“We don't
live for this world, as many of the Ikhwan [Brotherhood] seem to believe
unfortunately. We live for the afterlife. This dunya [world] is for Joe Kaufman
and Alan Dershowitz and George Bush. Let them have it because they'll have no
share in the next life.”
- Radical Islamist and CAIR
Staffer, Omer Subhani
On March 1, 2008, CAIR-Florida representative Jawhar “Joe” Badran,
with CAIR-Florida Executive
Director Altaf Ali by his side, proclaimed on camera that “Hamas
is not a terrorist organization.” Statements
such as these from CAIR officials
come sparse, as the group’s support for its murderous Palestinian patriarch is
usually hidden. However, it turns out
that one of Badran’s CAIR-Florida
colleagues, Omer Subhani, said the same months before. And he continues to do so.
Omer Subhani
is a 25-year-old Pakistani-American, who currently holds the position of
Communications Director for the South Florida
office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Being an officer for CAIR,
an organization aligned with terrorist groups overseas – most notably Hamas –
Subhani has the burden of attempting to explain (or explain away) CAIR’s sinister connections.
But first, he must explain his own.
Subhani has been involved
in radical Muslim organizations, since at least
his teenage years. Last month, he wrote,
on his personal blog, “I remember back when I was a freshman in high school, me
and my closest friend initiated the first annual MYNA Basketball Tournament at
Florida International University in 1996 I believe.” He stated that MYNA or Muslim Youth of North
America was created by the Muslim Students Association (MSA)
and admits that the MSA’s founders
“were former members or nominally inclined to the Muslim Brotherhood and its
teachings of activism (and world domination of course).”
In addition, Subhani was involved
with Islamic Relief (IR), a “charity” that, like CAIR,
has been recognized as being a front for Hamas.
He was a contact
for a fundraiser for the group, which was held at Nova Southeastern
University, in December 2004.
As a child, Subhani gained
knowledge of his relatives’ fondness
for suicide bombers. In October 2007, he stated on his blog, “I learned,
through my adult relatives’ conversations mostly, that Pakistan was a great
regional military power that had fought and defeated India multiple times in
warfare. Pakistani soldiers, I was told, were Muslim heroes who strapped
grenades to themselves in the face of Indian tanks and laid down in front of the tanks in order to take out the more powerful
Indian military. They sacrificed their lives for Pakistani freedom.”
Last November, Subhani, concerned
over the leadership situation in Pakistan, predicted
the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Following a duel suicide bombing that took
place in Karachi,
he wrote, “Bhutto escaped an assassination attempt on her life the first time
she came back to Pakistan.
She would likely not be as successful as Musharraf in avoiding assassination
attempts on a regular basis.” And after the successful suicide attack that took
her life in December, Subhani mercilessly ripped
her apart, saying, “I am disgusted with the U.S. media. Their coverage of
Bhutto as some sort of martyr is despicable and inappropriate... She was a
crook, plain and simple.”
Indeed, Subhani has a strong
connection to his native Pakistan. This is evidenced by the fact that he refers
to it as the “mother land.” He is quick
to point out, though, that he is “an American and a Pakistani second, if at
all.” He has also said that he has “zero
allegiance to any other country besides America.” Yet, in November of 2007, he wrote, “I
recently saw Michael Moore’s latest movie, Sicko. It was very informative and
also very depressing. I am seriously considering at some point in my life
moving to either Canada
or Europe... All of that makes me want to jump
on a boat to Cuba;
it’s only 90 some miles away from my home. Viva Fidel.”
In truth, Subhani has a sincere
hatred towards the United
States.
Last month, he even wrote, “As an American we all have the right to like
our country or
even to hate it.”
But Subhani goes much further than
to just have a simple disdain for America. In November, he wrote, “By our own
definitions of terrorism... the
US is a terrorist state.”
Mimicking our enemy overseas,
Subhani has called our presence in Iraq an “illegal occupation,” whilst
mocking
our troops. This month, he wrote, “It
takes a massive level of indoctrination and in other cases, arrogance, to
figure that another nation is ‘interfering’ in a country that our nation has
illegally occupied... President Bush and other American officials, in public
castigations of Iran,
have said that Iran
has been consistently meddlesome in Iraq and that the Iranians have
long sought to arm and train Iraqi militias... Oh, but you know, those 150,000
American troops – they’ve been nothing but angels.”
Subhani has also compared
both us and Israel to al-Qaeda, likening both countries to “cold blooded killers.”
In April, he wrote, “The rationale is exactly the same, unsurprisingly. If you
were to kill someone you would obviously blame your actions on either ignorance
of the circumstance or situation, or on someone else’s actions. It seems
al-Qaeda is just taking the approach that the U.S. and Israel have used for decades...
What all of this implies is that cold blooded killers, no matter their
ethnicity or religions or upbringings, think the same way.”
But while Subhani considers the United States
and Israel
to be terrorist entities, he refuses to say the same about Hamas and Hezbollah,
two groups found on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist
Organizations (FTOs). In November,
he stated, “Hamas, Hezbollah, and other national liberation movements use every
means at their disposal to fight occupation or oppression. It’s wrong to kill
innocent people. It’s wrong to fire rockets indiscriminately at towns and
villages. But that does not mean because they commit such actions that Hamas
and Hezbollah are completely and utterly devout terrorist organizations, as the
mainstream press here in the US
likes to label them.”
In January, he wrote, “I do not
agree with the idea that Hamas is a terrorist organization... Israel is far
worse. Hamas has not been brutally occupying Israel for over 40 years.” And in
March, he stated, “As far as saying that Hamas is a terrorist organization -
that is a statement of opinion for anyone who makes it - even the State
Department... [I]s Hamas a terrorist organization? Of
course it’s not... Israeli war crimes, documented by the most respected
human rights groups in the United
States and Israel, far surpass anything Hamas
or any other Palestinian organization could ever hope to accomplish.”
And in April, he admitted about
his group that it has a policy
of not denouncing either Hamas or Hezbollah. He wrote, “I’ve seen on TV and in print
people demanding CAIR to ‘condemn’
groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. CAIR
has openly condemned their violent actions, but as an organization it refuses
to condemn them as groups.”
Subhani’s obsession with Hamas and
Israel
has led him to believe that hatred of Jews is justified. He calls this “legitimate
antisemitism” and provides a laundry list of demands that Israel needs to
meet, before anyone can, according to him, “expect antisemitism to dwindle.”
All of the above quotes were made
starting the month Subhani joined the staff of CAIR,
September of 2007. On the top of his
blog, which even includes a piece calling
for the release of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a disclaimer is
found. It’s there for a reason. It’s to be used as an excuse to say, if an
article ever comes out such as this, Subhani’s statements will be his alone.
However, Subhani’s outrageous
words are a manifestation of CAIR’s
true self – that being a group based on the destruction of Israel, support
for terrorists, and a general disdain for the West (i.e. the United States).
Last April, Subhani wrote, “[I]f
any CAIR officials have done any
wrong doing then they should be punished.”
While his words do not reach the level of any type of prescribed
punishment, Subhani certainly has said enough to warrant his being watched as a
potential threat. Who could expect any
less for an individual that considers and proclaims Hamas to be anything but
that which it is, a terrorist organization?