It’s a bombshell, if accurate. But is the information accurate?
The Daily Caller has a post noting:
Rafia Farook, the mother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, is an active member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim organization that promotes the establishment of a caliphate and has ties to a radical Pakistani political group called Jamaat-e-Islami.
Farook’s affiliation with ICNA was revealed on Friday when MSNBC and other new outlets scoured the Farooks’ apartment in Redlands, Cal. An MSNBC reporter found a certificate of appreciation presented to Rafia Farook last summer by ICNA’s sisters’ wing.
ICNA has a post on its website that denies the organization is more than just a clearinghouse for “charitable, educational and civic initiatives” to members of the Muslim community in America. The statement begins:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The Islamic Circle of North America is repulsed at attempts by some in the media to link the suspects of the recent attacks in San Bernardino to the organization’s women’s division. Certain media sources reported that a certificate of appreciation from ICNA Sister’s Wing addressed to the mother of one of the suspects was found in the home during a search on Friday.
According to Discover the Network
In 2000, CNSNews.com made public a press release, originally posted on a Middle Eastern website, from a July 2000 ICNA meeting, which read: “Jamaat e-Islami’s supporters have an organization in America known as ICNA …” The press release also recounted some of the views expressed at the aforementioned ICNA meeting. These included an exhortation that “Islam must be translated into political dominance”; pleas for support for “jihad” in “Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq [against U.S. forces], southern Sudan, and … in Bosnia/Kosova [sic]”; an appeal for unity among Pakistani Muslims against “Hindu Brahmins and Zionist Jews”; and an endorsement of Muslim women’s inclusion in carrying out jihad. One Islamic leader present at the ICNA event complained about “human rights violations” being carried out by the U.S. government against the terrorist mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman, spiritual leader of Egypt’s Islamic Group.
In part because of such revelations, ICNA is now under investigation by U.S. authorities for possible connections to terrorist groups. In December 2003, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee requested that the Internal Revenue Service provide detailed information on 25 U.S. Muslim organizations, including ICNA.
The article further notes:
Terrorism analyst Steven Emerson claims that ICNA has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological forebear of all radical Islamic movements — including Hamas and al-Qaeda. Documents show that Hamas officials have participated in previous ICNA events. “The ICNA’s hatred of the Jews is so fierce,” writes Emerson, “that it taunted them with a repetition of what Hitler did to them.” In his book American Jihad, Emerson expounds: “The ICNA openly supports militant Islamic fundamentalist organizations, praises terror attacks, issues incendiary attacks on western values and policies, and supports the imposition of Sharia [Islamic law].”
Then there’s this from Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch noting that a New York Cty jihadi spoke at an ICNA event, a claim lent credence by a report by CBS New York on the trial of a woman implicated in a terror plot. Buried in the article is this paragraph:
As CBS2’s Tony Aiello reported, [Noelle] Velentzas [the woman on trial] spoke some time ago on behalf of the Islamic Circle of North America Relief Agency, talking about becoming a Muslim when she was 17 years old.
