All Roads Lead to Ground Zero Mosque – Part 1

From a report by Paul Sperry at Worldnetdaily.com:

The Saudi prince whose post-9/11 relief check was rejected by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has found a more willing recipient in the city for his millions: the head of the Ground Zero mosque project.

The same Saudi potentate, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, owns the biggest chunk of the parent company of the Fox News Channel outside of the Murdoch family.

Former Bush advisers have similar ties to the prince and the proposed mega-mosque in Manhattan, which may explain why they’ve asked Republicans to soften their opposition to it.

WND has learned that one of the original board members of the nonprofit group promoting the 13-story mosque and “cultural center” took the job as a favor to James A. Baker III, the former President George H.W. Bush official and lawyer who defended Saudi government officials against a lawsuit filed by families of 9/11 victims. Baker has counted bin Talal as a client.

Bin Talal has pumped more than $300,000 into the project headed by New York imam Feisal Abdul Rauf as part of the prince’s campaign to “improve the image of Islam in the American public.” The prince’s charitable foundation in 2008 gave $125,000 to Rauf, which came on the heels of an earlier $180,000 gift, according to the Arab press.

The foundation is run by Muna Abu Sulayman, a Saudi woman who appears on Rauf’s website as one of its “Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow.”

But not just any Saudi woman.

Last summer, while trying to keep up with Yale’s tin-cup submission to Islamic prohibitions against depicting Mohammed in a Yale Press treatise about the Danish Mohammed cartoons, I ran across Muna Abu Sulayman, who was described as a Saudi Arabian “media personality,” a newly minted Yale World Fellow, oh, and director of Talal’s charitable foundation, which just oozes petrodollars. (I can just see Yale Prez Levin saying to Abu Sulayman over welcome-reception gin and tonics: Do you happen to have any with you?) Abusulayman, as reported by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (via Family Security Matters) also has a pedigree worth noting, particularly as we now she learn that, as a Rauf-sponsored (Cordoba Initiative-sponsored) “Muslim Leader of Tomorrow,” she also administers the flow of Talal bucks into Rauf’s project.

Ms. Muna Abu Sulayman is the daughter of Dr. AbdulHamid Abu Sulayman, one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood. According to various biographies, Dr. Abu Sulayman was born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia and received his BA and MA at the University of Cairo and a PhD in International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. His global Muslim Brotherhood affiliations include:

• Secretary General of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) (1973-79)
• Chairman, Department of Political Science at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, (1982-84)
• Initial Board of Directors SAAR Foundation (1983)
• Founding member of The Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) (1972) and its former President, (1985-87)
• Rector, International Islamic University Malaysia (1989-1999)

The GMBDR report continues: “Dr. Abu Sulayman is currently Chairman of the Board and trustee of International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and its former president and founding member. IIIT was founded in the U.S. in 1980 by important members of the Global Muslim Brotherhood who wished to promote the “Islamization of Knowledge.” IIIT was associated with the now defunct SAAR Foundation, a network of Islamic organizations located in Northern Virginia that was raided by the Federal government in 2003 in connection with the financing of terrorism.”

Sperry’s WND.com piece goes on to unravel a tangle of connections between the Aspen Institute and the Cordoba Initiative, with the occasional link back to the George Herbert Walker Bush & chums. (See Part 2 tomorrow.)