Mosques in California being checked on by FBI

Reports concern Muslims: Alleged checks on San Diego, L.A. mosques spark calls for hearings,” by H.G. Reza for the Los Angeles Times, May 29

 

A report that mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego are under federal surveillance has resurrected fears in the Muslim community about government monitoring and led two civil rights groups Wednesday to call for congressional hearings.The request for public hearings followed a newspaper article last week that cited FBI and Defense Department files pertaining to surveillance of mosques and Muslims in Southern California.

Corey Saylor, Washington spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the article in the San Diego Union-Tribune “has again raised concerns that our community is being watched.”

“We’ve heard about this in the past, but this article appears to be the first confirmation that surveillance is taking place,” Saylor said. “Has faith moved from a personal choice to probable cause?”

Council chapters in Anaheim and San Diego joined the American Civil Liberties Union and Islamic Shura Council of Southern California in asking the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for hearings. In a letter to the committee chairmen and ranking minority members, the groups said hearings are needed to determine the extent of the surveillance and whether people are being monitored because they are Muslim.

 

The civil rights groups also want the hearings to determine if the U.S. military has engaged in domestic surveillance in violation of federal law. The Islamic Center of San Diego, where two of the 9/11 hijackers worshiped in early 2000, was the only mosque mentioned in the San Diego Union-Tribune article. The report did not specify which other mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego were allegedly under surveillance. But Saylor said it would not be surprising if mosques in Orange County were also monitored.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, members of the Islamic Center of Irvine and other local mosques have complained about FBI agents questioning them about imams’ sermons and how often they attend services. In 2006, J. Stephen Tidwell, then-FBI assistant director in Los Angeles, met at the Irvine mosque with about 200 people who questioned him about government monitoring.

The meeting was prompted by media reports that the FBI was monitoring Muslim students at UC Irvine and USC. Tidwell denied that monitoring was taking place, telling the audience that “we still play by the rules.”

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the congressional hearings would compel the government “to say why they’re amassing this information.” “There’s a lot of suspicion of the Muslim community,” she said.

ACLU lawyers regularly go to mosques to advise worshipers that they do not have to answer questions from FBI agents about how long they have been in the United States, how often they attend services and what they get out of the sermons, Ripston said.

CAIR’s Corey Saylor asks: “Has faith moved from a personal choice to probable cause?” He asks this, mind you, about apparent surveillance of The Islamic Center of San Diego, where, according to the article, “two of the 9/11 hijackers worshiped in early 2000.”

He asks this, mind you, as a member of a “civil rights” group that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas jihad terror funding case in 2007, and which has had several of its officials arrested and convicted on various terror-related charges.

He asks this, mind you, in the context of protesting against the surveillance of several Southern California mosques, suggesting that there is no probable cause here despite the testimony of the Muslim Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, as far back as 1999, that 80% of American mosques were controlled by “extremists,” and the findings of the Center for Religious Freedom in 2005, that hatred of Jews and Christians and Islamic supremacism were widely taught in American mosques.

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Monitor away FBI – thank God my tax dollars are well spent for a great cause.  Obviously something very fishy is going on otherwise why would these Muslims get their knickers into a twist?  A complete full investigation must be carried out – and when they get exposed there will be an outcry from Americans to CLOSE it all down.  As for ACLU – its clearly a terrorist Org – it is like the perfect storm is brewing – being in bed with CAIR.

“I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the properties class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”
— Roger Baldwin, leftist, anarchist, and Communist, was born in Wellesley MA and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
— Norman Thomas, Socialist Party Presidential Candidate in 1940, 1944 and 1948, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

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Qur’an critic to be executed in Iran within days
Urgent Attention
Another free thinker is to be executed in Iran in the coming days

It is with great regret that I inform all freedom loving people of the world that the Mullahs’ terrorist regime is about to execute one of Iran’s finest thinkers, a true patriot, scholar and historian.

Dr. Foroud Fouladvand is a dedicated monarchist, a Ferdousi expert as well as expert on the history of Iran and Islam.

A confirmed report sent to the office of Dr. Fouladvand in London from inside Iran suggests that Dr. Fouladvand and two of his compatriots are going to be executed on Saturday, May 31, 2008 or possibly even sooner.

The two men to be executed alongside Dr. Fouladvand are Mr. Nazem Schmidtt, an Iranian/American citizen, aka Simorgh, and Mr. Alexander Valizadeh, an Iranian/ German citizen, aka Koroush Lor.

Dr. Fouladvand, a British citizen, was known throughout the Iranian community for his open criticism of Islam and the Mullah’s tyranny.

Dr. Fouladvand, who is an expert on Islam, openly challenged the Qur’an in his daily television broadcasts for listeners both inside and outside Iran. His Television discussions were offensive to the Mullahs. On March 10, 2006, in a preplanned action, about 65 of his supporters refused to leave a Lufthansa plane in protest of the European Union’s policy of appeasement of the Mullahs’ regime.

Dr. Fouladvand was led to believe by an agent of the Mullahs’ regime posing as a monarchist activist from within Iran that there were many Iranian patriots inside Iran who believed in him, and that a meeting with them would be fruitful in organizing and uniting people inside Iran to oppose the Mullahs. On October 13, 2006, Dr. Fouladvand and a number of his friends, including the above-named men, left London for the Turkish/Iranian border. The last news of Dr. Fouladvand’s whereabouts was on January
17, 2007, when he was expected to meet the supposedly Iranian activists in the Kurdish province of Hakkary in Iraq, which is close to the Iranian border.

In January 2007, the agents of the Mullahs’ secret police arrested and smuggled these three men into Iran, where they were imprisoned and were subjected to torture.

Please contact anyone you can. Alert government officials, the press, the Amnesty International and the human rights organizations