Please tell us again how moderate and mainstream Keith Ellison is again.
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. the frontrunner to become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, is set to speak at an event next week that is being described as a “rogue’s gallery of the Islamist world.” He will be joined by a plethora of speakers who have espoused dangerous views and engaged directly with jihadist organizations.
The Muslim American Society (MAS) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) are co-hosting the “American Muslims Islamic Duties and Civic Obligations” convention in Chicago next week. And Ellison is scheduled to be a featured guest speaker Tuesday night.
One of the speakers is a mainstay of Islamist circles.
There’s Siraj Wahhaj, who was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj has advocated for the establishment of an Islamic state inside the United States.
While the media has been losing its mind over Trump's pick of David Friedman as Ambassador to Israel, it has nothing to say about Keith Ellison appearing at an event with an unindicted co-conspirator in the WTC attack. Is that not extremism? Or calling for the replacement of the American government with Islamic theocracy?
As DiscovertheNetworks documents, Wahhaj has quite a record beyond that.
On numerous occasions during Masjid Al-Taqwa's early years, Wahhaj invited Omar Abdel-Rahman, leader of the terrorist organization known as the Islamic Group, to address his (Wahhaj's) congregation as a guest preacher.
In a September 1991 speech in Toronto, titled “The Afghanistan Jihad,” Wahhaj told his fellow Muslims:
“Those who struggle for Allah, it doesn’t matter what kind of weapons [you use], I’m telling you it doesn’t matter! You don’t need nuclear weapons or even guns! If you have faith in Allah and a knife!"
Two months later, Wahhaj urged U.S. Muslims to become politically active as a means of augmenting the influence of their faith: “As long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”
In a 1992 sermon, Wahhaj emphasized the importance of jihad to his Al-Taqwa mosque congregation: “I will never ever tell people, 'don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.' The violence has to be selected.... Islam is the only answer because it is only Islam that we do it for Allah.... [We are] commanded to do jihad.... [W]hen Allah commands us to fight we are not stopping, no one will stop us.”
In an autumn 1992 address to an Islamic gathering in New Jersey, Wahhaj expressed his desire to have Muslims seize control of the United States and replace the country's constitutional government with an Islamic caliphate. “If we were united and strong,” Wahhaj said, “we'd elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him.... [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”Wahhaj has revisited this theme Islamic dominion over the United States many times over the years. For example, he has said:
“Islam is better than democracy. Allah will cause his deen [Islam as a complete way of life], Islam, to prevail over every kind of system, and you know what? It will happen.”[2] (In a related assertion, Wahhaj has called the Islamic way of life a preferable alternative to the “garbage can” of American culture.)
“In time, democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”
“Wherever you came from, you came to America. And you came for one reason—for one reason only—to establish Allah’s deen [Islam as a complete way of life], as a servant of Allah.”
How much of Wahhaj's views about Islamic Supremacism does Keith Ellison agree with? He ought to be asked that question.