On November 26, 2014, RCMP Superintendent Doug Best is scheduled to join Islamists Faisal Kutty and Robert Heft on a panel discussion entitled “Radicalization towards violence and its impact on Muslims.” The event is organized by the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Windsor.
Was there any verification done by the RCMP before it accepted to give credibility to Robert Heft and Faisal Kutty at an event organized by the Muslim Students Association?
- Robert Heft is a supporter of Zakir Naik, an Islamist banned from entering Canada for his extremist views, including his support for Al Qaeda;
- Faisal Kutty has been a spokesman of two Al Qaeda-funding organizations in the past;
- Muslim Students Associations have been described by the NYPD as “incubators” (p. 68) for radicalism.
As indicated by Tarek Fatah on Twitter on November 18, 2014, Islamist Robert Heft, who has been “building bridges” with the RCMP for many years, is a supporter of Zakir Naik. On his Facebook page, Heft links to the Indian Islamist preacher’s website. In 2010, Naik was banned from entering Canada to speak at an Islamist conference in Toronto. At the time, the National Post reported that Naik has expressed his support for Al Qaeda (“If [Osama bin Laden] is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him”), that he has described the Jews as “our staunchest enemy,” and that he professed that “every Muslim should be a terrorist,” etc. The website Islamic Far-Right in Britain provides more quotes by Zakir Naik on the second-class status of non-Muslims in Islamic countries, on the killing of homosexuals prescribed by the Islamic law (sharia), etc.
The upcoming event in Windsor is the latest example of an increasing and dangerous collaboration between Canada’s security agencies and Islamists linked to the Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure. Analyst Raymond Ibrahim recently compared the interaction between violent and non-violent proponents of sharia (Islamic law) to the good cop / bad cop routine.
At the end of September 2014, the RCMP had to withdraw its support (press release) to a so-called ”anti-terrorism” booklet after having been involved in its preparation for more than a year. The booklet, that was launched in Winnipeg by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (former CAIR-CAN) and the Islamic Social Services Association highlights the “noble” aspect of jihad (pp. 17 and 34). It also praises many radical Muslim scholars for their “good understanding of life and Islam in North America,” including Siraj Wahhaj who invited his supporters to convert youth who felt excluded, and eventually to arm them with Uzi submachine guns so that they could wage jihad in U.S. streets. (Point de Bascule – Muslim Mafia / pp. 136-137)
Faisal Kutty endorsed the NCCM booklet. Until 2008, Kutty was NCCM legal counsel and vice-chair.
Point de Bascule (November 10, 2014): An Imam promoting armed jihad in U.S. streets and other radical scholars consulted by the NCCM (the former CAIR-CAN) “to gain an accurate understanding” of Islam
In what follows, we examine Faisal Kutty’s relations with organizations and individuals linked to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and with other radical entities. For many years, Faisal Kutty has been part of the radicalization problem in the Muslim community and the RCMP should dissociate from him.
Faisal Kutty: Benevolence International “provides succor for the needy, not help for terrorists.” Allegations of links between Benevolence and Al Qaeda are “false rumours and innuendos.”
National Post – February 11, 2003, p. A8
Enaam Arnaout, director of the Benevolence International Foundation, poses with a machine gun at a training camp for Islamic fighters in this photograph released by U.S. authorities. The organization, which had offices in Ontario, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from Canadian mosques and Muslim student groups. The group’s assets were frozen by Ottawa in November [2002].
In October 2001, Faisal Kutty, the lawyer of the Benevolence International Foundation, assured journalists that the Foundation “provides succor for the needy, not help for terrorists.” Kutty called the allegations of terrorist links between Benevolence and Al Qaeda “false rumours and innuendos.”
Faisal Kutty was the spokesman of the Benevolence International Foundation in 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. administration “widen[ed] the financial assault on Osama bin Laden [and] prepare[ed] to freeze the assets of about two dozen more charities and other organizations that are suspected of providing money and support to his terrorist operations.”
After the U.S. government identified Benevolence as an organization funding Al Qaeda, Faisal Kutty retorted that these allegations were “false rumours and innuendos.”
