Protecting The Radical, Anti-Christian, Muslim Community ...
More Government Cover-Up / Media Bias ...
What the AP conveniently ignored, however, was the F.B.I.'s knowledge of suspected radical activity in northern New Jersey's Muslim community ... Yet no one was ever charged or arrested.
When a family of Egyptian immigrants was murdered in Jersey City [New Jersey] recently, the media's response was to wring its hands about anti-Muslim bias. But the truth is more complicated, and reveals the media's own bias -- against America.
Anti-Muslim bias had nothing to do with the killing of the Armanious family; they were Coptic Christians. It wasn't the religion of the victims that concerned the press; it was the religion of the suspected murderers.
Over the weekend, the Associated Press wrote of the "dirty looks and shouted slurs" directed at Muslims in Jersey City following the slaughter of an Egyptian Christian man, his wife, and two young daughters, which many reports attribute to local radical Islamists upset about something the man wrote in an Internet chat room.
The AP followed in predictable fashion:
The strife is particularly distressing in light of efforts the area's Muslim community made to reach out to other faiths and strengthen ties after the 9/11 attacks.
What the AP conveniently ignored, however, was known and suspected radical activity in northern New Jersey's Muslim community.
The former imam at the El Tawheed Islamic Center of Jersey City, Alaa Al-Sadawi, was convicted in July 2003 of attempting to smuggle more than $650,000 in cash to the terrorist Global Relief Fund in Egypt in April 2002.
One of Al-Sadawi's former mosque-goers was convicted last March of murdering in the name of Islam. Alim Hassan, then 31, killed his pregnant wife, her mother, and her sister on July 30, 2002. He reportedly stabbed the women more than 20 times each because they refused to convert to Islam. According to reports, Hassan prayed regularly at El-Tawheed.
Al-Sadawi and Hassan were hardly the first Muslims in the area, though, to appear on authorities' radar.
Mohamed El-Mezain , the former imam at the nearby Islamic Center of Passaic County, which has close relations with El-Tawheed, worked with the Paterson-based mosque to raise funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s, according to an FBI memo drafted in November 2001 by the FBI's assistant director of counterterrorism Dale Watson. El-Mezain, who is no longer affiliated with the Islamic Center, was never charged or arrested.
The FBI document, which served as the basis for the U.S. government shutting down the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in December 2001, cited a "reliable" source in noting that "during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain, the HLFRD's current Director of Endowments and former Chairman of the HLFRD Board, admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to Hamas or Hamas activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended Hamas and the activities carried out by Hamas."
El-Mezain also openly raised funds for Hamas, according to the FBI memo. After a speech at a Muslim rally in Southern California in the mid-90's in which the keynote speaker urged attendees to "exterminate" and "finish off the Israelis," El-Mezain asked for contributions and told the crowd that $1.8 million had been raised for Hamas in 1994 alone, according to the memo.
Radicalism at ICPC hardly seems to have subsided. The mosque in February 2003 hosted a lecture by Abdelhaleem Ashqar, long after he was identified by the FBI memo as a prominent Hamas figure.
Investigators in Jersey City have yet to announce the motive for the murder of the Armanious family. But if it turns out that the murder or murders were religiously-motivated Muslims, with whom will the media sympathize: those grieving for the victims or those who attend the same hate-filled mosques as the murderers? Is there any doubt?
©2005 Joel Mowbray
Contact Joel Mowbray | Read Mowbray's biography
Comment from Jihad Watch
An informed source close to the investigation of the murders of the Coptic family in New Jersey has given me some more information:
The police and prosecutor are "very scared" of this case. The Muslim community in Jersey City is putting enormous pressure on City Hall to softpedal the case. Says my source: "They [police and prosecutor] want this case to go away quickly because of that."
Both press and prosecutor are hampered by general ignorance of Islamic teaching on proselytizing and conversion, and of how jihadists operate.
Of course, my problem with the police and prosecutor's reaction is that if this really was a Sharia-inspired killing, they are opening the door to more of the same if they do not handle this case carefully and thoroughly.
My source went to the Armanious house after the murders. The house does not appear to be of a wealthy family, and does not stand out in the poor neighborhood where it is located; this makes it more difficult to sustain the notion that the primary motive was robbery. My source saw that there was no sign of forced entry.
There are indications that Sylvia, the 15-year-old, innocently let one of the perpetrators know where she lived.
Comment from Gary Bauer's American Values
Falwell in particular is taking it on the chin. News articles in recent days have accused him of causing Muslim riots in India, a bigger vote in Pakistan for radical Islamic political parties and a backlash against the U.S. in other Muslim nations.
