Dubai Security Chief Backs Trump Immigration Order

A prominent figure in the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) security apparatus is endorsing President Trump's executive order temporarily banning citizens of seven predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S., the Jordanian news service Al Bawaba reports.

"We completely support Trump in his ban on entry to those who may cause a breach in America's security," Dubai security chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim tweeted.

His country is not among the seven – Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen – covered by the executive order.

"Previous US administrations have embraced all the wanted men of the Arab world and those classified as terrorists. Trump, what you're doing is right," Khalfan wrote.

The UAE has cited security concerns for its own reluctance to admit Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in 2011. After drawing criticism from human rights groups, UAE officials agreed in September to accept 15,000 Syrian refugees over a five-year period.

His support for Trump's temporary ban generated criticism from Arab journalists such as Iraqi-American Steven Nabil.

"Marwan al-Shehhi and Fayez Banihammad were among the 19 terrorists of al-Qaeda who attacked the World Trade Center and other targets on 9-11, which led to the deaths of thousands of American civilians. They both had Emirati citizenship like Dhahi Khalfan," Nabil wrote.

Khalfan is known for making irreverent comments.

He bucked the regional consensus last March when he expressed opposition to a Palestinian state, warning it would become another failed state. He also urged his Twitter followers not to treat Jews as their enemies.

In 2012, Khalfan launched a war of words with radical Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi. Khalfan threatened Qaradawi, who lives in Qatar, with an international arrest warrant after the cleric criticized the UAE for revoking the visas of Syrian residents who allegedly demonstrated against the Assad regime.

This spat with Qaradawi should be understood in the context of Khalfan's criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he has accused to plotting to topple the UAE government and wanting to impose Islamist rule in all Gulf states.

Khalfan's anti-Muslim Brotherhood stance aligns well with that of his government, which pressured former British Prime Minister David Cameron's government to investigate the Brotherhood. UAE officials also classified the Muslim Brotherhood and offshoots, such as the Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist groups in 2014.

U.S. Special Operations Host Islamist Who Urged Support for Radical Faction

The U.S. Special Operations Command hosted Mouaz Moustafa, an American Islamist who urged U.S. policymakers to embrace the Islamic Front in 2013, at their Tampa headquarters on Thursday, a post on his Facebook page shows. The Islamic Front's charter called for replacing the Assad regime with an Islamic theocracy ruled by shariah law.

Moustafa heads the Syrian Emergency Taskforce (SETF), an organization that lobbies on behalf of anti-Assad rebels. SETF organized U.S. Sen. John McCain's May 2013 Syria trip. SETF also enjoyed close ties with the Obama State Department.

"The focus now is to depose the regime and kick out people like Hizballah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and others that are killing us. And so that's the best way to describe their ideology," Moustafa said in 2013. "I think the international community and the West ... must engage with the Islamic Front and need to be more pragmatic and realistic about what is going on ground in Syria in order to bring them on board with whatever political solution will happen in the future."

SETF tried to push the State Department to deal directly with the Islamic Front, records show. Robert Ford, then the U.S. ambassador to Syrian, met with Islamic Front representatives later in 2013.

The Islamic Front was a coalition of rebel groups including Ahrar al-Sham (aka "the Syrian Taliban"), Suquor al-Sham, Jaish al-Islam, Ansar al-Shariah, Tawhid Brigade, and Liwa Al-Haqq. Suquor al-Sham and Liwa al-Haqq have since merged with Ahrar al-Sham.

Ahrar al-Sham remains one of the most important factions in Syria's ongoing civil war. Its founder, Abu Khalid Al-Suri, acted as al-Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri's right-hand man there. Late Ahrar al-Sham leader Hasan Aboud condemned democracy, calling it a "sword hanging on everyone that Western powers want." He preferred establishing a caliphate under shariah law.

Last July, Amnesty International accused Ahrar al-Sham of torture and other human rights violations. Ahrar al-Sham also has been known to engage in beheadings.

Similarly, Jaish al-Islam's late leader Zahran Alloush endorsed restoring the caliphate and expressed support for Osama bin Laden.

Jaish al-Islam also engaged in atrocities, including beheading captive ISIS fighters while forcing them to dress in uniforms similar to "Jihadi John." In one instance, Jaish al-Islam executed and subsequently crucified a man it accused of cursing God, practicing witchcraft, taking drugs, committing adultery and kidnapping. Images of the executed man's crucified, decapitated body were circulated online.