In February 2003, Enaam Arnaout, the director of Benevolence International Foundation (Canada) pleaded guilty in Chicago to diverting charitable donations to Islamic fighters in Chechnya and Bosnia.
History Commons: Benevolence International Foundation – Complete 911 Timeline
Faisal Kutty: WAMY is a “very respected organization” and people “would be shocked” to hear allegations linking it with terrorism
In 2001, Faisal Kutty was also the lawyer of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), another organization considered for inclusion on a list of organizations accused by the U.S. Treasury Department of funding political violence. On October 11, 2001, in the Standard (St. Catharines), Faisal Kutty defended WAMY as a “very respected organization” and added that people “would be shocked” to hear allegations linking it with terrorism.
In 2011, it was the Canada Revenue Agency’s turn to take an interest in WAMY. After an audit, the CRA came to the conclusion that, in 2001, WAMY transferred funds to the Benevolence International Foundation belonging to Al Qaeda’s support network. At least one money transfer between WAMY and Benelolence occurred in 2001, the very year that Faisal Kutty was identified as WAMY’s lawyer by the Standard (St. Catharines). Moreover, the CRA audit indicates that Benevolence and WAMY shared an address, a bank account, and an administrator. The two organizations also shared a lawyer. It was Faisal Kutty. It is not mentioned in the audit but newspaper reports identified Kutty as WAMY’s lawyer on October 11, 2001 (Rick Mofina and Jim Bronskill, Standard, p. B6) and as Benevolence’s lawyer on October 2, 2001 (Philip Mascoll, Toronto Star, p. A8)
The CRA audit (p. 12/22) indicates that, “in approximately 1993, in conversations with former senior al-Qaida lieutenant Jamal Ahmed AI-Fadl, Usama Bin Laden identified three Muslim charities as the primary sources of Al-Qaida financial and fund raising activity.” The World Assembly of Muslim Youth was one of them. In the US, WAMY was established by Bin Laden’s nephew, Abdullah.
WAMY is an extension of the Saudi government. On July 31, 2003, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations testified in front of a US Senate Committee that “the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs chairs the secretariat of WAMY.” The Investigative Project on Terrorism also reports that, in the past, books released by WAMY were even printed by the Saudi Government’s Armed Forces Printing Press.
In a 2003 case, Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board highlighted that WAMY supports proponents of armed jihad in India.
In Canada, WAMY has also supported Muslims who present themselves as the alternative to violent jihad. In 2003, WAMY was the first sponsor of the annual RIS conventions held in Toronto. The RIS conventions were launched by Hussein Hamdani, an Islamist advising the federal government on security matters. Hamdani was appointed in 2005 to the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security that “provides advice and perspectives to the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Justice, concerning matters of national security.”
WAMY’s simultaneous support to violent jihadists and to those who present themselves as the alternative to violent jihad is a good example of the good cop / bad cop approach favored by international sponsors of Islamic supremacism.
Point de Bascule (December 12, 2013): Reviving the Islamic Spirit – In 2003, the launch of the RIS conventions in Toronto was sponsored by an organization tied to Al-Qaida (WAMY sponsored the event.)
Canada Revenue Agency / Archive.Today
Ahmed Said Khadr
On December 24, 1995, Faisal Kutty made an appeal in the Toronto Star for the release of Al Qaeda leader Ahmed Said Khadr after he was arrested in relation with the November 19, 1995 bombing at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad (Pakistan) that killed 17 people. At the time, Khadr led the Ottawa-based Human Concern International’s branch in Pakistan. According to his curriculum vitae, Kutty joined Human Concern International’s Board of Directors the following year.
On December 29, 1995, Kutty’s appeal was publicized in a regular Toronto Star article.
Ahmed Khadr’s wife, Elsamnahh, supported by many Canada-based Islamist organizations, asked then Prime Minister Chrétien to pressure his Pakistani counterpart for the release of Khadr. “We are Canadians. We have rights,” declared Khadr’s wife to the Toronto Star (December 15, 1995).
