Arab-American Association of New York

The Arab American Association of New York (AANYY) says its “mission is to support and empower the Arab Immigrant and Arab American community by providing services to help them adjust to their new home and become active members of society.”[1]

AAANY lists Qatar Foundation International as a “.supporter.” The Foundation is linked to the Islamist-sponsoring Qatari government and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is especially supportive of Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the terrorism-advocating spiritual leader of the Brotherhood.[1a]

The New York Police Department gathered intelligence on AANYY as part of a “terrorism enterprise investigation” and tried to place an informant on its board.[2] Such investigations are permitted when there is evidence to suspect that two or more individuals are conspiring to support terrorism or another violent crime.[3]

AANYY founder and president, Dr. Ahmad Jaber, used to be the president of the Dawood Mosque (also known as the Islamic Mission of America), another institution that the NYPD also looked into as part of a “terrorism enterprise investigation.”[4]

The mosque was originally founded by Sheikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal. According to Professor Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, “Daoud attacked Christianity as a white, racist religion.”[5] The radical Dar-Ul- Islam movement arose from this mosque.[6] Islamist cleric Khalid Yassin converted to Islam at the mosque and was a guest speaker there in 1995, despite his record of extremist preaching.[7]

Executive Director Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American, has several family members and friends who have been arrested by Israel. She said in 2004 that she has been questioned by authorities and her Palestinian husband, Maher Judh, was facing deportation after being in the U.S. for seven years.[8]

Sarsour said her brother-in-law is serving a 12-year sentence in an Israeli jail for his involvement with Hamas. She identified two Muslim men in an Arabic newspaper urging Muslims to become martyrs fighting against Israel. One was her cousin, who she said had spent 25 years in Israeli jails, and the other was a family friend who has a 99-year sentence.[9]

Sarsour ferociously attacks anyone bringing attention to Islamic extremism labeling them “Islamophobes” and anti-Muslim bigots. She harshly criticized[10] some of the Muslim women who appeared in the Honor Diaries documentary, a film about the abuse of women in Muslim-majority societies, and tweeted that its producers “don’t care about women.”

She regards any criticism of the oppression Muslim women face as unwelcome outside interference. Despite claiming to be anti-racist posted the following tweet which clearly uses racially charged language appealing to identity politics.

 

She says that the U.S. is a racist country with “Islamophobia” being just the latest manifestation. In 2012, she said, “This has happened throughout the history of our country; our country was based on, you know, genocide on Native Americans, based on slavery, racial profiling has existed for centuries in this community.”[11]

Her online magazine said in 2012, “Today the United States is still a democracy with authoritarian undertones…” The title of the article was, “America: Democratic Nation with Authoritarian Undertones or Authoritarian Nation with Democratic Undertones?”[12]

She even found fault in how the U.S. broadcasted an image of Saddam Hussein when he was captured. She was quoted in her magazine as saying, “I think he’s done a lot of things he shouldn’t have done but I was hurt. My Arab pride was hurt.”[13]

She is hostile to the idea of a Jewish state and the foundation of Israel. She has tweeted that “Nothing is creepier than Zionism. Challenge racism.”[14] In 2006, she said, “Israel is there, and it is going to be there whether we like it or not. We have to learn to deal with that.”[15]

Sarsour consistently depicts the Islamist terrorist threat as a U.S. government conspiracy to oppress Muslims. When an Al-Qaeda terrorist was prevented from blowing up an airliner with a hidden bomb, she said he was “CIA all along.”[16]

In one tweet she drew a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan.

In another statement, she claimed that American mistreatment of Arabs is getting worse and that Muslim youth are arrested and jailed just for attending certain mosques:

“The value of Arab life—whether nameless Palestinian children bombed by American-funded fighter jets or American youth profiled, questioned and incarcerated for frequenting a particular mosque—is spiraling downwards rapidly in the U.S. and at a more accelerated rate in the Arab World,” she wrote in March 2012.[17]

Sarsour claims that the NYPD creates terrorist plots in order to keep its budget:

“We believe that the NYPD informants actually manufacture these cases so they can justify the funding that comes to the NYPD,” she said in March 2012.[18]