DC Imam: Islamophobia in America a ‘Zionist Project’

The Jews are behind a rising tide of anti-Islamic sentiment in America, the director of a Washington, D.C. mosque told an Iranian state-controlled media outlet on Thursday.

“There is a great rise of islamophobia and in America and it precedes [U.S. presidential candidate] Donald Trump and his statement,” Abdul Alim Musa, the director of Masjid al-Islam in Washington, D.C. and a member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought tells Iran’s PressTv.

“We believe this islamophobia in America is a Zionist-American engineering project which if done properly would justify the hatred of Islam, hatred of Muslims,” Musa added.

‘Islamophobia’ is an invented word used by Islamic advocates to stereotype critics of Islam as racists. But racism only applies to attitudes towards ethnic and racial groups, not to competing ideas.

Islam is “winning the war of spirituality” in the world, Imam Musa said of his religion, claiming Islam’s ‘victories’ are causing a backlash in the West.

Musa is a supporter of the regime in Tehran and frequently visits the theocratic state, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). A former drug dealer who went by the name Clarence Reams, he escaped the United States to avoid trafficking charges. Reams eventually came back as an Islamic convert and served time in prison for drug offenses.

In 1996, Musa took part in a London conference where speakers called for the establishment of an Islamic state in Britain. The conference featured Islamic militants, and representatives from the Iranian regime, from Hezbollah, and from Hamas. He has since been banned by the UK, after the British government concluded he was “considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fomenting and glorifying terrorist violence in furtherance of his particular beliefs and seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts.”

In the early 1990s, he created the As-Sabiqun movement, which calls for the creation of an Islamic caliphate, IPT reports. which is the same goal sought by radical jihadist groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Musa openly promotes “hostility toward Israel and American Jews.” In a 2010 speech at UC Irvine, he compared Jews to Nazis, and openly expressed his support for U.S.-designated terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

In another speech at the University of Washington, Musa declared that “Yahuds are the enemy of humanity,” using the Arabic word for Jews.

Musa has said his goal is to build the Islamic community to a point where the United States becomes an Islamic State.