During a visit to Pakistan in January 1996, then Canadian Prime Minister Chrétien asked Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for the release of Ahmed Khadr. Khadr was effectively released a few months later without being put on trial.
Khadr was back in Canada in July 1996 (The Record / Kitchener, August 17, 1996). After spending some time in Canada, Khadr went back in Pakistan to resume jihad with Al Qaeda. According to La Presse, in 2002 Khadr was “on the United Nations Security Council’s most wanted terrorists list.” Ahmed Said Khadr was also connected to the Benevolence International Foundation.
On October 2, 2003, Khadr was killed, along with al-Qaeda and Taliban members, in a gunfight with Pakistan’s security forces near the Afghan border.
According to Maclean’s Michael Petrou, “an Al Qaeda website profiling ‘120 Martyrs of Afghanistan’ described Ahmed Khadr as an Al Qaeda leader and praised him for ‘tossing his little child [Omar] in the furnace of the battle’.”
Hassan Turabi
In 1996, Faisal Kutty wrote an important text (Islamists and the West: Co-existence or Confrontation?) endorsing three prominent Islamist leaders: Hassan Turabi, Ismail Faruqi, and Rachid Ghannouchi.
In a 2009 Canadian Federal Court (section 274) case, it is mentioned that “[Osama] Bin Laden and his entourage moved to Sudan in 1991 at the invitation of the Islamist leader, Hassan Turabi.”
In an interview given to the French magazine Le Point (March 4, 2006, p. 70), Hassan Turabi denied that bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks against the U.S.:
These actions were the consequence of American culture: cowboy movies, action movies, violence, boum, boum, boum (Laughs). That’s not [Bin Laden] who trained these guys.
Hassan Turabi was the primary force behind the introduction of sharia in Sudan during the eighties and nineties. In an immigration case heard by a Canadian tribunal in 2000, Turabi’s Sudan was described as a “country of horrors [where] people are whipped in the name of Shari’a, terrorist bases are harboured and the Christians in the South are exterminated.” In this case, Turabi was also described as “the ideologue of the military regime in Sudan” and the leader of an “Islamist International”. (X [Re], 2000 CanLII 21343 [IRB])
While Hassan Turabi was attorney general of Sudan in 1985, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Muslim theologian, was executed for apostasy by the State because he had openly advocated the reform of Islamic principles.
Jerusalem Fund for Human Services / IRFAN-Canada
In January/February 1998 and in December 2000, Faisal Kutty reported about two fundraising events organized for the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS). On both occasions, he encouraged his readers to send money to JFHS. The Jerusalem Fund was a fund collector for Hamas in Canada.
In the late nineties, JFHS applied to get charitable status. In March 1998, the Canada Revenue Agency explained the motives of its refusal in a letter sent to the Chairman of the organization:
I have now reviewed all of the submissions and correspondence in regard to this matter, […] and must advise you that, in my view, the JFHS has not yet met its onus to establish that it qualifies for such registration.
To be eligible for registration, an organization must demonstrate that it is established and operated exclusively for charitable purposes and activities, and complies with certain operational restrictions the Act sets as a matter of Canadian tax policy. Where there is any doubt as to whether a purpose is charitable, or where there is a mixture of charitable and non-charitable purposes, the courts have determined that an organization should not be recognized as charitable.
[…] There are indications from a variety of publications, documentaries, and media reports that the character of JFHS’s operations is substantially similar to that of organizations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas and, in fact, that JFHS affiliates and many of the organizations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip receiving funding from JFHS function as part of a support network for llamas. If this concern is well-founded, the Department will be obliged to refuse registration to JFHS on public policy grounds.
In order to get around the refusal of charitable status, a new organization, IRFAN-Canada, was created on the foundations of the Jerusalem Fund.
In 2007, a U.S. tribunal (subsection VIII) stated that IRFAN and the Jerusalem Fund were one single entity collecting money for Hamas in Canada. In April 2011, IRFAN’s charitable status was revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency after it concluded that, for the 2005-2009 period alone, it transferred $14.6 million to Hamas. In 2014, the Government of Canada listed IRFAN as a terrorist organization.
