Anthony Weiner resigned yesterday, unable to withstand the relentless pressure put on him for his sexting extravaganzas. Yet if an article written by former PLO terrorist-turned-Christian and Israel supporter Walid Shoebat (along with KTEM radio host Ben Barrack) is any indication, it may very well be that the wrong member of the family resigned. According to Arabic sources translated by Mr. Shoebat, Huma Abedin’s mother and brother are both associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ms. Abedin’s mother, Saleha Mahmoud Abdeen, is reportedly part of a special woman’s unit known as the Muslim Sisterhood or the International Women’s Organization (IWO) which, according to a counter-terrorism report obtained by the Terrorism Committee of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, operates within the Brotherhood in Egypt and possibly other Arab nations as well. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Dostor confirms that the Sisterhood includes 63 international members in 16 different countries.
The group is being portrayed by Western media in a benign fashion, as noted in Der Spiegel and on its Facebook page. But a report by the Egyptian opposition newspaper Al-Liwa Al-Arabi paints a far more ominous picture. It reveals that these women, who are “the wives of some of the highest-ranking leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood” are being recruited to:
[S]muggle secret documents for the members since women go undetected by security surveillance…to spread the Brotherhood’s ideology by infiltrating universities, schools and homes…to lay the plans for the Sisterhood to work at the state level…[and]…to fulfill the interests of the Brotherhood and also to benefit from international women’s conferences and unify all efforts to benefit the Brotherhood globally.
Furthermore, the Sisterhood’s mission includes:
The newspaper then lists the names of the women who belong to the organization on a country-by-country basis. There are a dozen members of the Sisterhood from Saudi Arabia. Saleha Mahmoud Abdeen (Abedin) is one of them.
It has also been revealed in the Arab media that Huma Abedin’s brother Hassan is a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS) at Oxford University in England. A number of Muslim Brotherhood members sit on the board, including Qatari cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has incited violence against Jews and Israel on numerous occasions. In 2009, Qaradawi’s role at Oxford and the Muslim Brotherhood was supported by Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, one of 90 Muslim leaders who, in the same year, signed a pact in support of Hamas and for military action against the British Navy if it stopped an arms shipment headed for Gaza. Another member of the OCIS is Abdullah Omar Naseef, who founded the Rabita Trust, which was included in the first post-9/11 list of al-Qaeda supporters whose financial assets could be frozen. Naseef is chairman of the board of OCIS.
Not that the radicalization of English universities is anything new. In 2007, Professor Anthony Glees, professor of politics and director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, warned that British universities, “including Cambridge and Oxford” had been infiltrated by Islamic extremists. ”We must accept this problem is widespread and underestimated. Unless clear and decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate,” he said. Glees stated that as many as 46 other schools had been infiltrated as well.
Hassan Abedin himself has expressed an interest in spreading Islam in the West, meeting with billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Alwaleed is one of the largest shareholders in both Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Citigroup. He is also the same prince Alwaleed whose $10 million dollar check for post 9/11 disaster relief was rejected by then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani when the prince suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the attacks.
It is up for debate to what extent Hassan Abedin’s associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, OCIS and Prince Alwaleed could be construed as “innocent.” But one thing is certain: as Abdul Rahim Ali, Director of the Arab Center for Research and Studies pointed out in a speech at the International Center for Future and Strategic Studies (ICFS) in Cairo on Wednesday, January 27, 2010, the next generation of al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations “will be better educated and more adopted to using technological means, particularly communications and modern weapons,” noting that they are “born in the West, flamboyant, multilingual, well-traveled, and eager for personal notoriety in addition to excelling in modern technology, physics and chemistry.” This sentiment was echoed in Senate testimony by the former leaders of the 9-11 Commission, Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, both of whom noted that the United States hadn’t done enough to protect itself from an “ever evolving” terrorist threat.
Which brings us to Anthony Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, who is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff. Ms. Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, MI, but moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at the age of 2, before returning to the United States 16 years later to attend college. A detailed report from 2007 shows that the aforementioned Abdullah Omar Naseef was instrumental in the Abedin family’s move around 1977 — the same year that the Muslim Sisterhood was established. Huma Abedin has been working for Mrs. Clinton since 1996. Between that job and being married to a Congressman — in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton — Ms. Abedin is privy to sensitive and secret information. Walid Shoebat explains the significance: “Huma Abedin is a practicing Muslim and is still well-connected to her family. She also has access to highly sensitive State secrets–admitted by Hillary herself–as well as significant influence in the Obama administration.”
This brings us to a curious sidebar: how it is possible for a “practicing Muslim” woman to be married to a Jewish American? Islamic scholarship and Sharia law forbid Muslims from marrying non-believers. Mr. Shoebat translated the Al-Marsid newspaper, which reported on the Weiner/Abedin marriage specifically:
Dr. Anwar Shoeb of the faculty of Islamic law in Kuwait declared that the marriage between Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin is null and void, considering it adultery as confirmed in the Sharia position, prohibiting the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim, regardless of whether he is a Jew or a Christian. In this case, he assured the invalidity of the marriage certificate between them.
Yet far more importantly, how is it that Huma Abedin’s mother’s and brother’s associations with the Muslim Brotherhood, direct and indirect respectively, have remained beyond scrutiny? As for Ms. Abedin herself, it strains credulity to assume that she is unaware of those associations, just as it is impossible that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t know. NPR reported that Mrs. Clinton visited Dar al-Hekma college last Tuesday, where Saleha Mahmoud Abdeen is a vice dean and the school’s co-founder. Yet it took an Arabic news report translated by Shoebat to confirm the obvious:
Saleha Abedin spoke after Shuheir Qureshi (another member of the Muslim Sisterhood) and beamed in the presence of Secretary Clinton. Saleha’s speech preceded the former First Lady’s. Then Hillary stood. She donned a broad smile as she approached the podium… Clinton started with a strong word and she spent a long time complimenting Dr. Saleha Abedin regarding her daughter. Hillary explained that Huma holds an important and sensitive position in her office. She ended her speech by speaking of Saleha Abedin’s daughter (Huma), that a person must be happy if mentioned in a positive light but there is no happiness that equals the compliment given to children in front of a parent.
So, we essentially have a parent who is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, and a daughter who holds an “important and sensitive position” in one of the highest echelons of the federal government. In this context, would it really be that out of line to suggest that the real scandal in the Weiner family has less to do with Anthony, and far more to do with his wife Huma and her apparent enabler, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? And just how much of an enabler? In 2008, Dr. Mumen Muhammad wrote about why Huma promised to stay with Clinton even if she were to lose the presidential nomination to Barack Obama:
Abedin assures in press releases of her continuance on the path with Hillary Clinton, even if Clinton failed as a candidate. The candidate’s aids and other influential figures in the Democratic Party assure that they do not disregard Abedin running for election or taking her position in the political arena with the help in successive political administrations of the Clinton family itself.
If one good thing has come from the Weiner scandal, it is that this deeply troubling association has been brought to light. A thorough investigation and intense media scrutiny are immediately needed.
Arnold Ahlert is a contributing columnist to the conservative website JewishWorldReview.com.