The Wahhabi Lobby

Although the Saudi government is primarily responsible for the financing of terrorism, the cooperation at high levels of the Republican government in propagating its Wahhabi version of Islam in the U.S reveals the depth of the conspiracy. On September 26, 2001, George W. Bush gathered fifteen prominent Muslim and Arab-Americans at the White House, where he proclaimed that, “the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good.” This assemblage of Muslim “moderates” was a necessary diplomatic manoeuvre to deny that the Bush administration was at war with Islam. However, many of the leaders present were part of a large network of Islamic organisations, created through Saudi funding for the spread of Wahhabi Islam, and often with ties to terrorist activities.

Since 1975, the Saudis have spent as much as seventy billion dollars towards this international project, making it the largest propaganda campaign in history.²⁴⁹ Unlike other parts of the world, where the progress of Wahhabi preaching has been impeded by stubborn adherence to traditional interpretations of Islam, the American Islamic community is relatively new, and therefore, more vulnerable to Saudi influence. Out of thousands, the Wahhabis reportedly control as many as eighty percent of mosques in the U.S., giving them control over the appointment and training of Imams, the content of preaching, and of literature distributed in Islamic bookstores.²⁵⁰

To win political clout in America, the Saudis deliberately imitated the model of the Jewish lobbying groups. With Saudi backing, American Muslims started organisations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was similar to the anti-Defamation League; the American Muslim Council (AMC), which was modelled on the American Jewish Committee; the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), which was similar to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and so on.

In support of Elhussein’s contention, it was discovered, in October 2001, that not only was a secretive group of prominent Muslim charities and businesses in Northern Virginia funneling millions of dollars to foreign terrorists, but it was part of a suspicious agenda designed to sway the Muslim vote in favour of the Republican party. The probe of the groups in Herndon, Virginia, was the largest federal investigation of its kind in the world. The network was centred around the SAAR Foundation, named after its chief sponsor, Sulaiman Abdul Aziz al Rajhi, head of one of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest families. The treasurer of SAAR was Cherif Sedky, an American lawyer for the Rahji family, and representative and business partner of Khalid bin Mahfouz.

The Safa Group, as the network of organisations are referred to in Herndon, had transmitted more than $26 million in untraceable money overseas, and leaders of the organisation committed and conspired to provide material support to terrorist organisations. The president of Safa, Jamal Barzinji, is a former business associate of Youssef Nada.²⁵¹ The ties between Nada and Safa were many, as were ties to other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.²⁵²

According to David Kane, of Homeland Security, there was no innocent explanation “for the use of layers and layers of transactions between Safa Group companies and charities other than to throw law enforcement authorities off the trail.” The express purpose of the Safa Group, “set up primarily with donations from a wealthy Saudi family, was to fund terrorism and hide millions of dollars.” Kane insisted that the complex nature of “the myriad financial transactions and the fact that much of the money was sent to tax havens with bank secrecy laws make it impossible to trace the final destination of much of the money.”²⁵³

The Safa trust provided funds for a political group called the Islamic Free Market Institute. The non-profit Islamic Institute was started by Grover Norquist, in collaboration with Karl Rove, former President Bush’s chief political adviser. Grover Norquist is the president of the noted anti-tax lobbying group, Americans for Tax Reform, and is a well-connected Conservatism activist with close ties to business and to the media.

The institute was founded in 1999, and has helped to arrange meetings between senior Bush officials and Islamic leaders. Its chairman was Khaled Saffuri, a Palestinian-American raised in Kuwait who had been an official of the American Muslim Council, a political group in Washington. Saffuri, who has met with many top-level administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and FBI Director Robert Mueller, is listed as the treasurer of National Muslims for a Greater America, a defunct political action committee that received contributions from individuals connected to the Safa Group.

The Islamic Institute’s founding chairman was a Palestinian American investor from Chicago, Talat Othman. According to the Chicago Tribune, in August 10, 2003: “In 1990, media reports implied that Othman was a front man for Bakhsh, who had acquired a 17.6 percent stake in Harken Energy Corp. in the 1980s. Serving alongside Othman as a Harken corporate officer: then-presidential son George W. Bush.”²⁵⁴ Othman was later granted privileged access to George W. Bush when he became president, attending White House meetings with him to discuss Middle East policy, according to records obtained by the National Security News Service.²⁵⁵ On July 21, 2000, the Republican national convention opened with a duaa, or Muslim benediction, that was offered by Othman.