My response: Hogwash! The statements made by all of these Christian leaders are mild compared to the vicious hate rhetoric that is used in thousands of mosques and religious schools across the Middle East, including the West Bank, Africa and Asia.
Muslim children by the tens of thousands are being taught that Jews are monkeys, i.e., sub human, and that Allah, through his prophet Mohammad, demands the blood of infidels, i.e., you and me!
When Muslim Palestinian suicide bombers kill innocent Israeli civilians, the knee-jerk reaction in the media and among some apologists for radical Islam is to blame the policies of Ariel Sharon or Israeli settlements or you just fill in the blank. When planes crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers, the apologists said it was the fault of U.S. foreign policy. Now when mobs fill the streets of India or bombs go off in Indonesia, we are supposed to believe it is Jerry Falwell's fault.
Jerry Falwell isn't the problem. Jihadism is. Moreover, it is precisely this kind of radical/murderous/suicidal behavior that proves his point.
How much longer must we wait to hear "moderate" Muslim leaders say to these satanic killers, "Not in our name"? I challenge our media elites: Take a look at what is being promoted by many Islamic leaders around the world and then answer the question, "Who is spreading hate?"
Comment from AgapePress
Is the Media Downplaying Possible Muslim Connection to New Jersey Murders?
By Chad Groening and Jody Brown February 2, 2005
The bodies of a Coptic Christian family were found in their New Jersey home on January 14. Hossam Armanious, an immigrant from Egypt, his wife and their two daughters had been bound and gagged, and their throats slashed. While authorities have not determined if the murders are tied to Islamic radicals, they do report that Armanious had received a death threat from a Muslim through the Internet chat room known as barsomyat.com. The family had reportedly received threats not to speak out against Islam on the Internet chat room.
Before being shut down by the company hosting it, the website reportedly featured photographs of the Coptic Christian couple, referring to the husband as a "filthy dog" and Amal Garas as "his filthy wife," says the New York Sun. That newspaper quotes one website member writing that "they got what they deserved for their actions in America."
According to various news reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the website. And WorldNetDaily reports that, according to eyewitnesses who saw the bodies at the funeral home, the injuries to the victims' throats are consistent with the executions by radical Islamists shown on the Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera.
Victor Mordecai is an Israeli Middle East expert whose wife is Egyptian. He says the New Jersey family paid the price for telling the truth.
"When you say [something critical] to a Moslem, he's going to slit your throat -- and that's what the Moslems said to [the Armanious family] on the Internet," Mordecai says. "He said if you keep talking like this in the [Internet] chat rooms, we're going to slaughter you like how chickens are slaughtered -- meaning with their throats slit. And that's exactly what happened to this poor family in New Jersey."
Mordecai says even though many Coptic Christians have fled the persecution of the Islamic majority in Egypt and have immigrated to America, the persecution does not stop.
"[T]he persecution doesn't end because they are in contact [with Muslims], usually at workplaces every day, and the Moslems are relentless," he says. "They will not allow a Coptic Christian even to be a Christian in America, even though this is the United States of America. In other words, the bottom line of the Moslems is to convert everyone to Islam."
And there is another aspect of the brutal murder that deeply bothers the Middle East expert.
"What really, really aggravates me is that the media will focus on O.J. Simpson and his case for two years [and] it will focus on Laci Peterson," he notes, "but when you have Moslems doing the slitting of the throats and killing, then nobody wants to talk about it because it's not politically correct."
According to WorldNetDaily, earlier reports of the family's jewelry being taken by their assailants were false, thereby discounting the possibility that robbery was a motive in the killings. Associated Press says one of the motives being considered is "religious animosity."
© 2005 AgapePress all rights reserved.
Comment from Tom Troncone / NorthJersey.Com
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
By TOM TRONCONE STAFF WRITER / NorthJersey.Com
The FBI is investigating a radical Islamic Web site that posted photos and information about people who use an Internet chat room frequented by a Jersey City man whose family was murdered Jan. 14.
The Web site, barsomyat.com, contained detailed information about some users of the PalTalk.com chat service whom the site's members accuse of being outspoken critics of Islam, according to published reports.
An FBI spokesman confirmed Monday that federal investigators are probing whether the site - which is run by a Jordanian - played any role in the murders of Hossam Armanious, 47, his wife, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8. The family was discovered bound and stabbed to death in their Jersey City Heights home.
Hossam Armanious was an active participant in PalTalk.com discussions, using the nickname "I Love Jesus," according to friends. Armanious, a Coptic Orthodox Christian from Egypt, would often engage in heated debates with Muslims in the site's religious chat rooms, and family members have speculated that the murders stemmed from these discussions and his attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.
