Ron Branstner: Keith Ellison’s (Hakim Muhammad) Anti-Islamic Blasphemy Laws…

Beginnings

Born in August 1963, Keith Maurice Ellison was raised as a Roman Catholic in Detroit, Michigan.

Conversion to Islam

At age 19, while attending Wayne State University, he accompanied a friend to Jummah prayer at the University’s student center, where he heard a Muslim preacher discussing “universal brotherhood, the evils of racism and the common origins of all of humanity.” Impressed by what he heard, Ellison later that year converted to Islam because he perceived it to be a faith that “might inform social change [and] justice in society.” After graduating with a BA in economics in 1987, Ellison enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School.

Views About Racism & The Nation of Islam

As a third-year law student in 1989-90, Ellison penned four columns for the Minnesota Daily under the name “Keith E. Hakim”:

(a) In a November 27, 1989 piece titled “Minister [Louis] Farrakhan Never Claimed to Be a ‘Malcolm X’,” Ellison laid out his views about racism:

“Racism means conspiracy to subjugate and actual subjugation. That means planned social, economic, military, religious and political subjugation of whites. It cannot be intelligently argued that the Nation of Islam is doing this. In fact, blacks have no history of harming or subjecting whites as a class. On the other hand, whites have it written into their very Constitution that blacks shall be considered three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation of their white owners. Their Constitution also makes provisions for the return of runaway slaves. Their constitution is the bedrock of American law; it’s the best evidence of a white racist conspiracy to subjugate other peoples.”

(b) In a November 30, 1989 column, Ellison wrote: “The news media prints only the most sensational bits and pieces, never the whole story. This leaves people believing that the Nation of Islam is some kind of black Ku Klux Klan, and they immediately dismiss all of its laudable work.”

(c) On February 2, 1990, Ellison published “Affirmative Action Does Not Make up for Past Injustice,” an article advocating slavery reparations as well as the creation of a geographically self-contained “homeland” for black people:

“Since no one but the WASP elite really appreciates affirmative action, I have a challenge for all fair-minded middle- and working-class white people: I will urge black people to abandon white-dominated, integration-oriented, give-away programs, if you urge white people to justly compensate black people for 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow and 25 years of neo-Jim Crow.

“The settlement could be a straight cash transfer for all the black exploitation. This means just compensation for all the labor hours put in by the slaves and just compensation for all the intellectual and artistic property ripped off by all the Elvis Presleys and Pat Boones. It means compensation for all the money ripped off through sharecropping and just compensation owing to all the black athletes of yesterday, such as Jack Jefferson and Joe Louis. It means back payment of the ‘black tax,’ which is the price hike that ghetto merchants and pawnbrokers charge black consumers….

“Finally, blacks would have the option of choosing their own land base or remaining in the United States. Since black people toiled most diligently in the southeastern section of the United States, this land, quite naturally, would be most suitable. That means Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Blacks, of course, would not be compelled to move to the black state, and, of course, peaceful whites would not be compelled to move away.”

(d) In one piece, Ellison defended the incendiary Nation of Islam spokesman and black supremacist Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and, as The Weekly Standard reports, spoke “in the voice” of Muhammad.

Defending Anti-Semitism

In February 1990, Ellison participated in sponsoring Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael) to speak at his law school on the subject, “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy, or Both?”—a speech that proved to be deeply anti-Semitic. Ellison subsequently defended the speech.

Launching His Career As a Lawyer

After earning a Juris Doctorate in 1990, Ellison worked three years as a litigator with the Minnesota-based law firm Lindquist & Vennum. He then served as executive director of the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, which specialized in the pro bono defense of “low-income people and people of color.” After that, he took a job with the law firm Hassan & Reed Ltd. (also in Minneapolis).

Failure to Pay Taxes and Traffic Tickets

During the 1990s, Ellison failed to pay all or part of his income taxes on a number of occasions. Consequently, the IRS filed liens against him and he eventually was forced to pay some $25,000 in back taxes. Ellison also ignored fines that he had incurred for parking tickets and moving violations so numerous that his driver’s license was suspended multiple times.

