Bin Bayyah (2nd L) released this photo on his website, showing the June 13 meeting with Obama administration officials including Gayle Smith (2nd R) and Rashad Hussain (4th L)
Muslim Brotherhood's 'Godfather' Yusuf Qaradawi's Outspoken Deputy Visits Obama White House.HT: IPT News. By Steven Emerson and John Rossomando.
Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States bans him from entering the country.Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews andAmericans.That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyah all the more inexplicable. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded by and headed by Qaradawi. The IUMS has a long history of supporting Hamas –a top Hamas leader is an IUMS member – and of calling for Israel's destruction.
Bin Bayyah's website claims that he met June 13 with senior Obama administration officials at the White House.
Nonetheless, it was the Obama administration which sought the meeting with Bin Bayyah, his website's account said.
"We asked for this meeting to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars (another name used for the IUMS)," Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, reportedly said.Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including: Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security AdviserTom Donilon and White House spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri. But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting.
Smith also thanked Bin Bayyah for "his efforts to bring more understanding amongst humanity" during the meeting, the Bin Bayyah account said.
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments between June 14 and Tuesday.
In granting Bin Bayyah a visa, White House officials ignored his radical statements as well as his close connection to Qaradawi. The IUMS's hostility toward Israel, and its support of terrorists, is well documented. Bin Bayyah falls comfortably in line with that view.For example, in a 2011 statement on his Arabic-language website, he criticized the West for placing Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others in the same category as al-Qaida:
"[P]lacing the Palestinian resistance, which defends internationally recognized rights, on an equal footing with intercontinental terrorist organizations (al-Qaida) is not based on any moral principle and would be detrimental to the cause of the fight against terrorism and mix the cards and raises questions to the world conscience and serves terrorists."
Bin Bayyah previously met with White House envoy Rashad Hussain when Bin Bayyah participated in a July 2012 Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conference in his native Mauritania.
His website also indicates he spoke at the ADAMS Center, a large northern Virginia mosque, while he was in Washington June 12.
In addition to his role as IUMS vice president , Bin Bayyah also is a member of the similarly anti-Semitic Qaradawi-founded European Council for Fatwa and Research and the OIC's International Islamic Fiqh Academy, the latter of which issued a resolution in January 2003 sanctioning Palestinian suicide bombings.
Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah show a keen mutual admiration of each other in their writing. Bin Bayyah notably referred to Qaradawi as "a mountain upon whose peak there is light" and as "a great reformer" who "spreads knowledge and wisdom" in a 2008 article published by Boston cleric Suhaib Webb. Qaradawi returned the favor three days later: "The reality is that the more I have come closer to him and got to know him better, the more I have loved him…"
That article also was published on Webb's site.
And like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah claims Palestinian violence is acceptable under international law. Islamic law's approval is a given.Hmmmm...........A man is known by the company he keeps.Read the full story here. More here.