"We are aware of that site, and we are looking at it," FBI spokesman John Conway said. "It's an interesting site to say the least. ... It's unknown to anybody right now what credence to put into this."
It also is not known whether any photos of Hossam Armanious or other personal information were posted on the site prior to the murders. Users of the PalTalk service communicate via instant messaging, voice and, often, Web cams. Members of the barsomyat.com site apparently scanned the chat rooms to identify opponents.
The information was then posted with photos of the person. In one case, according to The New York Sun, a barsomyat.com post about a Christian man included his PalTalk nickname, photograph, real name and the city in which he lives, all hacked from his home computer.
Before the site was taken down Monday by its Minnesota hosting company, it contained photos of Hossam Armanious and Amal Garas. It called Armanious a "filthy dog" and Garas "his filthy wife," according to the paper. A screenshot of barsomyat.com was posted on another Web site, Jihadwatch.com.
"They were slaughtered along with their children as a punishment from the heavens to those who curse the most divine of all who were created," one member of barsomyat.com is quoted as writing.
Several Muslim community leaders said on Monday that they were unaware of the existence of the Web site and denounced it when told about the content.
"It is very sick," said Mohamed El Filali, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Passaic County. "Nobody should be harmed because of a person's opinion."
Authorities have not zeroed in on a motive in the quadruple homicide. Several possibilities exist, including a financial motive or a vendetta from the family's Egyptian homeland.
Each family member's bound body was found in a different room of the Oakland Avenue home. Each bled to death from stab wounds to the neck and had other knife wounds.
Money was taken from Armanious' wallet, Garas' purse had been emptied, and someone had rifled through drawers. However, a "significant" amount of jewelry was left untouched, authorities said.
The absence of money in the home and the presence of jewelry have sparked debate about a possible robbery gone bad. There was no forced entry into the home. And no religious symbols were desecrated, including tattoos each Armanious family member had on his or her wrists.
Conway, a violent crimes investigator, said the FBI is "heavily involved" in the Armanious investigation and has been looking into the PalTalk connection since early in the investigation.
He acknowledged it was "hard to imagine anything else but the murders being fueled by a dispute," but said agents were exploring the gamut of possibilities.
Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said he was not familiar with the site, but that his investigators working with the FBI were likely aware of it.
He said the key factor in determining whether the site played a role in the killings would be pinpointing when information about Armanious was posted.
"If it was posted after the homicide, that makes the whole issue somewhat moot," DeFazio said. "But if it was posted prior to the homicide it would give it some more credence."
DeFazio said that without any definitive connection to any violence, the postings on the site are just words.
"There is a lot of hate talk that is propagated that is not dispositive of the motive," DeFazio said. "This site has not been the only site indicating they support what happened to this family."
The site was registered on Nov. 7 to VizaWeb Inc., a hosting company in Woodbury, Minn. Rick Mueller, one of the owners of VizaWeb, would not release the name of his customer, other than to say it was a person living in Jordan.
Mueller removed the site soon after learning of its content. The banner on the site while it was active showed a lamb with its throat being slit and a cross with a red "X" through it.
"We started hearing about this [Monday]," he said. "We took the site off-line as we look into the content. If what we are hearing is true, we will not put it back up. ... We obviously do not support its content."
FBI and Hudson County investigators are examining the bedroom computer of Sylvia and Monica, which prosecutors said was the only computer in the modest two-family home.
Comment from JihadWatch.Org
A close friend of Hossam Armanious and relatives of the family murdered in New Jersey have revealed the following:
Shortly after the murders, members of the Egyptian consulate went to visit the family to encourage them to keep quiet. And many family members have obeyed, saying nothing to reporters or anyone else. However, two family members and another Copt viewed the bodies at the funeral home. One of these eyewitnesses said that he clearly saw that the family members had not suffered "stab wounds to the throat," as the prosecutor's report states, but rather the following:
A. Both adults, Hossam and Amal, had a horizontal slit across the throat. Below the slit, on the left, right and middle of the throat were three holes, big enough so that one could place a finger in each hole. According to the eyewitness, it was as if the assailant(s) took a knife and turned it repeatedly in a circular fashion, as if to screw holes into the victims' necks.
B. The two young girls, Sylvia (15) and Monica (8), also had a horizontal slits in their throats, along with two holes bored below the slits, one on the right and one on the left sides of their necks. The holes were similar to those on their parents' necks.
