Huma Weiner Abedin

See also:  Saleha Abedin   Hassan Abedin   Anthony Weiner
          
              Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs   Hillary Clinton


Huma Abedin was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her father, Syed Abedin (1928-1993), was an Indian-born scholar who had worked as a visiting professor at Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz University in the early Seventies. Huma's mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a sociologist with ties to numerous Islamist organizations including the Muslim Brotherhood, and is known for her strong advocacy of Sharia Law.

When Huma was two, the Abedin family relocated from Michigan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This move took place when Abdullah Omar Naseef, then-vice president of Abdulaziz University (AU), recruited his former AU colleague, Zyed Abedin, to work for the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), a Saudi-based Islamic think tank that Naseef was preparing to launch. A number of years later, Naseef would develop close ties to Osama bin Laden and the terrorist group al Qaeda.

It is vital to note that IMMA's "Muslim Minority Affairs" agenda was, and remains to this day, a calculated foreign policy of the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, designed, as journalist Andrew C. McCarthy explains, "to grow an unassimilated, aggressive population of Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the character of the West." For details about this agenda, click here.

At age 18, Huma Abedin returned to the U.S. to attend George Washington University. In 1996 she began working as an intern in the Bill Clinton White House, where she was assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Abedin was eventually hired as an aide to Mrs. Clinton and has worked for her ever since, through Clinton's successful Senate runs (in 2000 and 2006) and her failed presidential bid in 2008.

From 1997 until sometime before early 1999, while still interning at the White House, Abedinwas an executive board member of George Washington University's (GWU) Muslim Students Association (MSA), heading the organization's “Social Committee.”

It is noteworthy that in 2001-02, soon after Abedin left that executive board, the chaplain and "spritual guide" of GWU's MSA was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al Qaeda operative who ministered to some of the men who were among the 9/11 hijackers. Another chaplain at GWU's MSA (from at least October 1999 through April 2002) was Mohamed Omeish, who headed the International Islamic Relief Organization, which has been tied to the funding of al Qaeda. Omeish’s brother, Esam, headed the Muslim American Society, the Muslim Brotherhood’s quasi-official branch in the United States. Both Omeish brothers were closelyassociated with Abdurahman Alamoudi, who would later be convicted and incarcerated on terrorism charges.

From 1996-2008, Abedin was employed by IMMA as the assistant editor of its in-house publication, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA). The first seven of those yearsoverlapped with the al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Omar Naseef's active presence at IMMA. Abedin's last six years at the Institute (2002-2008) were spent as a JMMA editorial boardmember; for one of those years, 2003, Naseef and Abedin served together on that board.

Throughout her years with IMMA, Abedin remained a close aide to Hillary Clinton. During Mrs. Clinton's 2008 presidential primary campaign, a New York Observer profile of Abedin described her as "a trusted advisor to Mrs. Clinton, especially on issues pertaining to the Middle East, according to a number of Clinton associates." "At meetings on the region," continued the profile, "... Ms. Abedin’s perspective is always sought out."

When Mrs. Clinton was appointed as President Barack Obama's Secretary of State in 2009, Abedin became her deputy chief of staff. At approximately that same point in time, Abedin's name was removed from the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs' masthead.

Apart from their working relationship, Abedin and Mrs. Clinton have also developed a close personal bond over their years together, as reflected in Clinton's 2010 assertion that: “I have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be] Huma.” In 2011, Secretary Clinton paid a friendly visit to Abedin's mother, Saleha, in Saudi Arabia. On that occasion, Mrs. Clinton publicly described her aide's position as “very important and sensitive.”

On July 10, 2010, Huma Abedin, a practicing Muslim, married then-congressman Anthony Weiner in a ceremony officiated by former president Bill Clinton. A number of analysts have noted that it is extremely rare for Islamic women—particularly those whose families have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—to marry non-Muslims like Weiner, who is Jewish. Indeed, Dr. Anwar Shoeb, the highest-ranking faculty authority at the prestigious College of Sharia and Islamic Studies in Kuwait, formally declared that Abedin's marriage to Weiner was “null and void” under the dictates of Sharia Law, which explicitly forbids matrimony between a Muslim woman and an "infidel"; in fact, Shoeb classified the Abedin-Weiner union as a form of “adultery.”

Abedin went on maternity leave after giving birth to a baby boy in early December 2011. When she returned to work in June 2012, the State Department granted her an arrangement that allowed her to do outside consulting work as a “special government employee,” even as she remained a top advisor in the Department. Abedin did not disclose on her financial report either the arrangement or the $135,000 she earned from it, in violation of a law mandating that public officials disclose significant sources of income. Abedin's outside clients included the State Department, Hillary Clinton, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and Teneo (a firm co-founded by Doug Band, a former counselor for Bill Clinton). Good-government groups warned of the potential conflict-of-interest inherent in an arangement where a government employee maintains private clients.

In June 2012, five Republican lawmakers (most prominently, Michele Bachmann) sent letters to the inspectors general at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State, asking that they investigate whether the Muslim Brotherhood was gaining undue influence over U.S. government officials. One letter, noting that Huma Abedin's position with Hillary Clinton "affords her routine access to the secretary [of state] and to policymaking," expressed concern over the fact that Abedin “has three family members—her late father, mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations.” Some other prominent Republicans such as John McCain and John Boehner disavowed the concerns articulated in the letters.

On February 1, 2013—Hillary Clinton's final day as Secretary of State—Abedin resigned her post as Mrs. Clinton's deputy chief of staff.

On March 1, 2013, Abedin was tapped to run Clinton’s post-State Department transition team, comprised of a six-person “transition office” located in Washington.

Huma Abedin's brother, Hassan Abedin, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and is currently an associate editor with the JMMA. Huma's sister, Heba Abedin (formerly known as “Heba A. Khaled”), is an assistant editor with JMMA as well. Indeed, she served alongside Huma prior to the latter's departure.

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