member, was forced to resign over her anti-Semitic tweets. Plame is currently running in the Democrat primary for a House seat in New Mexico.
The official list of Bernie Sanders endorsements includes Keith Ellison, an Islamist with a history of anti-Semitism, and Julia Salazar, an anti-Israel BDS activist with the hate group, If Not Now, who wrongly claimed to be Jewish. The unofficial list at Feed the Bern, includes George Galloway, who had conducted propaganda broadcasts for Iran, and was recently fired by a radio network over an anti-Semitic tweet.
Galloway’s previous endorsees had included Saddam Hussein, Bashar Assad and the Soviet Union.
“If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life,” Galloway had once said.
It’s not hard to see why Galloway might have endorsed Bernie who had honeymooned in the USSR.
Other endorsees include Bernd Riexinger, who had tweeted, #IAmAntifa, Dov Khenin, a key figure in the Israeli Communist Party, who was part of an Islamist anti-Israel coalition in the Israeli Knesset, Niki Ashton, the Canadian version of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who has backed Venezuela’s brutal socialist regime, was endorsed by a Muslim Holocaust denier, and attended pro-terror events.
When that’s Bernie’s base, it’s no wonder that he wound up speaking at an Islamist convention where anti-Israel lesbian lefties rub shoulders with Islamist clerics who endorse the murder of gay people.
Had President Trump appeared at a convention whose panel members have defended killing gay people, it would have been a nationwide story that would have been covered widely and extensively.
Instead, Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro appeared at a convention with Islamic clerics who have defended the death penalty for homosexuality, and no one in the media wanted to cover the story.
Not CNN. Not the Washington Post. And not the New York Times.
Just like Bernie, when faced with a choice between gay rights and Islamism, they chose Islam.
And Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro, and the Dems who failed to condemn them, should be confronted with it and reminded of it every time they tout LGBT rights and accuse Republicans of bigotry.
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