Last month, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) took a delegation of a half-dozen people to meet with the Palm Beach Post to propagandize against Israel and demand their reporting of ‘Muslim issues’ meet with their approval. Partaking in this show of intimidation were a number of controversial individuals, including one, Ammar Ahmed, who once joked about threatening to blow up a school.
SFMF, a.k.a. SoFlo Muslims, is an umbrella group consisting of most if not all of the radical Muslim organizations located in South Florida. According to SFMF, the group is “meeting with various media outlets throughout South Florida to share [its] concerns and ask for equal coverage of issues and stories that involve the Muslim community.” One of the group’s first victims was the Editorial Board of the Palm Beach Post.
As reported by SFMF, half the issues the group dealt with concerned the Jewish state, Israel, including what they consider their right to harm Israel using the bigoted BDS boycott movement without having to be called anti-Semites for doing so. This disproportionate targeting of Israel comes as no surprise, given the individual leading this meeting, SFMF Executive Director and former CAIR representative Nezar Hamze.
CAIR was established, in June 1994, as a part of an American Hamas infrastructure led by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. The Florida chapter of CAIR never fell far from its national organization’s Hamas roots. In July 2014, under Hamze’s leadership as CAIR-Florida Regional Operations Director, the group co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally outside the Israeli Consulate in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas,” “Let’s go Hamas,” and “Hamas kicked your ass.”
Participating with SFMF, at the Palm Beach Post meeting, was the South Florida Director of Emgage and Adjunct Professor at Broward College, Syed Ammar Ahmed. Emgage has its own ties to CAIR, as its founder and Co-Chairman Khurrum Wahid was a legal advisor for CAIR National and a Director for CAIR-Florida. Additionally, Emgage Executive Director Wa’el Alzayat was photographed with CAIR National founder and Executive Director Nihad Awad, this past June, writing that he was “proud to stand” with Awad and calling Awad a “trailblazer.”
Emgage’s Syed Ahmed, in February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, wrote on Facebook, “I hate white people” and joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.” Ahmed, as well, wrote that former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was a “great man.”
Also taking part in the Palm Beach Post meeting was the Secretary of the Florida chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and Chief Operating Officer of ICNA Relief USA, Abdul Rauf Khan. ICNA was founded in September 1968 as the American affiliate of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), South Asia’s largest Islamist group. JI is related to both the Pakistani compound where Osama bin Laden was killed in and the slaughter of millions that took place during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. ICNA, itself, has been linked to terrorist financing and has promoted various terrorist groups online, including Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
ICNA’s Khan, who attended the meeting, has used Facebook to promote videos dedicated to: Nation of Islam leader and anti-Jewish bigot Louis Farrakhan, Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood, and anti-gay propaganda. Khan has been photographed wearing Muslim Brotherhood garb, himself. In November 2015, Khan posted a video on his Facebook page glorifying a member of Hezbollah as a “hero.” And in July 2014, he posted a link on Facebook to an anti-Semitic video labeling comedian talk show host Bill Maher, “Zionist Jew Bill Maher.”
Besides the matter of Israel, SFMF discussed with the Palm Beach Post the issue of “Islamic terrorism.” The group says it considers it to be a “negative term,” yet Islamic terrorism is precisely what the group represents, and this author has provided many examples to prove this.
Mainstream media usually like to paint groups such as the Muslim Federation as “civil rights” or “human rights” organizations. But the Palm Beach Post and other media outlets, which are being targeted by SFMF, should be aware that this group and its affiliates have a sinister agenda which poses a grave threat to community safety and national security. If the media honestly aims to display the true face of the Muslim Federation, the documented terror ties and bigotry of those who represent it cannot be ignored.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
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