Defending a Convicted Murderer

In October 1992 Ellison publicly came to the defense of Sharif Willis, a convicted murderer and ex-convict who was now the leader of the violent Minneapolis-based Vice Lords gang. The previous month, four Vice Lord members had used Willis’s house as their headquarters for planning the murder of a local police officer named Jerry Haaf. At the trial of one of the killers, two witnesses implicated Willis in the plot. Willis himself was never charged, however, because law-enforcement authorities said they lacked sufficient evidence to convict him. Ellison helped organize a demonstration against Minneapolis police, where he denounced “the campaign of slander the police federation has been waging” against Willis. He also told the crowd that the police union was systematically trying to frighten white people in order to persuade the city to hire more officers and thereby strengthen the police union’s power base. In February 1993, while the trial of Officer Haaf’s killers was in progress, Ellison led a protesting crowd outside the courthouse in the chant: “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace!” In February 1995 Willis was convicted in federal court for several drug and gun-related offenses, for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Relationship with The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan

In 1995 Ellison worked actively on behalf of the Nation of Islam. At a University of Minnesota rally to promote Louis Farrakhan’s highly anticipated Million Man March, Ellison, who organized the rally, appeared onstage with Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who delivered a thundering, racist diatribe.

That same year, when Qubilah Shabazz, daughter of the late Malcolm X, was indicted for conspiring to murder Farrakhan, Ellison organized a march on the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minneapolis demanding that Shabazz be released, and alleging that the FBI itself had conspired to try to kill Farrakhan. In a November 6, 1995, column for the Minneapolis periodical Insight News, Ellison wrote under the name “Keith X Ellison” and condemned a Star Tribune editorial cartoon implying that Farrakhan was an anti-Semite. Ellison argued to the contrary, saying that “Minister Farrakhan is a role model for black youth”; “is not an anti-Semite”; “is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world”; and is regarded by “most black people” as “a role model for youth and, increasingly, a central voice for our collective aspirations.”

In February 1997 Ellison served as a local NOI spokesman (with the surname “Muhammad”) at a public hearing in connection with a controversy involving Joanne Jackson of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism. Jackson, a supporter of Louis Farrakhan, was alleged to have said that “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.” Declared Ellison: “We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction. Here is why we support Ms. Jackson: She is correct about Minister Farrakhan. He is not a racist. He is also not an anti-Semite. Minister Farrakhan is a tireless public servant of Black people, who constantly teaches self-reliance and self-examination to the Black community.”

Ellison first emerged as a candidate for public office in 1998, when he ran, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party nomination for state representative as “Keith Ellison-Muhammad.” In an article on his candidacy that appeared in Insight News, Ellison identified himself as an NOI member and was still defending Farrakhan: “Anticipating possible criticism for his NOI affiliation, Ellison-Muhammad says he is aware that not everyone appreciates what the Nation does and [he] feels there is a propaganda war being launched against its leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

In 1998 as well, Ellison appeared at a public forum as a spokesman for NOI.

Fundraising for a Domestic Terrorist

In February 2000 Ellison gave a speech at a fundraising event sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, on whose steering committee he previously had served. Also in attendance was the former Weather Underground leader Bernardine Dohrn. The event was a fundraiser for onetime Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Kathleen Soliah after her apprehension in St. Paul for the attempted murder of Los Angeles police officers in 1975. Calling for Soliah’s release, Ellison referred to her as “basically … a black gang member” (though she is white) because she was purportedly a victim of government persecution. He also described Soliah as a woman who had been “fighting for freedom in the ’60s and ’70s.” (Soliah subsequently pled guilty to charges in Los Angeles and to an additional murder charge in Sacramento.) Further, Ellison spoke favorably of the high-profile murderers and leftist icons Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur, and Geronimo Pratt.

Elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives

In 2002, Ellison, having dropped “Muhammad” from his name, was elected (as a Democrat) to the Minnesota House of Representatives; two years later he was re-elected.

Running for the U.S. House of Representatives

In 2006 Ellison ran for Minnesota’s Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Early that year, the Minnesota State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board reprimanded Ellison’s campaign for unreported contributions, misclassified disbursements, and inaccurate cash balances. Ellison himself was fined for willful violation of Minnesota’s campaign-finance-reporting law and was sued twice by the state attorney general.

During the 2006 campaign, Ellison called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the impeachment of President Bush.

Ellison Addresses His NOI Links

In May 2006, Ellison addressed his Nation of Islam links in a letter he penned to the local chapter of the Jewish Community Relations Council. In the letter, Ellison asserted that his involvement with NOI had been limited to an 18-month period around the time of the Million Man March in 1995; that he had been unfamiliar with the organization’s anti-Semitic views at that time; that he “did not adequately scrutinize” those views; and that he himself had never expressed or defended such views. “I have long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam,” Ellison wrote. But all of these assertions by Ellison were demonstrably false. As journalist Joe Kaufman, founder of Americans Against Hate, writes: “Indeed, although he has since denied it, Ellison was involved with NOI for ten long years. In that time, he participated in NOI rallies, including the Million Man March hate fest; he defended NOI hate speech; and he used such NOI aliases as Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, and Keith Ellison-Muhammad.”

