Trumping Trump? How Then Visiting Imam at The Islamic Cultural Center of New York and Representative of Sunni Islam’s Vatican Characterized the 9/11 Attacks

Despite significant corroborating evidence—from a local New Jersey police report and a northeastern US FBI account (a plethora of complaints dubbed “Happy Muslim calls” by agents), to a compilation of local New Jersey eyewitness accounts, and even a contemporaneous, if begrudging, Washington Post story summary assessment—Donald Trump continues to be pilloried for his contention that large numbers of New Jersey area Muslims celebrated the 9/11 carnage.

I recall quite vividly a related incident which for me provided objective validation of the “sacralized” Islamic motivations for such putative heinous behaviors by local New York area Muslims, i.e., celebrating the 9/11/01 slaughter of their “fellow” U.S. citizens, overwhelmingly non-Muslim “infidels.”

Since its founding in 973 C.E., Al Azhar University (and its mosque) have embodied the apogee of Sunni Islamic religious education, which evolved into the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gameia, was the Al-Azhar University representative in the U.S., and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City (1711 Third Avenue, between 96^th and 97^th streets), at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He was interviewed for an Al-Azhar University website, on October 4, 2001. Sheikh Gameia returned to Egypt after September 11, 2001 alleging, without any substantiation, that he was being “harassed.”

Gameia’s interview (original Arabic; extracts translated here) was rife with conspiratorial Islamic antisemitism, which riveted upon his invocation of the central Koranic motifs of Jew-hatred. Al-Azhar’s representative to the U.S. melded this sacralized anti-Jewish bigotry to virulent calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews.

The unfiltered observations regarding the 9/11 attacks by former Al-Azhar representative to the U.S., and then Manhattan imam, al-Gameia, should stand as a permanent reminder of the mainstream, authoritative Islamic viewpoint. Defensive non-Muslim infidel reactions against the modern onslaught of jihad depredations will always be viewed by institutional Islam through the warped prism of conspiratorial Islamic Jew-hatred, conjoined to a steadfast belief in perpetual “Muslim innocence.”

Here are representative extracts of the interview:

Conspiratorial Jew-hatred, rooted in the central anti-Jewish motifs of the Koran:

The Jewish element is as Allah described it when he said: “They disseminate corruption in the land.” [Koran 5:33; 5:64] We know that they have always broken agreements [4:155; 5:13], unjustly murdered the prophets [Koran 2:61; 2:87; 2:91; 3:112; 4:155], and betrayed the faith [2:42; 2:75; 2:89] . Can they be expected to live up to their contracts with us? These people murdered the prophets; do you think they will stop spilling our blood? No. You see these people (i.e. the Jews) all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. [Because of them] there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world. Now, they are riding on the back of the world powers. These people always seek out the superpower of the generation and develop coexistence with it. Before this, they rode on the back of England and on the back of the French empire. After that, they rode on the back of Germany. But Hitler annihilated them because they betrayed him and violated their contract with him. We saw these Zionists, just one hour after the event [the 9/11 attacks], broadcasting on the BBC, the biggest media channel, that the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, were celebrating and rejoicing over the American deaths. Unfortunately, this incident made the American people hate everyone who is Muslim or Arab. What can you expect when you think, first off, that fifty thousand have died and the Arabs are celebrating? How would you feel as an American? Of course you’d want revenge. This is what the Jews plotted and planned. They used the Arabs to carry it out. All the signs indicate that the Jews have the most to gain from an explosion like that. They are the only ones capable of planning such acts. First of all, it was found that the automatic pilot was neutralized a few minutes before the flight, and the automatic pilot cannot be neutralized if you don’t have command of the control tower. Second, the black boxes were found to contain no information; you cannot erase the information from these boxes if you do not plan it ahead of time on the plane. Third, America has the most powerful intelligence apparatuses, the FBI and the CIA… How did [the perpetrators] manage to infiltrate America without their knowledge? Fourth, Jews control decision-making in the airports and in the sensitive centers in the White House and the Pentagon. Fifth, to date America has presented no proof incriminating Osama bin Laden and Al-Qa’ida. If we take these things into account and look closely at the incident, we will find that only the Jews are capable of planning such an incident, because it was planned with great precision of which Osama bin Laden or any other Islamic organization or intelligence apparatus is incapable…I told the American officials that the American people cannot, at this critical stage, know the real enemy who struck at its heart if it does not awaken from its slumber and stop blaming the Arabs and the Muslims…On the news in the U.S. it was said that four thousand Jews did not come to work at the World Trade Center on the day of the incident, and that the police arrested a group of Jews rejoicing in the streets at the time of the incident… This news item was hushed up immediately after it was broadcast… The Jews who control the media acted to hush it up so that the American people would not know. If it became known to the American people, they would have done to the Jews what Hitler did!…Muslims do not feel safe even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died.

Calumnies against Americans, and threats to the U.S.—witless “dupes” of the Zionist Jews

[A]fter the incident, things deteriorated. All [commercial] activity with anyone found to be a Muslim or an Arab was immediately halted, and the federal bureaus stopped matters. Furthermore, he was thoroughly investigated, and asked: “Why did you come to America? What is your connection to Osama bin Laden? What do you know about the [Islamic] Jihad, Hamas, and Hizbullah organizations?” Therefore, the Muslim feels imprisoned…Following the incident, Muslims and Arabs stopped feeling that it was safe to leave [their homes]… They stopped feeling that it was safe to send their wives to the market or their children to the schools. The Muslims are being persecuted by the people and the federal government. This is the result of the bad image of Muslims created by the Zionist media, and of their presenting Islam as a religion of terrorism. That is why the Americans have linked the recent incidents to Islam. I personally have suffered; my home was attacked and my daughters were harassed.

As President Bush said, this is a crusade against Islam and against Muslims…He went to the Islamic center in Washington and took back his words, but he did this only after he incited the souls and revealed what happened behind the scenes of American policy. For this reason, I advise every Arab and every Muslim leader not to offer any aid whatsoever to the oppressing superpower [to help it] attack Muslims, because this is a betrayal of Allah and his Prophet… An American attack on Afghanistan will constitute terrorism, as the U.S. did in Iraq and in Palestine… I think that this war will be the end of America the oppressor. I see America as the second ‘Aad (according to Islamic tradition, ‘Aad and Thamud were two Arab tribes that were annihilated because they deviated from the path of Allah; see Koran 7:73–74)… The U.S. has the same traits as the first ‘Aad: it has skyscrapers and large factories. Allah will impose on the people of the second ‘Aad (i.e. the Americans) what he imposed on the people of the first ‘Aad, because they are a people who are arrogant in their power, but Allah will avenge himself on them.