Faisal Kutty’s law firm (KSM Law) represented IRFAN-Canada in Court and with the media between 2006 and 2013, at least. Kutty’s colleague, Naseer Syed, was responsible of the file.
Point de Bascule (September 5, 2014): June 8, 2012 – Muslim Brotherhood delegation led by Hussein Hamdani met with Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews / Details provided by lawyer of Hamas’s fund collector
Muslim World League
In August 2004, the Saudi Muslim World League recommended Faisal Kutty as a scholar of Islam on its website’s Scholars connection. The next month, the Ottawa Citizen published the conclusions of a report by Martin Rudner, the founding director of Carleton University’s Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies. According to Rudner, the large influx of Saudi money going to mosques and Islamic schools in Canada is contributing in large part to the radicalization of Canada’s Arab community. Saudi money is being transferred to Canada via organizations such as the Muslim World League (identified as the World Muslim League in the article).
The threat represented by the large influx of Saudi money in Canada was expressed as follows in Rudner’s 2004 report:
“Many, if not most, Arab and Muslim religious and education institutions in this country [Canada] are still financed largely by Islamic charitable organizations based in Saudi Arabia. Saudi funding brought with it teachers, clerics and materials that infused … mosques, schools, publications and other communal institutions with an extremist and militant Islamic purview, characteristic of the Wahhabi creed.”
“The continued dependency of Canadian Arab and Muslim institutions on external resources renders them vulnerable to extremist influences that can threaten Canadian multicultural values, public safety and national security.”
According to a 2005 U.S. Government Accountability Office report (p. 6), the Muslim World League is part of a Saudi network of organizations responsible for “the global propagation of religious intolerance, hatred of Western values, and support to terrorist activities.”
Council on American Islamic Relations
On March 31, 2012, the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) presented the I-CAIR award to Faisal Kutty “for his outstanding work as an international human rights leader.”
CAIR was founded by three leaders of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), an organization identified as a Hamas front in the United States in the 2002 case Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development v. Ashcroft.
In 2009, in the case (United States of America v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development), CAIR itself was identified as a Hamas front in the U.S. In his decision, Judge Jorge Solis stated that “The [U.S.] government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT […] with Hamas.”
Hamas leaders have frequently advocated the Islamic conquest of the West in the past (2006 – 2008 – 2011 – 2012). In 2011, for example, Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said on TV that Western civilization “will not be able to withstand the great and glorious Islam.” Hamas is also engaged in the destruction of the state of Israel, of course, as stated in its charter. On July 16, 2013, Hamas threatened to launch terrorist attacks in countries where Israel embassies are located.
In 1996, Sheema Khan started a group in Montreal “to work with the Washington-based CAIR” (as the CAIR-CAN 2005 Annual report puts it). This became CAIR-Montreal. It was soon replaced by CAIR-Ottawa. In 2000, CAIR-CAN was incorporated.
A 2003 Journalist’s Guide to Islam, conceived by CAIR-CAN (p. 15), describes Washington-based / Hamas-linked CAIR as “CAIR-CAN’s parent organization” (p. 14). In December 2003, then CAIR-CAN Chair Sheema Khan swore an affidavit supporting Washington-based CAIR in a legal trade-mark battle stating that it “has direct control” over CAIR-CAN’s activities in Canada.
On August 7, 2000, Sheem Khan was appointed director of Washington-based CAIR while head of the organization’s Canadian branch CAIR-CAN.
CAIR-CAN was renamed the National Council of Canadian Muslims in July 2013. Until 2008, Kutty was NCCM legal counsel and vice-chair.
Faisal Kutty condemned the Canadian government for preventing two Islamists supporters of terrorism from entering Canada
Between 1993 and 2007, Faisal Kutty produced more than 50 articles for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA). In 2010, JihadWatch presented WRMEA as a “jihad enabling” publication.
Two of Faisal Kutty’s articles were messages of protest against decisions taken by the Canadian government to block two Islamists supporters of terrorism from entering Canada
In 1998, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was invited by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to address its annual conference in Toronto. According to the Toronto Star (May 21, 1998), “in a letter dated April 30, Ghannouchi was told he was not admissible to Canada because there was reason to believe his organization was linked to terrorism.”