Support from the Communist Party

In August 2006 the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) said: “If Keith Ellison is elected in November to represent Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, he will bring to the U.S. House of Representatives a fresh progressive voice in tradition of Paul Wellstone. He will also be the first African American congressman from Minnesota and the first Muslim in the U.S. Congress.”

Support From a Prominent Minnesota Communist

A key supporter of Ellison’s 2006 congressional campaign was Erwin Marquit, a University of Minnesota professor who was the principal founder of the Marxist Education Press, and who in 1974 had run for governor of Minnesota on the Communist Party ticket. A 2015 Minneapolis Star-Tribune profile of Marquit referred to him the “state’s best-known Communist.” In Memoirs of a Lifelong Communist, Marquit wrote that he and his wife Doris had hosted the first political fundraiser for Ellison in their home in July 2006; it was the first of four such fundraisers which they would hold for Ellison before Marquit’s death in 2015. All told, Marquit helped Ellison in five separate congressional campaigns between 2006 and 2014. One person who was present at a December 2013 Marquit fundraiser for Ellison was a then-CPUSA member named Matthew Voges, who recalls: “Many Communist Party members were in attendance [at the fundraiser,] although I don’t believe all of the attendees were Communists.” Between 2006 and 2014, Marquit still wrote occasionally for the CPUSA website and he served as a delegate to the CPUSA National Convention.

Victory

Ellison won his congressional election on November 7, 2006, and has been re-elected every two years since then. At his 2006 victory party, a number of his supporters shouted “Allahu Akbar!”—the traditional battle cry of jihadists.

On January 4, 2007, Ellison placed his right hand on a Koran (instead of a Bible) at the photo-op reenactment of his congressional swearing-in ceremony. (At the earlier, official ceremony, all the newly elected representatives were sworn in at one time, without any books.) Notably, the Koran used by Ellison had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson; the book had been taken from the Library of Congress, under security, specifically for Ellison’s swearing-in ceremony. Clayton State University English professor Mary Grabar observed: “In this p.r. stunt [Ellison] tried to claim Jefferson’s blessing. The mainstream media presented it as another way to upstage what they see as ignorant rubes who would be upset by a Congressman not using the traditional Bible in the swearing-in ceremony.”

Soon after joining the House of Representatives, Ellison became a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus.