Groups comprising the Islamic Front also fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra prior to Moustafa's request for the Obama administration to work with the jihadist coalition.

New Study Emphasizes Islamism as Foreign Fighters' Main Motivation

Prominent public figures and officials often claim that Islam has nothing to do with the jihadist terrorist violence spreading throughout the world. A recent academic study challenges this misguided view – by actually speaking to terrorist foreign fighters.

The authors of "Talking to Foreign Fighters: Insights into the Motivations for Hijrah to Syria and Iraq," University of Waterloo sociologist Lorne L. Dawson, and George Washington University Program on Extremism Fellow Amarnath Amarasingam, published their findings after numerous conversations with 20 foreign fighters, mostly coming from the West. None of the jihadists cited socioeconomic grievances or other forms of disenfranchisement as a major role in their decisions to wage jihad abroad. Rather, the conversations largely revolved around their Islamist beliefs.

Religion dominated discussion so much, the report said, that "it seems implausible to suggest that religiosity (i.e. a sincere religious commitment, no matter how ill informed or unorthodox) is not a primary motivator for their actions. Religion provides the dominant frame these foreign fighters use to interpret almost every aspect of their lives..."

The authors cite a British Muslim who joined Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, which is now called Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

"The zeal for jihad always struck me when I would sit in my room and read Qur'an with English translation," he said. "I would wonder how jihad was fought today. At the outbreak of 2011 war in Syria, the thinking of going began and brothers from town who had gone were an inspiration."

Previous studies on foreign fighter motivations tend to exclusively focus on "push" factors, such as poor socioeconomic status or psychological factors, that encourage Western foreign fighters to fight abroad. Other radicalization studies tend to emphasize that a search for meaning and identity is an important factor explaining why some Westerners, including Americans, adopt the Islamic State's ideology. Another recent report emphasized the criminal pasts among many Western foreign fighters moving to Syria and Iraq.

While these factors may play a role in radicalization processes, they fail to fully explain why some people embrace violence or wage jihad abroad. In some contexts, terrorists come from relatively higher socio-economic and educated status, such as Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists. Ideology and indoctrination clearly plays a major role in their radicalization. Many individuals around the world face social, economic, and psychological issues and many others search for meaning in life, but do not necessarily become terrorists.

In trying to understand radicalization and foreign fighter motivations, researchers need to put more emphasis on the role of religion and radical Islamist ideology. While many American Islamists and their prominent sympathizers argue that Islam or Islamism has nothing to do with the terrorist violence plaguing the world, engaging in an actual conversation with some of these terrorists suggests otherwise.

Texas Officials Warn of ISIS Threat to U.S.-Mexican Border

A report by the Texas Department of Public Safety raises concerns about ISIS terrorists using the Mexican border both to enter and leave the country. It noted that at least 13 aspiring terrorists have tried to cross into Mexico, or considered trying, since 2012.

Most of those cases involved people who knew they were on the federal no-fly list but wanted to travel to join terrorists, the report said. Sneaking across the southern border "presents an opportunity for increasing numbers of aspiring foreign terrorist fighters to evade US interdiction efforts such as the No-Fly List."

The most recent example happened in October. Texas authorities arrested two Milwaukee men near San Angelo, Texas on the way to the Mexican border. Jason Ludke, 35, and Yosvany Padilla-Conde, 30, wanted to go to Mexico, obtain fraudulent travel documents and travel to join ISIS in Syria or Iraq.

In another instance in April 2015, seven Somali men from Minnesota tried to cross from San Diego into Mexico in an effort to get to Syria and fight for ISIS.

Texas resident Bilal Hamed Abood, an Iraq-born naturalized U.S. citizen, successfully used the border in 2013 to travel to Syria, where he fought for a Syrian rebel group. The FBI arrested Abood for lying about his initial travel to Syria when he tried to come home through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. Abood claimed he fought for a faction that was not prohibited under U.S. law. However, FBI agents search his computer and found that he took an oath of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Texas authorities voiced concern in 2014 about ISIS social media threats to use the Mexican border to enter the United States.

In a criminal complaint filed last year, alleged ISIS supporter Erick Jamal Hendricks claimed to have had contact with an ISIS supporter known as "Abu Harb." "Abu Harb" told Hendricks that he was in Dallas and that the "Islamic State had brothers in Mexico."

Previously, government officials warned about threats to the U.S. border posed by other terrorist groups including Al-Shabaab and Hizballah.