The Safa Group was linked to Abdurahman M. Alamoudi, a politically connected Muslim activist, who was welcomed at the White House by former President Bill Clinton and President Bush for his work on behalf of Muslim causes. In the mid 1990s, he helped recruit as many as a hundred “Islamic lay leaders” for the U.S. military. In 2000, Alamoudi reportedly attended a terrorist summit in Beirut, with leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda.

According to an article by Frank Gaffney, Alamoudi had contributed $20,000 to help found Norquist’s Islamic Institute.²⁵⁶ However, Alamoudi recently pleaded not guilty to an eighteen count federal indictment alleging that he laundered money and violated immigration and customs laws, by accepting $340,000 from the Libyan government, which is considered a state sponsor of terrorism.
Safa was also linked to Sami al Arian, a Kuwaiti-Palestinian computer science professor at the University of South Florida. Between 1988 and 1992, al Arian hosted a series of conferences of the world’s leading terrorists and openly associated with Hamas officials in the U.S. and elsewhere. Al Arian was also alleged to have “helped oversee terrorist cells in the Middle East,” according to Newsweek.²⁵⁷ Al Arian and his family were photographed with a beaming Bush and his wife, Laura, during a Florida campaign stop.

Norquist, who along with other institute leaders, courted Muslim voters for the Bush 2000 presidential campaign, credits the “Muslim vote” of putting Bush in a position to win the Florida contest.²⁵⁸ During the 2000 election cycle, Norquist championed the prohibition of “secret evidence”, a personal priority of al Arian.

The following year, al Arian bestowed on Norquist an award from the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom for his work against secret evidence. Thanks in large part to Norquist’s efforts, in a presidential campaign debate with Al Gore, George W. Bush pledged, if elected, to prohibit the use of secret evidence, and succeeded in attracting the Muslim vote. Encouraged by his promise, a Michigan umbrella group of more than twenty Arab-American groups came out for Bush, and the American Muslim Political Coordination Council called a press conference in Washington and announced its endorsement of him.

Agha Saeed, the AMPCC chairman said, “it won’t be long before political analysts realize that Muslim voters have played a historic role.”²⁵⁹ Al Arian boasted that he had delivered “considerably more” than the 537 votes that gave Bush his victory in Florida, and allowed him to capture the White House.²⁶⁰ As Craig Unger describes, “in other words, without the mobilization of Saudi-funded Islamic groups, George W. Bush would not be president today.”²⁶¹

For much of a decade, John Loftus tried unsuccessfully to have al Arian arrested. Al Arian was finally arrested in February 2003, and was revealed as an FBI informant. Coincidentally, al Arian’s attorney also represented Theresa LePore, the local ballots chief in Palm Beach, one of the key problem areas during balloting. LePore had also moonlighted as a flight attendant on private planes owned by the notorious arms dealer, Adnan Khashoggi.²⁶²

Theresa “Madam Butterfly” LePore also assisted a company called Database Technologies (DBT)/ChoicePoint Inc, of which Richard Armitage was a board member prior to his appointment to the State Department. As the Guardian’s Tim Wheeler noted in May 2003: “ChoicePoint Inc, a data-processing firm... is notorious for purging Black and Latino voters in Florida to help George W. Bush steal the 2000 election...”²⁶³

Footnotes:

249 Unger, Craig. House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 204.
250 Ibid, p. 203.
251 Tom Hamburger and Glenn R. Simpson, “In Difficult Times, Muslims Count On Unlikely Advocate”, Wall Street Journal, undated.
252 Farah, Blood From Stones, p. 154.
253 Constantine, Alex. Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists. Part XXIII: Nazi & Republican Party Ties to Three 911 Hijackers.
254 Brian Grow, “Muslim financier pushes peace effort,” Chicago Tribune,
August 10, 2003, p. 1.
255 Tom Hamburger and Glenn R. Simpson, “In Difficult Times, Muslims Count On
Unlikely Advocate.”, Wall Street Journal.
256 Unger, Craig. House of Bush, House of Saud. p. 206
257 Alex Constantine, Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists Part II: An American Pinay Circle.
258 Constantine, Alex. Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists. Part XXIII: Nazi & Republican Party Ties to Three 911 Hijackers.
259 House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 216.
260 Farrah, Diamonds Are a Terrorist’s Best Friend.
261 House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 216.
262 “Washington Wire” The Wall Street Journal. Dec. 1, 2000; Alex Constantine, “Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists”, Part XI: Being an Account of the “Enterprise” Behind “Team Bush” & a First Glimpse at the Black Heart of 911 Octopus.
263 Tim Wheeler, "Collecting data on everyone," Guardian, May 21, 2003.