Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has gotten an angry thumbs-down from 9/11 family members who say she played a key role in quashing a lawsuit that accused the Saudi kingdom of helping finance the terror attacks.
"Kagan is the main reason why the Supreme Court ruled against the 9/11 families," said William Doyle, who lost his son in the Twin Towers.
Doyle and thousands of other 9/11 relatives had joined in a suit that traced funding for the 19 hijackers to certain Saudi royals, along with banks, corporations and Islamic charities.
The royals were let off the hook last year at the urging of Kagan, the US solicitor general.
"Kagan protected them," Doyle said. "I think it's a huge issue, and I hope it comes up in her confirmation hearings."
She filed a brief to the Supreme Court last May, arguing that the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act shielded Saudi princes from the suit's claims that they gave money to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders or to charities that funneled funds to al Qaeda.
Kagan cited "the potentially significant foreign-relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit."
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
In December, 2006, Kagan hired Noah Feldman, architect of Iraq’s Constitution requiring Shariah, as a star faculty member at Harvard Law School. On March 16, 2008, Feldman published his controversial article “Why Shariah” in the New York Times Magazine, which promoted “Islamists” - the Muslim Brotherhood – as a progressive democratic party, and promoted Shariah as a model not just for Muslim-majority countries but for all: “In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world…” The article was adapted from his book The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, which was published in late March, 2008.On September 16, 2008, Kagan whole-heartedly endorsed Feldman’s promotion of the Muslim Brotherhood and Shariah by honoring him with the endowed Bemis Chair in International Law. Feldman’s speech on receiving the award was revealing: he advocated for an international, “outward interpretation” of the Constitution that could “require the U.S. to confer rights on citizens of other nations,” and allow for an “experimental Constitution.”There's more. Go read it.
As to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist worldwide political organization that Feldman and Kagan support? Their motto is as revealing as Feldman’s speech:“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”Given that slogan, you could well ask if Feldman really meant the Muslim Brotherhood when he wrote about “Islamists” in the book Kagan so admired that she gave him an endowed chair. And he anticipated that question; in the second footnote in his book he states, “Throughout this book, when I refer to Islamists or Islamism, I have in mind mainstream Sunni Muslim activists loosely aligned with the ideology of the transnational Muslim Brotherhood (MB)…the Brotherhood broadly embraces electoral politics, but without eschewing the use of violence in some circumstances, notably against those whom it defines as invaders in Iraq and Palestine.”