President Trump touted the ISIS threat as a reason for building his wall along the Mexican border during the campaign. He signed an executive order Wednesday calling for the wall's construction, but funding sources are not yet clear.

CAIR: Cruz's Muslim Brotherhood Bill Not About Terrorism

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's bill seeking to classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group is discriminatory leaders of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) claimed at a press conference Wednesday.

"We believe it has little to do with national security or terrorism," CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.

He sees Cruz's bill as part of a two-step strategy to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and attack groups and their leaders who "Islamophobes have falsely labeled as linked to the Muslim Brotherhood."

Hard evidence, however, links CAIR and other American Islamist groups to the Brotherhood.

A phone book introduced at 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas fundraising trial revealed that CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad and fellow CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. This committee came into existence as part of the Muslim Brotherhood's plan to support Hamas in America.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis noted in a 2009 ruling that the HLF trial evidence provided "at least a prima facie case as to CAIR's involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas."

Awad defended the Muslim Brotherhood at the press conference, saying it has been "part in parcel of the democratic process" that it believes in democracy. Banning it for ideological reasons "is nothing short of shooting ourselves in the foot as the biggest democracy or the strongest democracy in the world," Awad said.

Cruz's bill would direct the secretary of state to tell Congress whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization. President Trump reportedly is considering an executive order accomplishing the bill's objectives.

CAIR also protested Trump's proposed executive order curtailing immigration and visas from majority Muslim countries such as Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iran. With the exception of Iran, all of these countries have barely functioning central governments and are in the midst of raging civil wars. It also contested President Trump's order halting the processing of Syrian refugees and ordering the creation of safe zones inside Syria for them.

Awad cast the orders as anti-Muslim and bigoted.

"Never before in our country's history have we purposely as a matter of policy imposed a ban on immigrants or refugees on the basis of religion or imposed a litmus test on those coming to this nation," Awad said. "The orders will tarnish our image in the Muslim world, making us seem uncaring and hard-hearted."

It's not exactly without precedent. Early 20^th century immigration laws barred those belonging to ideological subversives and polygamists from coming to the U.S. Ottoman authorities protested the latter for curtailing Muslim immigration to the United States.

Erdogan Daughter's MAS-ICNA Speech Spurs Dissent

A speech Monday night by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's daughter is dividing some prominent American Islamists.

Sümeyye Erdogan Bayraktar used her address at the Muslim American Society (MAS) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)'s joint convention in Chicago to defend her father's regime and lash out at the "cult" she says is trying to tear it down.

Erdogan has cracked down on political opponents and journalists, a process dramatically accelerated by a failed coup attempt last summer. In her remarks to the Muslim American Society (MAS) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) joint convention, Bayraktar denied that Turkish democracy and press freedoms are under assault.

Instead, she suggested that the "Gülen cult," led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamist leader exiled in Pennsylvania, poses Turkey's greatest threat. Erdogan blamed Gulen for masterminding the coup attempt.

"The fact is every person, regardless of their profession, has to face the full consequences of law if they have links to a terrorist organization or promote terrorist propaganda," Bayraktar said. "There is not one journalist in Turkey who is imprisoned for journalistic activities, nor for criticizing the president."

Just two weeks ago, Human Rights Watch released a 69-page report detailing Turkey's "crackdown on media freedom that had already been going on for over a year."

But that didn't stop Suhaib Webb, former imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, from expressing his pleasure over the "honor" of introducing Bayraktar's speech. He added that he was thankful for Erdogan's "concern & attention towards justice and tolerance."

"I don't have words. Thanking Erdogan for his tolerance and justice," activist Rabia Chaudry sarcastically replied on her Facebook page.

On Wednesday, Chaudry denounced leaders of major U.S. Islamist organizations for embracing Erdogan despite questions about his human-rights abuses.

"Am I crazy to think the embrace of this regime is dangerous, unethical?" Chaudry asked. "Am i the only one who wonders how the same groups and individuals in the US who are likely going to be the target of any future Muslim Brotherhood witchhunt are supporting a man who is engaged in his own witchhunt? Do Muslims just really love strongmen and dictators?"

Chaudry wasn't alone. Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Chicago office, joined in the chorus of dozens of Muslims protesting Webb's effusive praise for Erdogan.

"Ironic given that for many, justice and tolerance are completely denied in Turkey. Again, let's beware of our 'blind spots' @ImamSuhaibWebb," Rehab wrote.