In his column for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Faisal Kutty objected that this could not be true because Ghannouchi insisted that “Using violence to achieve political goals is refused in our view of Islam.”
Ghannouchi’s organization, Ennahda, was involved in terrorism in Tunisia in the eighties and nineties. Some of the actions perpetrated by Ghannouchi’s followers were listed by Canada’s Refugee Board in 2002 to justify its refusal to grant refugee status to Mohamed Zrig, a Tunisian Ennahda activist. An overview of the terrorist activities carried out by Ghannouchi’s organization is presented in the Board’s decision:
The panel held that there were serious reasons for considering that the applicant [Mohamed Zrig] was an accomplice to the commission of serious non-political crimes including the use of Molotov cocktails, the throwing of acid in people’s faces, physical attacks at educational institutions, the burning of automobiles, conspiracy to commit murder, arson resulting in a fatality, and conspiracy to violently overthrow the former President. It also concluded that the applicant should be excluded pursuant to Article 1F(c) because it had serious reasons for considering that he had been involved in a terrorist movement headed by a terrorist leader and using terrorist methods, and opposing human rights, sexual equality and freedom of religion.
All these event occurred before Faisal Kutty defended Rachid Ghannouchi and were widely reported by international media.
As for Ghannouchi’s claim (repeated by Faisal Kutty) that “Using violence to achieve political goals is refused in our view of Islam,” it is simply another deceptive statement made by a Muslim Brotherhood leader. In 1990, in front of supporters in Algeria, Youssef Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide and close collaborator of Ghannouchi, summarized the Brotherhood’s position regarding the use of force when he said that one of “the political principles brought to this earth by Islam ‘is’ changing wrong by force whenever possible”, ‘wrong’ being what is contrary to Islamic law (sharia), of course.
In 2013, ISNA Development Foundation, one of the substructures of the organization that had invited Ghannouchi in Canada in 1998, had its charitable status revoked after the Canada Revenue Agency came to the conclusion that it provided tax receipts to a non-charitable entity collecting money for a Jamaat-e-Islami-linked terrorist organization in India.
In March 1998, Faisal Kutty also protested in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs after Wagdi Ghoneim (aka Abdul Hamid Mohamed Ghoneim) was blocked from entering Canada from Detroit on January 7, 1998. Kutty described Ghoneim as a “prominent Muslim cleric” working as a “senior ranking finance officer in the Egyptian [Mubarak’s] government,” who should be above any suspicion of terrorist links.
A few years later, in 2005, Ghoneim was arrested in the U.S. for violating his immigration status. Bail was refused over concerns about his fundraising for Hamas. At the time, Ghoneim agreed to leave the country voluntarily for Qatar.
Many positions taken by Ghoneim have made the headlines in recent years:
August 13, 2010 – Ghoneim said that Muslims were spending too much time in toilets, which he called the “House of Satan”;
December 11, 2011 – He rejected the concept of democracy and denied the rights of the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt:
There’s nothing called democracy. Democracy is built on the basis of infidelity […] The Crusader Christians [the Coptics] are a minority and we can never equate a minority’s rights with the majority’s […] How can they ask for the same rights as ours?
February 17, 2012 – Wagdi Ghoneim promoted female genital mutilations in a speech given in a Tunisian mosque;
Spring 2014 – Wagdi Ghoneim was invited in Sudan by Hassan Turabi. Both Islamist leaders have been promoted by Faisal Kutty in the past;
September 16, 2014 – Ghoneim referred to Osama Bin Laden as a “heroic martyr,” and called the action against the Islamic State “a Crusader War.”
Further reading
Tarek Fatah (Twitter – November 18-19, 2014): Columnist Tarek Fatah warns PM Harper that the RCMP is consorting with Islamists in the name of ‘outreach’ in Ontario
Point de Bascule: File Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)
Point de Bascule: File Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
Point de Bascule (August 21, 2014): The RCMP and other Canadian security agencies still consult Islamist leaders involved in the radicalization of young Muslims
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