The mystery surrounding how the “Jumah at the DNC” event sponsored by the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs, an obscure Islamist organization, became part of the officially sanctioned DNC/Charlotte in 2012 pre-convention program has begun to unravel.
Ibrahim Jaaber, son of BIMA Executive Director Muhammad Jaaber, told Breitbart News the DNC “reached out” to the Muslim organization and invited it to hold a two-hour prayer service as one of the officially sanctioned pre-convention events beginning Friday, August 31. In addition to the “Jumah” event, BIMA hosted the DNC/Charlotte in 2012 officially sanctioned “Islamic Regal Dinner” later that night. The convention itself kicks off on Monday, September 3.
The BIMA website says the organization is “a non profit organization seeking status with the United Nations as a non governmental organization (NGO). BIMA was founded in 1992 by the late Hajj Heshaam Jaaber. The objective of BIMA is to provide social and economic development to indigenous Muslims in the United States of America.” Heshaam Jaaber was Executive Director Muhammad Jaaber’s father and Ibrahim Jaaber’s grandfather.
Ibrahim Jaaber is a 2007 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he was an All-Ivy League basketball player. He told Breitbart News that his role in his father’s BIMA organization is to provide media management services. Two months ago he purchased the “muslimbureau.com” domain name, which BIMA uses for its website. Prior to that time, BIMA had no web presence.
When Heshaam Jaaber died in 2007, El-Hajj Mauri Saalakhan of The Peace and Justice Foundation in Silver Spring, Maryland, delivered a eulogy that included references to Jaaber’s relationship with Malcolm X and praised Jaaber for his commitment to promoting Islam through “faith, family, and propaganda”:
I don’t think it is possible for any Muslim (or any well informed non-Muslim) who knows Sheikh Heshaam, and something about his background, to think of him without thinking of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (aka, Malcolm X). Destiny has caused Sheikh Heshaam and El-Hajj Malik to be inextricably linked.
While those in the know are well aware that Sheikh Heshaam performed the janaza (last rites) for El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, what isn’t widely known is that he, along with Sheikh Ahmed Hassoun (of Sudan), served as spiritual advisors for our beloved martyr in that very pivotal final year of his life.
Finally, we also know that Sheikh Heshaam exemplified a deep understanding of the importance of three of the most critical challenges confronting Muslims in this present day and age: Faith, Family and Propaganda.
The radical Islamist nature of the BIMA organization is highlighted by the topics to be addressed at the “Jumah at the DNC” event–Islamophobia and opposition to Anti-Sharia laws–as well as the featured speakers who will address the crowd in attendance:
— Jibril Hough, who claims Muslims lived in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Hough is listed as a “spokesman” for BIMA, and his views are reflected in the “indigenous Muslims” claim included in the group’s title.
—Retired Army Muslim Chaplain, Captain James Yee, who was charged with sedition, but not prosecuted since to do so would have revealed national security secrets.
— Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Charlotte in 2012 Convention Host Committee, working with the Democratic National Convention Committee, approved and officially sanctioned the “Jumah at the DNC” and “Islamic Regal Dinner” events sponsored by BIMA. The organization is described on its website as “a non-profit, non-partisan organization established by the city of Charlotte to fulfill obligations of the master contract with the Democratic National Convention Committee.” It is run by three Democratic Party stalwarts and a politically ambitious CEO based in Charlotte. North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue and North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan serve as honorary co-chairs, and Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx and Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers serve as co-chairs. Rogers has contributed to Senate candidates of both parties but most recently donated $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2010, according to Federal Election Commission records.
At least one prominent Muslim, M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of The American Islamic Forum for Democracy, whose “mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state,” has criticized the DNC for sanctioning the radical Islamists who will be featured speakers at “Jumah at the DNC”:
It is troubling that the Democratic National Convention has decided to promote and lend its name and national political platform to the organizers of the “Jummah at the DNC”. The leaders of this event – Jibril Hough and Imam Siraj Wahhaj as advertised are no moderates. They are radicals. These individuals embrace Islamist supremacy and have demonstrated support for radical ideologies. . .
Their jummah (group) prayer is supposedly against the Patriot Act, the NYPD, and Islamophobia and is actually NOT about our democracy but about empowering their Islamist and MB sympathetic groups into the very fabric of the political system so that Americans become anesthetized. We need American Muslims to speak up and marginalize these radicals. The DNC needs to understand and reject them because of their radical history and ideas.
They use our American Muslim identity to speak as “one community” as a political unit or as a “bloc vote” – a political Islamist party when in fact most us Muslims don’t want that political unity and seek reform against their ideology that seeks to hijack our community. They do not represent us.
Jasser has not been the only critic of the DNC/Charlotte in 2012 embrace of this radical Islamist group. Native Americans, who can properly claim to be “indigenous” to the United States, are bristling that the Democratic Party has officially recognized the interpretation of “indigenous” set forward by BIMA.
As Miki Booth wrote last week:
Native Americans are very angry to learn that Muslims in the United States of America are being touted as “indigenous”, a complete falsehood. The fact is, American Indians are the indigenous people of North America, as Hawai’ians are to Hawai’i and the Aborigine to Australia. Organizations like BIMA marginalize native Americans in favor of Muslims, and Indians are not pleased. Speaking with many tribal friends and associates here in northeast Oklahoma, it is clear that the support Obama received from native American Democrats in 2008 is waning.
The Democrats’ embrace of BIMA’s incorrect use of the term “indigenous” to describe American-born Muslims is expected to further diminish the party’s standing among Native Americans. The Democratic Party is already on the defensive with Native Americans because its Massachusetts Senate nominee, Elizabeth Warren, has come under heavy criticism for falsely claiming to have Native American ancestry.
It remains unclear if BIMA is an actual organization or a recently established “shell corporation” set up by Islamists to take advantage of the Democratic Party’s ideological desire for diversity. Indeed, other than spokesman Hough, the entirety of the BIMA organization seems to be limited to Executive Director Muhammad Jaaber and his two sons.
One son, Yusuf, is listed as the organization’s press contact. Ibrahim, the second son who owns the organization’s domain name and describes his role in the organization as a person responsible for media management, is involved with BIMA on a part-time basis. Since his graduation from Penn, he has played basketball professionally in Bulgaria and Italy. He has had several NBA tryouts, including one with the Houston Rockets in 2011, and told Breitbart News he is hoping for a tryout this coming season with either the Indiana Pacers or the San Antonio Spurs. Some time after 2007, he became a citizen of Bulgaria, which allows him to play basketball on the Bulgarian national team. He was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and maintains his American citizenship as well.
Calls placed by Breitbart News to Yusuf Jaaber at BIMA and Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx at DNC/Charlotte in 2012 for comment have not been returned.
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