A local supporter of the call by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) and four other House members for an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood's “infiltration” into the Obama administration is using a couple Orange County incidents to build his case.
One happened at UC Irvine–although it's not the round-up and pers–, er, prosecution of Muslim students who dared call out Israel's ambassador to the U.S. for the horrors of the modern day Siege of Gaza.
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The other involved Imam Muzammil Siddiqi–although it had nothing to do with the longtime Islamic Center of Orange County's internationally recognized interfaith efforts.
Nor is Gary Fouse, a UCI English as a Second Language teacher drawing the local connections, bringing up the FBI's spying on Muslim mosques in Southern California when the bureau swore it wasn't.
First, Fouse defends Bachmann on the late Roger Gardner's Radarsite, echoing the congresswoman's denials that she questioned the loyalty of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's aide Huma Abedin. No, Bachmann and Fouse clarify, the House members merely wonder how someone with family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood ever obtained U.S. security clearance.
Fouse goes on to pontificate on what's apparently the biggest piece of evidence supporting Bachmann's bogeyman concerns: a Brotherhood letter seized by the FBI and introduced in the 2007 Holy
Land Foundation trial in Dallas, Texas. The letter reportedly claims the
Brotherhood iis “eliminating and destroying Western
civilization from within” North America.
“This was the same document that I
confronted Brotherhood spokesman Ibrahim El Houdaiby with at UC Irvine
in 2008 when he was invited to speak to a UCI class,” Fouse froths. “He claimed the
document was a forgery and insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood had no
presence in the U.S.–both lies.”
Um, okay. And this relates to Abedin and apparently brainwashed high ranking Obama officials how?
Siddiqi, who the Orange County Human Relations Commission honored last year because he truly deserves it, gets dragged into the lunacy because of his past leadership of the Islamic Society of North America. During Siddiqi's tenure, Fouse notes, he did not grant a 2009 request from Former Muslims United to sign a pledge that
American Muslim apostates should not be harmed.
“He denied to me having
ever received the letter” from Former Muslims United, Fouse writes of Siddiqi.
While wondering how Siddiqi could have acted on a request he did not receive–as well as how many evangelical Christian leaders and gay-conversion advocates like Bachmann's husband would sign a pledge that American Christian apostates should not be harmed by Christians–it occurs that at least Fouse is an equal-opportunity critic.
After all, he popped up in Navel Gazing in September 2010 blasting Jewish Federation of Orange County President and CEO Shalom C. Elcott.
Shalom C. Elcott, OC Jewish Federation Chief, Chided for UCI Muslim Suspension Boasts
Check that: It was because Elcott applauded the suspensions of the Muslim students who interrupted Israel's Michael Oren–applause that was much too late for Fouse.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.