MAS, ICNA, and other U.S. Islamist groups are allowing themselves to become tools of Turkish foreign policy, Abdullah Bozkurt, the exiled former Ankara bureau chief of the English language, anti-Erdogan newspaper Today's Zaman that was shuttered by the Turkish government in March, told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Erdogan's strategy is akin to Iran's clandestine cultural and education programs that use aligned groups to manipulate popular perception and policy, Bozkurt said.

Ellison's Name Disappears from Islamist Convention Program After IPT Report

After being featured among a list of speakers for an upcoming national convention hosted by two Islamist groups, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison's name does not appear on the convention program.

Ellison, a candidate to be the next Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, was scheduled to speak Tuesday at the annual Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America (MAS-ICNA) convention in Chicago.

An earlier program titled Ellison's speech as "Our Voice Will Be Heard." That talk still appears in the convention, but the program now identifies former Muslim Students Association (MSA) President Altaf Husain and an individual named Anthony Whitmore as the speakers.

Both MAS and the MSA were founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States.

Ellison's office declined to comment when the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) asked whether he no longer planned to speak at the event.

On Monday, IPT reported that the MAS-ICNA conference also will feature Ali Qaradaghi, secretary general of the pro-Hamas International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). The article also disclosed a 2010 email in which liberal Muslim scholar al-Husein Madhany described MAS as a "national security threat" due to its ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like Ellison, Qaradaghi had been listed as a speaker on the convention's website, but his name likewise does not appear in the program.

Sheikh Mohammed Rateb Nabulsi, a Syrian imam who sanctioned suicide bombings in 2001 and met top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar earlier this month, still appears in the convention program.

Ellison's DNC candidacy was rocked by a Nov. 30 IPT report which included a 2010 recording in which Ellison described American foreign policy as disproportionately influenced by Jews.

"The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people," Ellison said. "A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right? When the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved, everything changes. Can I say that again?"

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) retracted its endorsement of Ellison after the IPT's report, calling his remarks "deeply disturbing and disqualifying" and that they "his words raise the specter of age-old stereotypes about Jewish control of our government."

Hamas-tied Imam Hosts Syrian Sheikh Who Backed Suicide Bombings

A New Jersey imam fighting deportation may have harmed his case to stay in this country and avoid deportation by hosting a radical Syrian cleric last week.

Sheikh Mohammad Qatanani is due back in immigration court next month. He failed to disclose connections with Hamas when he applied for permanent residency in the United States. That omission, immigration officials say, renders him ineligible to stay in the country.

Israeli military court records show he was arrested in 1993 and convicted of providing support to Hamas. Qatanani claims he was merely detained and never charged.

While his case is in recess, Qatanani's mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), hosted Sheikh Mohammed Rateb Al-Nabulsi last Friday. Al-Nabulsi is a Syrian imam who defended Palestinian suicide bombings in April 2001.

"All the Jewish people are combatants" acceptable as targets for attacks in Israel, Al-Nabulsi wrote in his "ruling on martyrdom operations in Palestine."

Al-Nabulsi praised "our Mujahidin Resistance Brothers in Palestine and Lebanon" in a 2006 article on his website.

"We say Allah-u Akbar to all our Mujahidin brothers in South Lebanon and Palestine who embodied with their heroic deeds the meaning of Jihad," Al-Nabulsi said.

During a  visit to Qatar earlier this month, Al-Nabulsi posed for a photo with Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader who served as its prime minister in Gaza.

Qatanani also hosted Al-Nabulsi in January 2014.

Al-Nabulsi's defense of suicide bombings might be added into the record in Qatanani's immigration court case to help build the argument that he supports extremists. It also could contradict Qatanani's statement at his Dec. 7 deportation hearing that he did not know anyone in Hamas or connected to Hamas apart from his brother-in-law, who he met once in 1994.

Both Qatanani and Al-Nabulsi are slated to speak at next week's MAS-ICNA Convention in Chicago.

Al-Nabulsi's ICPC appearance last Friday focused on Muslim unity in response to the Syrian civil war and the slaughter in Aleppo. Qatanani sought to tie the fight against Assad in Aleppo with the Palestinian struggle with Israel in Gaza.

"The blood of the Syrian Muslim child of Aleppo is the same blood of the Palestinian child of Gaza," Qatanani said.

Keith Ellison Lies to CNN

With a new challenger to his bid to become Democratic National Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison took to CNN Wednesday morning and lied about 2010 anti-Israel remarks first exposed by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

During a private fundraiser, Ellison criticized what he saw as Israel's disproportionate influence in American foreign policy.