C. The eyewitness said although the bodies of the victims were all covered, he was able to see the arms of the little girl Monica. Although the tattoo of the cross inside Monica's wrist was not defaced, he saw that her wrists were cut. He was not able to see the wrists of the other victims to see if the crosses on their wrists were defaced.
D. Though the family wants to reserve judgment until the results of the case are released, they did say that the way the four family members were bound and gagged and the way their throats were slit with holes carved is similar to executions that are shown on al-Jazeera. The American public is not aware of this because the details of the executions are not often described in news accounts.
Amal Garas's father said that (contrary to many news reports and CAIR's press release) none of the family's jewelry was taken, and that Amal owned some quite expensive pieces that were not touched. At the time of her murder, Amal was wearing a ring worth $3,500 that was not taken.
Garas's father also has been speaking with the detectives and the prosecutor on the case. He was told that the results of the autopsy would not be ready until March 14. However, an inside source in one of New Jersey's police departments said that the results of autopsy and toxicology reports are known within 48 hours after the bodies are discovered. This source has worked on such cases for many years. He said that the department knows the results, but as in similar cases intends to wait a month or two before they release them to the family. During that time long reports are written to cross the t's and dot the i's for the family, but the final results are not much different from what is discovered within the first 48 hours. So all of the press reports about waiting for the prosecutor's findings on the autopsies are nonsense. Though the investigators are looking at Sylvia's computer and other evidence, the findings on the autopsy for the most part are already in.
A reporter who is closely following this case said that this delay was because the police and prosecutor want this case to go away. They want things to cool down. That's why they set the autopsy date as March 14, two months after the murders.
It is still possible that this wasn't a Muslim hate crime. The problem is that investigators have not taken the necessary steps to ensure a fair review of the evidence. There are too many holes here, too many inconsistencies in the official story. Too many obvious tasks have not been done: an Armanious family friend with whom I spoke, who gave me names and motives of possible perpetrators, is still waiting for a call from investigators.
Investigators seem to be following dead ends more assiduously than live leads. A Muslim has told police in Jersey City that there is an Islamic custom in Egypt: a life for a life. He said that is what may have happened in this case. Some news reports are referring to this when they say they're looking into the family's activities in Egypt before they came to the U.S. in 1997. Said prosecutor Edward DeFazio, "It could be that it's a vendetta that might go back to the old country. We're going to try to look into that." However, those close to Hossam Armanious maintain that he didn't have any enemies, and certainly never took anyone's life in Egypt or here; nor did anyone in his family.
This background information may illuminate why this investigation has been so curiously lacking:
There are a number of clergy in the Coptic community who are in bed with the Egyptian government. Some even act as agents for the Mubarak regime. Coptic clergy who won't cooperate are often exiled into the Egyptian desert, where they live a very difficult life.
Many Coptic women have been kidnapped by Muslims. Some of these women are being kidnapped with the help of the compromised clergy. The priest hears a girl's confession and then passes on information he hears there to Muslim kidnappers, who decide which girls they want to take. Many of these women are forced to marry Muslim men and are never seen again.
A number of Muslims have infiltrated the Coptic community, pretending to be Christians in order to gather information. Jersey City has a large number of Copts. Some of this infiltration has taken place there; some of the Coptic clergy there are also compromised. However, most Copts trust their clergy wholeheartedly, making it easy for the moles to operate.
What do those compromised clergymen want? The answer possibly has to do with a fact revealed by a number of other sources, including one within a New Jersey police department: the Egyptian government is pressuring the police and prosecutor to make this case disappear. Where are the mainstream media reporters contacting the Egyptian consulate to find out whether or not this is true?
Comment from Gary Bauer's American Values
A new 89-page report by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom on the involvement of the Saudi Arabian government in promoting hate in the United States - yes, right here at home - is causing quite a stir among Washington policy makers. The report examined over two hundred mosques in the U.S. All of the documents were "disseminated, published or otherwise generated" by the government of Saudi Arabia. What researchers found in document after document was a virulent Wahhabi ideology that promotes hatred and bigotry.
The documents teach Muslims that it is their duty to hate Christians and Jews; they denounce democracy as un-Islamic; and argue that it is a Muslim's duty to eliminate the nation of Israel. And this putrid brew of hate is readily available in mosques and Islamic centers around the country - courtesy of our Saudi "ally."
By the way, here is an encouraging note. The study was undertaken after many U.S. Muslims requested the Center for Religious Freedom's help in exposing the extremist agenda being subsidized by the Saudi government. (You can get more information by visiting http://www.freedomhouse.org, then click on the link for Center for Religious Freedom.)
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