Wednesday, March 14, 2012

CHRIS CHRISTIE HAS A MUSLIM PROBLEM

From Conservative News and Views:


CHRIS CHRISTIE HAS A MUSLIM PROBLEM

The crescent moon and star of Islam
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Governor Chris Christie has a Muslim problem, one going beyond his nominating Sohail Mohammed as a Superior Court judge.

Who is Sohail Mohammed?

Sohail Mohammed, age 47, is a criminal attorney. He is also a prominent voice for Muslims in New Jersey, and especially in Passaic County, his home.
In 2000, he plumped for a new law defining halal food. Halal (“lawful”) food has much in common with Jewish kosher food: no pork, blood, or alcohol, no carnivores, birds of prey, or animals that were already dead before slaughtering. The key difference: during the slaughter, the butchers must pray specifically to Allah.
That by itself might not mean much. But shortly after the September 11 attacks, Sohail Mohammed defended several Muslim and Middle Eastern detainees. Typical old-line media reports speak of a “dragnet” “sweeping up” people. Well, innocent persons “in the wrong place at the wrong time” usually protest their innocence. They do not go on hunger strikes to demand special administrative favors, as these detainees did.
Sohail Mohammed is also the lawyer-in-chief for the American Muslim Union. The AMU tried to make a reputation for interfaith outreach. In fact it has many ties with front groups for Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is a part). The Muslim Brotherhood has committed itself to establishing a worldwide caliphate with Sharia law prevailing everywhere. (Sources: Joel Mowbray, andScott Johnson at Power Line.)
Mohammed Qatanani, head of the Islamic Center for Passaic County, was a client of Sohail Mohammed. And his case implicates not only Sohail Mohammed, but also Chris Christie—directly.

What did Chris Christie have to do with Qatanani?

Chris Christie as United States Attorney
Chris Christie as United States Attorney. Photo: US Department of Justice
Mohammed Qatanani lied on his application to move to the United States in 1999. In 1993, the IsraeliTzahal arrested him as a member of Hamas. A military tribunal convicted him of this. Qatanani should have mentioned this, but did not. Yet Qatanani makes no secret of his ideology. Once heprayed for the absorption of the Land of Israel into a “Greater Syria.”
When US immigration authorities sought to deport him, Sohail Mohammed represented him. And then, in 2008, then-Governor Jon S. Corzine and then-US Attorney Chris Christie intervened on Qatanani’s behalf. Chris Christie let one of his assistants, Charles McKenna, testify as a character witness for Qatanani. Then Christie himself appeared at the Passaic Islamic Center. There he praised Qatanani as “a man of great good will.”
When Chris Christie became governor, he appointed McKenna as his Commissioner on Homeland Security. But Christie’s worse problem is this: he must have gone to that mosque to support Qatanani to win Muslim votes. Democrats seem no longer to be the only ones who play politics with homeland security.
(Qatanani beat the deportation rap. According to Jonathan Tobin at Commentary, Qatanani said, but did not show, that the Tzahal tortured him to confess. But even if he wasn’t a radical then, he is now. His history in the United States shows this.)

What has Chris Christie said more recently?

Chris Christie insists that Sohail Mohammed is a good nominee to be a Superior Court judge. He defended the attorney at a town-hall meeting. He also mistakenly called him an Arab-American. (Sohail Mohammed is a native of India, not of any Arab land. See also here.) And yesterday afternoon, the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee took up the Sohail Mohammed nomination.
Chris Christie’s attitude seems typical to many conservatives. Typical, that is, ofpoliticians all over America who are afraid to see Islam for what it is: a political movement in religious dress.
Neil Braithwaite of Canada Free Press calls this episode “the real reason Governor Christie won’t run for President.” More accurately, it is the real reason not to vote for Chris Christie for President.
Featured image: the Islamic crescent moon and star.

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