Muslim Congressmen Exhibit Outrageous Hypocrisy in Trying To Ban Dutch Politician Geert Wilders from U.S.

PJ Media, by Patrick Poole, May 1, 2015:

It was reported earlier this week that the two Muslim members of Congress, Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Andre Carson (D-IN), had sent a letter to the State Department last week requesting that they deny a visa to Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who was coming to Washington D.C. for a Capitol Hill event sponsored by Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA).

Unsuccessful in their attempts to have Wilders banned from the U.S. Ellison, Carson and their associates from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) tried to disrupt a press conference on free speech with Wilders, Gohmert and King in front of the U.S. Capitol yesterday, with Ellison promoting their actions on Twitter:

Leave aside for the moment the spurious legal reasoning they employed to try to deny Wilders a visa, aptly refuted by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, and that their attempts to tie Wilders to Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik had been thoroughly debunked by none other than Breivik himself.

What makes the pair’s anti-free speech behavior so outrageously hypocritical is that they both have stood silent as the Obama administration has allowed a long line of extremists, and even members of terrorist organizations, to enter the U.S.

Even worse, the two Muslim congressmen have regularly promoted and associated with organizations that have been designated as terrorist organizations, and individuals and groups that have been tagged in federal court by the Justice Department.

For instance, in May 2012 a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (still a designated terrorist organization), Hani Nour Eldin, was allowed to enter the U.S. and even escorted into the White House for a private meeting with Obama’s national security staff, Ellison and Carson didn’t apparently utter a single word in protest.

Nor did they express even the slightest bit of concern when members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were given VIP treatment typically reserved for visiting dignitaries at JFK airport.

When Sudanese genocide henchman Nafie Ali Nafie (aka “Nafie the Butcher) was given a visa by the State Department in 2013, the Muslim congressmen again were found mute.

And nothing was said when Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano testified before Congress in July 2012 that she would allow more members of terrorist organizations into the U.S.

Their voice has also been absent following the news last year that the Clinton State Department maintained a terrorist “hands-off” list for entry into the U.S., revealed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), or as Homeland Security continued to stonewall congressional requests for information on such terrorist “hands-off” lists.

So Ellison and Carson have deemed Geert Wilders, who has been subject to repeated threats from Islamic terror organizations and has had to live with 24/7 security for more than a decade, a greater threat than members of terrorist groups, genocidal henchmen, and Islamic extremists.

That glaring silence might be telling of where their sympathies really lie, if it weren’t for their open and unashamed support of terrorist fronts and cheerleaders.

As I reported here at PJ Media late last December, Carson was scheduled to appear at the 2014 Muslim American Society (MAS)-Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) annual conference on a Ferguson panel with Mazen Mokhtar, an individual that federal agents had testified in federal court had operated an Al-Qaeda website to raise money for the Taliban.

Carson’s appearance at the MAS-ICNA event was not only promoted on the conference website, but also in the conference program:

A few days later, Carson was quickly trying to walk back his appearance at the conference, claiming he didn’t speak on the panel with Mokhtar. And yet, Carson never addressed the fact that he was speaking at Mohktar’s conference (Mokhtar is currently executive directtor of the primary conference sponsor, MAS).

But both Ellison and Carson appeared just a few months before with Al-Qaeda webmaster Mokhtar at a June 2014 event announcing the formation of a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood political front, the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). Mokhtar is second from the left:

In this picture published by The Muslim Link newspaper, Mokhtar can be seen immediately over the right shoulder of Ellison as he speaks at the USCMO rollout:

So attempts by either Ellison or Carson to walk back their association to Mazen Mokhtar are laughingly bogus.

But there’s good reason why the pair want to keep their distance from Mohktar and his MAS organization. In November 2014, one month before Carson appeared at the MAS-ICNA conference, the United Arab Emirates designated MAS as a terrorist organization. In 2008, Ellison took a 16-day Hajj trip to Saudi Arabia financed by MAS, and lied about the source of the funding.

Even more troubling for Ellison and Carson, UAE also designated CAIR a terrorist organization. Both congressmen have regularly appeared at the group’s events across the country and spoken in support of their efforts. In 2012, I documented Ellison’s extensive ties to CAIR here at PJ Media as he was publicly attacking then-Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

It’s not just the UAE terror designation of CAIR that is problematic for the pair. In 2008, FBI agent Lara Burns testified in federal court that CAIR was a front for the terrorist group HAMAS in the Holy Land Foundation case.

During that trial, the Justice Department submitted a brief to the court stating that CAIR was part of an international Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to provide “media, money and men” to Hamas (p. 13).

The federal judge hearing the case agreed, stating in an opinion that there was “ample evidence” that CAIR and other US Muslim organizations worked to support Hamas.

So before Keith Ellison and Andre Carson start attacking other members of Congress about their support for Geert Wilders, perhaps they should answer some questions about their ties to Mazen Mokhtar and their continued public support to MAS and CAIR despite their designation as terrorist groups by UAE, and tagged as terrorist fronts in federal court by the FBI and the Justice Department.

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