On Saturday, January 8, 2001, a nice-sounding organization called the United Muslim Christian Forum (UMC) held an event in Binghamton, New York, for members of both faiths to “share, in unity, their love and admiration for Jesus, son of Mary (peace be upon him).” Gullible Christians and officials have supported the event, unaware or unconcerned that it is a front for the anti-Semitic extremist group Muslims of the Americas (MOA) and its leader in Pakistan, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani.
There is no excuse for those who have embraced the UMC, as its website says it was founded by Sheikh Gilani and no effort is made to disguise UMC’s status as an MOA front. The UMC website also spouts the same ideology. At a 2008 event, the leadership proclaimed that “…we will no longer be duped or manipulated by a ‘hidden hand’ into fighting, or going to war with each other.” The write-up on the event, which claims 3000 Muslims and Christians attended, then argues that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” by the U.S., UK, Israel and international bankers. It describes the attacks as “Stage One of getting the Western world, on behalf of the Jews, to go to war with the Arab world.”
The UMC’s website also carries a letter to President Obama asking him to stop an anti-Muslim conspiracy within the United States. It warns of a “hate campaign, within our own borders, against the American Muslims, [that] MUST come to an end. This campaign is an integral part of the nefarious scheme to bring this nation to its knees by those who have no love for humanity.”
The UMC is an affiliate of the MOA, whose extremism is thinly concealed and well-documented. Sheikh Gilani has called Jews an “example of human Satans.” Even his outreach to Christians is based on anti-Semitism, as he says that “the Jews tried to murder Jesus, son of Mary.” Sheikh Gilani and MOA, like their UMC, blame a Satanist-Zionist conspiracy for 9/11 and not Osama bin Laden, whom Gilani describes as a “Saudi activist.”
In 2009, the Christian Action Network released a film about the use of the MOA’s compounds, some of which are dozens of acres large, for guerrilla warfare instruction. Since then, a law enforcement source has given me a secret MOA videotape showing female members in military attire receiving paramilitary training that included simulated combat with knives and swords and firing guns into a lake at the group’s “Islamberg” headquarters in Hancock, New York. We have also received videotape with the sound of gunfire coming from the MOA’s compound in York County, South Carolina. This is the group that runs UMC.
The spokesman claims that at least 500 people attended this month’s event, including Dr. Diane O’Heron of Broome Community College and a representative of Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan who said “events like these enrich our community.” Mayor Ryan has also spoken at UMC events where and he is seen on the group’s website holding their sign. A local news report states that members from the 22 MOA “villages” around the country and even as far away as Canada, Pakistan, and Venezuela came to the event.
One of the speakers at the January 8 event was Dr. Ali Mazrui, director of Binghamton University’s Institute of Global Cultural Studies. He said in 2002 that “there is … suspicion that some members of the Bush administration in collusion with Israel are more than ready to plunge the Middle East into turmoil in the hope that the final outcome would be to the territorial advantage of Israel and the strategic advantage of the United States. All this is part of the emerging sadism of the United States, a readiness to hurt others abroad.”
Dr. Mazrui also wrote an article in April 2002 titled “Is Israel a Threat to American Democracy?” in which he says that “Israeli neo-Nazism” and “militarism” is what caused the creation of Hamas, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. He accuses Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” and being the “most effective war machine since Nazi Germany.”
The UMC is just another trick used by MOA to present itself as a moderate group with the help of incredibly naïve officials. In August 2008, the New York State Police and FBI gave awards to members of the MOA’s Muslim Scouts of America in Islamberg. In 2005, an FBI Special Agent sent them a note of appreciation, and in the previous year, FBI Special Agent in Charge Leslie Wieser spoke at the graduation ceremony for the scouts at the York County site. Also in attendance were Mayor Eddie Lee, the York County sheriff, and three other FBI Special Agents.
The inclusion of Dr. Mazrui, the publicly available information about MOA, and the extremist rhetoric readily available on the UMC’s website should have been enough to stop any public official, especially Mayor Ryan, from supporting the event. Any official involved with this group is guilty of negligence of an unthinkable magnitude. The community of Binghamton and the surrounding areas need to let Mayor Ryan and other officials know that their participation in the UMC’s events is unacceptable.
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