Rep. Mike Rogers to Honor Pro-Sharia Extremist Feisal Rauf

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is slated to be the keynote speaker at an event honoring the notorious Ground Zero Mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan. Rauf and Khan are respected, even revered, in the mainstream media, and enjoy a reputation as moderate, reasonable, thoughtful, and wise. That reputation is undeserved. Like the host of the event, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD), they have extensive Muslim Brotherhood ties. Does Rogers simply not care?

Rauf’s sinister mien is not the only indication that he is not even close to being as “moderate” as the media is so desperate to portray him. He has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Rauf’s book What’s Right with Islam says on the copyright page: “This edition was made possible through a joint effort of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and the office of Interfaith and Community Alliance of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Funding for this project was provided by IIIT.” Both IIIT and ISNA are Muslim Brotherhood fronts, and ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case.

The Arabic translation of Rauf’s book is a call to conversion from the pile of human remains at Ground Zero, disturbingly entitled, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of post 9/11 America.

In his book, Rauf supports and justifies Sharia law, and calls for restrictions on free speech in America. He has written another book that has gotten little notice: Islam: A Sacred Law–What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia. In it he explains why Allah’s law is superior to man made law–that is, why Sharia is better than democracy:

“The corruption of the individual or a society that abandons Sacred Law is amplified in one of the key Qur’anic passages regarding the relevance, evolution and meaning of Divine Law, (5:41-50) where Allah speaks frequently of the act of ‘judging.’ In this passage, God criticizes previous generations who ‘raced toward disbelief, among those who say with their mouths “We believe” while their hearts done believe;’ who ‘altered God’s Words from their placements;’ indicating somehow that they altered their divinely ordained Shari’ah, placing their own values above that which God had established. The Qur’an continues to describe them as ‘listeners of lies, devourers of ill-gotten property,’ an accusation that a Muslim tries carefully to avoid incurring.”

This passage is based on a section of the Quran, 5:41-50, that talks about “judging” peoples. It’s clear from the context that the “previous generations” are Jews and Christians who have now become “listeners of lies, devourers of ill-gotten property.” In other words, Rauf is condemning Jews and Christians in America and arguing obliquely that America should ditch the Constitution and adopt Sharia.

Rauf was also a “key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization,” which “helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos” on the jihad flotilla Mavi Marmara in 2010. Perdana, reported the New York Post at the time, was “the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday.” A Muslim “charity,” the Foundation for Human Rights and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), launched those ships, and Fox News reported that IHH has links to terrorist groups, including Hamas and Al Qaeda.

Rauf also shows a reluctance to admit that Muslims were involved in Islamic terrorism. At one point he says: “And when we observe terrorism, whether it was done by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or by al Qaeda or whoever is behind the bombings in London or those in Madrid.” Remember: when he said this about the London and Madrid bombings, he was speaking five days after the 7/7 London jihad attacks and over a year after those in Madrid. It was common knowledge who the perps were at that time. But maybe Rauf didn’t want his listeners to be thinking about exactly who they were.

Rauf also praises the worst extremists and inciters to genocide. In his address in Australia he said he had just come from a conference in Jordan featuring “over 170 leading Muslim scholars from almost every part of the Muslim world, including some of the most important names like Sheikh Tantawi of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, who is the chief mufti of Egypt, the chief mufti of Jordan, the Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, who is a very very well-known Islamic jurist, highly regarded all over the Muslim world.”

The late Sheikh Tantawi several years ago endorsed suicide attacks against Israelis, as did Sheikh Qaradawi. Sheikh Gomaa has defended Islam’s death penalty for apostasy and sanction for wife-beating, and has endorsed the jihad terror group Hizballah.

Moderates?

Rauf also says he wants a “one-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians. Given his advocacy for Islamic law, that means an Islamic supremacist sharia state in which Jews are denied equal rights–when they aren’t killed outright.

Rogers should pull out of this event. The prospect of a Republican Congressman keynoting an event of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization honoring two unsavory Islamic supremacists shows the sad state of the GOP today.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.