Ties to Islamist Organizations & Individuals

• The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR), Nihad Awad (a self-identified supporter of Hamas), spoke at an August 25, 2006 political fundraiser for Ellison, who accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations raised by Awad. All told, the Ellison congressional campaign received approximately $50,000 in contributions that were given or raised by CAIR officials.
• In October 2006 Ellison keynoted a closed-door meeting of CAIR in Pembroke Pines, Florida.
• On November 19, 2006, Ellison gave a speech titled “Imams and Politics” to the Fourth Annual Body Meeting of the North American Imams Federation (NAIF). At that conference, he also participated in a “Community Night” event along with Imams Siraj Wahhaj and Omar Shahin. Two days after the NAIF gathering, Shahin and five other conference attendees were removed from a US Airways flight when their suspicious behavior alarmed other passengers. In the wake of the airline incident, Ellison asked to meet with executives of US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to discuss what had happened. “While some constituents have understood the fears of the passenger who reported the clerics’ prayers as suspicious activity, many more have expressed shock and surprise at what they perceive as discrimination,” Ellison wrote in a letter to US Airways CEO Doug Parker and Jeff Hamiel, executive director of the MAC.
• On December 24, 2006, Ellison spoke at a Dearborn, Michigan convention of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America.
• That same month, Ellison spoke at the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Two years later, he would address a town hall forum during MPAC’s “Activate ’08 Election Campaign.”
• In May 2007 Ellison spoke at the fourth annual convention of the Muslim American Society.
• On June 16, 2007, he was a featured speaker at the first annual banquet of CAIR’s Minnesota chapter.
• That same month, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee honored Ellison with its Trailblazer Award, for his “career of advocacy focused on promoting civil and human rights, peace, and prosperity for working families.”
• Ellison was angry when several officials of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) were tried in 2007, on charges that they had funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. After the trial ended with a hung jury on most counts, Ellison, speaking at a CAIR fundraising banquet in Anaheim, denounced the entire case as a “persecution” of the defendants, adding: “And the worst of it was not that these people’s lives were disrupted, their reputations were tarnished. The worst of it was that [300] other organizations were tossed in to the mix of it all as they were listed as unindicted co-conspirators. No evidence to be found that they had done anything. So here is what we have today. 300 reputable civil rights organizations, including CAIR, put on a list they never should have been put on in a case where they had been thoroughly exonerated. It’s time to call an end to wasting taxpayer money in this manner. There have been other prosecutions for Muslim charities and we’ve come up with nothing at all when it comes to convictions in these cases. It’s time for us to call a stop to this selective prosecution. It’s time to say that our justice system and our prosecutors and our police officers are here to investigate crime for the sake of public safety, not to pursue a political agenda.” (Ellison issued no comment the following year, when the HLF defendants were retried and convicted on all counts.)
• In 2007, 2008, and 2009, Ellison spoke at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual national conventions. His 2008 address discussed the theme of “mobilizing the Muslim political machine.”
• In the spring of 2008, Ellison keynoted the Muslim American Society‘s Minnesota convention, appearing alongside Siraj Wahhaj.
• In 2008 Ellison spoke at CAIR-Tampa’s sixth annual banquet, where he urged his listeners to support Sami al-Arian, the former University of South Florida professor who had confessed two years earlier to conspiring to supply goods and services to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• Also in 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to finance his 16-day December pilgrimage to Mecca.
• In 2009, after the FBI had cut off its contacts with CAIR because of the organization’s ties to Hamas, Ellison spoke at three CAIR fundraising dinners, gave videotaped statements at a number of others, and appeared with CAIR officials at meetings on healthcare reform and at Muslim religious festivals.
• In 2009 as well, Ellison met with Mohammed al-Hanooti — a leading U.S.-based fundraiser for Hamas — at a campaign event for for Virginia House of Delegates candidate Esam Omeish, who had previously exhorted Palestinians to follow “the jihad way” in their struggle against Israel.
• In October 2009 Ellison denounced four Congressional Republicans who had called for an investigation of CAIR’s possible infiltration of government committees. Said Ellison: “The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our Founding Fathers cherished so dearly.” Soon thereafter, Ellison attended a CAIR fundraising event in Washington and urged the organization’s supporters to apply for jobs with the incoming Obama administration.
• During his 2010 congressional re-election bid, Ellison accepted campaign contributions from such notables as Jamal Barzinji and Hisham Al-Talib, both of whom had previously served as vice presidents of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, and both of whom had been identified by the FBI as U.S. leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ellison also received donations from former Muslim American Society president Esam Omeish; Turkish Islamist Merve Kavakci; and former American Muslim Council officials Aly Abuzaakouk, Mohammed Cheema, and Yayha Basha. Further, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad helped organize a fundraiser on Ellison’s behalf.
• In May 2011, Ellison was the keynote speaker at a CAIR-Los Angeles fundraiser. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Ellison spoke at a minimum of twelve CAIR fundraising events between 2006-16.
• Ellison was one of two keynote speakers at the Islamic Shura Council of California’s 21st anniversary celebration on February 27, 2016. The other keynoter at that event was Siraj Wahhaj.
• Ellison was scheduled to be the keynote speaker for the annual Muslim American Society (MAS)/ Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) national convention in late December 2016. But in the days just prior to that event, websites like the Middle East Forum and the Investigative Project on Terrorism publicized a great deal of crucial information revealing the fact that many of the speakers who were slated to share the podium with Ellison had ties to highly radicalized Islamic elements. For example, the convention’s program director, Ahmed Taha, (a) was an open supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood; (b) had previously posted online videos claiming to expose the “Rothschild Zionism Secret Regime in America”; and (c) had circulated articles characterizing Egypt as “Israeli-occupied territory” because of its relatively friendly relations with the Jewish state. To view a list of some of the other speakers who were scheduled to speak at the same MAS/ICNA event.

Endorsing Obama for President

On February 20, 2007, Ellison endorsed the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, praising the latter’s “unifying spirit” as well as his “message of an open and fair economy, a balanced prosperity and clear opposition to the war in Iraq.”

Calling for Impeachment of VP Dick Cheney

On June 28, 2007, Ellison co-sponsored Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Republican Vice President Dick Cheney for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The bill charged that Cheney had “purposefully manipulated [pre-Iraq War] intelligence” and had “fabricated a threat of weapons of mass destruction.” Other co-sponsors included William Lacy Clay, Jan Schakowsky, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, and Maxine Waters.

Likening the Bush Administration to the Nazis

In a July 2007 speech, Ellison likened America’s military response to the 9/11 attacks to the manner in which the Nazis had exploited the 1933 burning of the Reichstag in Berlin: “It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”

Speaking at Leftist Conferences

• In 2007 Ellison was a guest speaker at that year’s Take Back America conference, which was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF). Ellison also spoke at the 2009 and 2010 America’s Future Now conferences organized by those same two organizations, and at a 2011 Take Back the American Dream conference, again organized by IPS and CAF.
• In 2011 Ellison spoke at a rally held during the annual conference of Netroots Nation.
• In April 2013, Ellison was the featured speaker at a “benefit dinner” held by EMERGE USA, an organization that seeks to increase the political influence of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian Americans.

