Is President Barack Obama supporting and legitimising radical Islamic groups in the U.S. at the expense of more moderate Muslims?
The answer is "yes" as far as the research group Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is concerned.
IPT president and founder Steve Emerson told WND that Obama is pursuing his plans to visit a mosque in Baltimore, Maryland as a gesture of religious tolerance.
However, the big problem here is that the mosque Obama has chosen to visit is known for its radical politics and has a long history of ties to terrorism, Emerson said.
What is even more alarming, Emerson pointed out, is that Obama is ignoring evidence about the mosque's ties to terrorism.
Emerson said his organisation was told first hand by a law enforcement official that Obama was presented the evidence against the Islamic Society of Baltimore, which operates the mosque.
However, when Obama was shown the evidence linking group to terrorism, he tossed it aside. "As he has done so many times in the past, he decided to ignore this evidence and still continue his plans to confer legitimacy on a mosque that has a history of having officials connected to Islamic terrorism and to this day still has officials making outrageously pro-terrorist statements that would seem to conflict with the president's policies," Emerson said.
"One can only conclude that the selection of this mosque by the president was made as part of his consistent policy to not even utter the term 'radical Islam' and the simultaneous policy of inviting only radical Islamist groups and leaders to the White House that FBI documents clearly show were derived from the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas," Emerson told WND.
Most of the recent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have in fact been carried out by Muslims who attended Islamic Society mosques, according to WND. The Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 had attended the Islamic Society of Boston. The Chattanooga shooter, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who murdered five U.S. servicemen last year, attended the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga. Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino attackers who killed 14 at a Christmas party, attended the Islamic Center (formerly Islamic Society) of Riverside, WND pointed out.
When Obama performs his media "stunt" aimed at promoting religious tolerance, Emerson said he fully expects him "to invoke the fabricated concept of 'Islamophobia.'"
That term was "invented by front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in a deliberate effort to silence criticism of radical Islam," Emerson said.
Dr. Mark Christian, a former child imam who grew up in Egypt as the son of a Muslim Brotherhood member and who later converted to Christianity, said he is not surprised that Obama is visiting the Islamic radicals' mosque in Baltimore "because this has been the way of President Obama and his administration from day one."
"He insisted to have Muslim Brotherhood aides and counsels in the White House, he insisted to have their presence when he was touring Egypt and the Middle East after he became president ... He regularly and religiously invited the Muslim Brotherhood leaders to the White House at every occasion to get their counsel," Christian said.
