‘Taliban Imam’ Gets Gun Training from CAIR
Nezar Hamze teaches potential jihadists how to aim better at us.
December 29, 2015
CAIR’s Nezar Hamze is on a mission to give gun training to every radical mosque in Florida. This month, while Jews have been preoccupied with Hanukkah and Christians have been readying themselves for Christmas, Hamze has been not-so-quietly hopping from mosque to mosque telling those who may very well be a danger to society that they have a right to take up arms. He has done at least 16 of these training sessions. One of his stops has been to a mosque whose imam was arrested for financing the Taliban.
On December 14th, Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen (MJAM), located in Margate, Florida, held an event sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to teach the congregants of MJAM weapons training. The teacher, Nezar Hamze, is the CEO and Regional Operations Director of CAIR-Florida. He is also a Deputy Sheriff at the Broward Sheriff’s Office (BSO), so he knows proper technique in handling and using guns and is apparently ready to hand that knowledge over to potential jihadists who should not have it.
CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of the American Palestine Committee, a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the US for terrorist-related crimes. In November 2014, the UAE government designated CAIR a terrorist group.
There is little difference between the ideology of Hamze’s group, CAIR-Florida, and its DC-based parent organization. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” After the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!” In August 2014, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God...”
The mosque that Hamze had given training to, MJAM, is led by its imam, Izhar Khan. Khan, who his congregants call Mufti or Muslim jurist, was one of the attendees at the gun event, shown on video sitting at the feet of Hamze, as Hamze spoke to the audience and as CAIR-Florida Legal Counsel Wilfredo Amr Ruiz reenacted a shooting with a gun in each hand.
In May 2011, Khan was arrested and spent the next 20 months in a federal detention center in Miami on charges of terrorism. According to the indictment against him, “Izhar is a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer who worked with [his father Hafiz Muhammad Sher Ali Khan] and others to collect and deliver money for the Pakistani Taliban… Izhar… provided and attempted to provide material support and resources… knowing and intending that they be used in preparation for and in carrying out… a conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim persons in a foreign country.”
In January 2013, shortly before his father’s conviction, a federal judge dismissed the case against Izhar, citing lack of evidence; Khan said he was “shocked.” The Court itself had stated that Izhar “by clear and convincing evidence… posed a danger to the community.” The Court too reiterated the findings of the indictment, stating “Izhar collected money in the United States that was intended for mujahideen in Pakistan, sent money to Pakistan to a Pakistani Taliban sympathizer, and gave money himself to the mujahideen while traveling in Pakistan in 2009.”
Apart from its imam, MJAM is also linked to extremist groups and individuals.
This past February, the mosque placed a photo on its Facebook page depicting members of the charity, ICNA Relief, working at an ICNA Relief table set up in the mosque. ICNA Relief is the main charity of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). ICNA has been linked to terrorist financing and has used the web to promote a number of terrorist groups, including Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Taliban. ICNA conducts annual functions along with the Muslim American Society (MAS), a group that, like CAIR, was named a terrorist organization by UAE.
Shown in the photo wearing a yellow ICNA Relief shirt is the Registered Agent and Secretary of ICNA Relief Florida, Abdul Rauf Khan. Khan has used his Facebook page to post videos dedicated to Nation of Islam leader and anti-Jewish bigot Louis Farrakhan and Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood. He also posted a link on his site to an anti-Semitic video labeling comedian talk show host Bill Maher, “Zionist Jew Bill Maher.” Last month, he posted a video lauding Hezbollah member Adel Themos, who died during a suicide attack in Beirut, as a hero.
Shafayat Mohamed, who has spoken at MJAM previously, has been thrown off a number of boards in Broward County for his actions against homosexuals. A number of al-Qaeda terrorists have spent time at Darul Uloom, including “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla, who was a student at the mosque; now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief Adnan el-Shukrijumah, who was a prayer leader there; and mosque goers Imran Mandhai and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, who had plotted to blow up area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory.
Another MJAM speaker was Zulfiqar Ali Shah, the Executive Director of the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) and Religious Director for the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (ISM). He is ex-President of ICNA (see above) and ex-South Asia Director of KindHearts, a Hamas charity shut down by the US government in February 2006. In June 2001, he stated, “If we are unable to stop the Jews now, their next stop is Yathrib (The Prophet’s city of Medina), where the Jews used to live until their expulsion by Prophet Muhammad. That’s the pinnacle of their motives.”
A photograph of Izhar Khan together with his father, Hafiz, is found on the Facebook site of MJAM. Taking the scenery within the picture into account, as well as courtroom testimony which suggests that the only time the father left America since 1996 was during a hajj (pilgrimage) trip in 2005, the photo was presumably taken in Saudi Arabia in 2005. But regardless of Khan’s familiar connection to his father or when the picture was taken, it is telling that the mosque would keep the photo on its site.
During the same courtroom testimony as mentioned, quotes from the father, made in conversation with his violent compatriots, were overwhelming in their level of cruelty and brutality. After hearing that seven US troops had died in a helicopter crash, Hafiz stated, “May God kill 50,000 more of them.” And in his quest for the Taliban to create more civilian casualties, Hafiz complained, “Doesn’t one of them have the guts to do a suicide attack, so they can teach them a lesson?”
Post San Bernardino, the only reason anyone could conceive of giving gun training to members of a mosque such as this – with an imam with documented ties to financing terror – is for the congregants to go on the offensive against perceived enemies in the future. This surreal situation shows how far CAIR has infiltrated law enforcement and how the Broward Sheriff’s Office headed by Scott Israel has lost its credibility.
When one looks into the terrorist background of CAIR and sees its local leader, Nezar Hamze, showing Muslims how to use guns, one can understand the necessity of stopping this travesty immediately.
If you are concerned about CAIR providing gun training to MJAM and wish to voice your opinion, you can contact the Miami FBI office by email at Miami@ic.fbi.gov or by phone at 754-703-2000. Please be respectful in any and all communications with this office.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
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