Calling for a Global Marshall Plan

In April 2008, Ellison introduced Resolution 1078 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This Resolution called for the implementation of a Global Marshall Plan that would “demonstrate the commitment of the United States to peace and prosperity,” a plan that “must operate within the ethical framework of generosity and magnanimity, not merely of instrumentality, and to be successful and must be perceived as more than a new attempt to extend influence into the world.” This plan mirrored the foreign-policy approach advocated by the Network of Spiritual Progressives.

Positions Against Israel

● During “Operation Cast Lead” (OCL), a December 2008/January 2009 military operation in which Israel sought to quell the aggression of Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza, Ellison, stating that he was “torn” on the issue, voted “present” on — rather than in favor of — a January 9th nonbinding House resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” The resolution passed by a margin of 390 to 5, while 21 other legislators joined Ellison in voting “present.”

“The people who have a strong sympathy for the Israeli position dominate the conversation,” Ellison told Al Jazeera during OCL. “It is really not politically safe to say there have been two sides to this.” In an interview a month later with the BBC, Ellison similarly lamented that it was not feasible for any member of Congress to reach out diplomatically to Hamas — not because Hamas was a genocidal terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews — but because such an outreach effort would be politically unpopular in the United States: “What I can tell you now is that the constellation of political forces in the United States at this moment would make a member of Congress who has reached out directly to Hamas spend all their time defending that decision and would not be able to deal with other critical issues that need to be focused on. So for example if I were to make a move like that I wouldn’t be able to focus my attention on the humanitarian issue. I’d have to defend myself to my colleagues why I reached out to a terrorist organization. It would absorb all of my time. I would spend a lot of time fighting off personal attack and would not be able to achieve goals that I have.”

“In mid-February 2009,” reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “Ellison, accompanied by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), visited Gaza and Israel to observe the humanitarian situation after the Gaza War. Although the pair spent time on both sides of the border, most of their public statements emphasized the idea that Israel, and not Hamas, was victimizing Palestinians in Gaza.”

● In a September 2009 article which he wrote, Ellison called for an end to all U.S. aid to Israel, asserting that such aid was unnecessary because Israel “is a modern industrial power with a personal income rivaling Great Britain’s and a health care system that covers all its citizens.”

● On January 27, 2010, Ellison authored a letter that was signed by 53 fellow Members of Congress, calling on President Barack Obama to use diplomatic pressure to end Israel’s blockade of Gaza—a blockade which had been imposed in order to prevent the importation of weaponry from Iran and Syria. By Ellison’s telling, the blockade constituted an unjust form of “collective punishment” against the Palestinian people.

● Speaking at a 2010 fundraiser that was hosted by former Muslim American Society leader and jihad supporter Esam Omeish, Ellison made plain his belief that Israel played far too large a role in controlling American foreign policy: “The United States foreign policy in the Middle East is governed by what is good or bad through a country of seven million people. A region of 350 million all turns on a country of seven million. Does that make sense? Is that logic?” Also at this event, Ellison said:

• “[T]here is a growing awareness in the U.S. Congress and in the executive branch that everything anyone does, including Israel, is not fine…. But let me just tell you, this effort to stop settlements throughout East Jerusalem and throughout the rest of Palestine cannot be something that only the President carries on his shoulders. The American people have got to stand up and say something. And who’s going to say something if you don’t say something?… This is an important issue, and we should not let the President be out there by ourselves.”
• “Why are we sending $2.8 billion a year over there [to Israel] when they won’t even honor our request to stop building in East Jerusalem? Where is the future Palestinian state going to be if it’s colonized before it even gets up off the ground?”
• “[W]e’re Americans, right? We can’t allow another country [Israel] to treat us like we’re their ATM. Right?”
• “We should be building the bilateral business relationships between the United States and the Muslim world….Morocco, we gotta build it up. Saudi Arabia, we gotta build it up. The Gulf countries, we gotta build them. Pakistan, we gotta build them…. We need to have so much goods and services going back and forth between this country and the Muslim world that if we [American Muslims] say we need this right here, then everyone is saying, OK. Understand my point? You’ve got to be strategic….These business relationships can be leveraged to say that we need a new deal politically.”
• “And I am telling you, that with your help, we are able to take Muslim presence on Capitol Hill from zero to a real player. And this is what we’re trying to do a