"The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of 7 million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic? Right?"

Asked about the comments by CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, Ellison falsely claimed he was merely answering a question about political involvement.

"I was talking to a group of people who asked me how they could look at the Jewish community as a model for political empowerment," Ellison said in a transcript posted by Real Clear Politics.

The IPT published the entirety of Ellison's remarks from that 2010 fundraiser, which was hosted by former Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish, an activist who previously praised Palestinians for choosing "the jihad way" for their liberation. MAS was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members in the United States, and Omeish recently published a glowing tribute to the Egyptian-based Islamist group.

The full recording and transcript show that Ellison addressed a range of issues, including taking time to praise Omeish and note the passage of the Affordable Care Act. But there was no question about empowerment.

On CNN, Ellison said he saw "nothing wrong with any group of Americans using our democratic system in order to advance their policy views."

Again, that statement flies in the face of Ellison's recorded comments. His language, and the rhetorical questions he posed, indicated something was very wrong: "A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million. Does that make sense? Is that logic?"

He does say that this can change "[w]hen the Americans who trace their roots back to those 350 million get involved," but it was a subject he raised despite his recent spin. There was no consideration that it is in American national security interest to support the region's only stable democracy. To Ellison, it must be because of disproportionate influence.

Later, he added, "We can't allow another country to treat us like we're their ATM. Right? And so we ought to stand up as Americans. Now some of us have affinity for other places around the globe. Some of us are new Americans and adopted America as our home. But whether you're born here or whether you accepted America as your own voluntarily, this is our home. Right? All of our home equally, and we can't allow it to be disrespected because some, by a country that we're paying money to."

It's good that Cuomo asked Ellison about his comments. But he let the politician skate with a false account.

Prosecutors Try to Refocus Rasmieh Odeh Case

Update: The Odeh retrial has been pushed back to May 16.

Attorneys for Palestinian bomber Rasmieh Odeh want to delay her re-trial on naturalization fraud for two months, pointing to a superseding indictment in the case.

The new charging document, which has not yet been filed publicly, still includes just the one count of naturalization fraud against Odeh, who has become a heroic figure among Palestinian advocates. But it includes "additional facts to support the charges," a press release Tuesday from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit said.

The original indictment emphasized Odeh's "no" answers to immigration officials when asked several times whether she ever had been arrested, convicted or imprisoned. During her 2014 trial, Odeh claimed she thought the question only applied to her time in the United States. In fact, she was arrested and spent 10 years in an Israeli prison for her role in two 1969 bombings, one of which killed two college students.

"The new indictment ... also alleges that Odeh, in seeking naturalization, also falsely answered two additional questions on her application form relating to her association with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terrorist organization," the government news release said.

By emphasizing Odeh's membership in a terrorist organization, the prosecution appears to be trying to narrow the focus of the case just a week after a federal judge's ruling broadly expanded it.

U.S. District Judge Gershwin A. Drain granted Odeh a new trial, this time allowing testimony claiming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by alleged Israeli torture, caused her to "filter" out her terrorist past when answering the immigration questions.

Drain kept that testimony out of Odeh's 2014 trial, which ended with her conviction and an 18-month prison sentence. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case back to Drain's court, saying he ruled in error.

Prosecutors telegraphed the move in a previous motion arguing against the PTSD testimony. Allowing it, they wrote, would mean they would have to prove Odeh's membership in a terrorist organization. They pointed to several published documents which help do that, including interviews in which Odeh and an accomplice discussed their roles in the bombings. In addition, the terrorists who attacked Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games "demanded the release of hundreds of prisoners in Israel in exchange for the athletes, included a demand to release Defendant Odeh. The PFLP would not demand the release of anyone not affiliated with the organization," prosecutors wrote. Similarly, a series of 1970 PFLP airline hijackings were claimed by the PFLP's 'Task Force Rasmieh Odeh.'

"The PFLP would not name a crew of hijackers after someone not affiliated with the organization," they wrote.

Even if jurors believed Odeh's claim that she confessed to the Israeli bombings only after enduring weeks of torture, and that experience led to her post-traumatic stress, evidence that she was a member of a terrorist organization – the PFLP – would be enough to disqualify Odeh from entering the United States or becoming a citizen.

"So, this is a very important move [by] the prosecution, and makes the PTSD defense much less critical to the case," wrote Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson.

Odeh's attorneys asked that the case be delayed until mid-March. Judge Drain has not ruled on that request.

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