Sawsan Jaber, Dept Chair of English at Maine West, to speak at Extremist Conference organized by groups with ties to Islamist orgs Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e Islami- the MAS-ICNA Conference
Jaber is speaking at the MAS-ICNA Conference this weekend, at a panel hosted by American Muslims for Palestine, where she calls Israelis oppressors and colonizers
Sawsan Jaber will be speaking at the American Muslims for Palestine panel during the MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society - Islamic Circle of North America) conference this Saturday. The MAS-ICNA convention is billed as the largest in North America, with over 30 000 attendees in 2022.
Her bio for the event proudly displays her affiliation with Maine West High School. Jaber is current Department Chair of the English Dept. at Maine West.
“Dr. Jaber is currently a high school English Department Chair, District Equity Leader, and teacher at Maine West High School in Park Ridge, Il….However, her favorite work is being an Activist Scholar and co-conspirator for justice alongside her students.”
As a reminder, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is under investigation for terror financing and instigating violence and riots post-October 7th.
Jaber spoke at the AMP conference in November and is affiliated with AMP’s branch in Chicago.
MAS was founded as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America. Its co-founder, Jamal Balawi, is “listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial for providing material support to Hamas.”
ICNA is the North American branch of the Islamist group Jamaat e-Islami. Here are just some links of ICNA to Jamaat e-Islami:
A 1996 article published in ICNA’s own publication, The Message International, states that: “Using the organizational development methodology of Maulana Mawdudi [the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami] and the Jamaat Al-Islami of Pakistan, which lays special emphasis on spiritual development, ICNA has developed a strong foundation.
Mohammed Naseen, the former head of ICNA’s Tarbiyah Program and a member of its Shura Council, is openly named by ICNA as a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami branch in Lucknow, and a “member of the Central Shura of Jamaat Islami Hind” (Jamaat-e-Islami’s national Indian branch).
After the 1971 Liberation War, in which Jamaat-e-Islami fighters helped the Pakistani army murder Bangladeshi independence activists, a Jamaat-e-Islami operative named Ashrafuzzaman Khan fled to the U.S. and helped develop ICNA, eventually becoming its Vice-President. Testimony and evidence during Bangladeshi War Crimes Tribunals revealed that Khan served as the “chief executor” of a Jamaat killing squad named Al-Badr.
Mohsin Ansari, the chairman of ICNA’s foreign aid charity, Helping Hand for Relief and Development, and the former chairman of ICNA Relief, ICNA’s domestic charity, openly identifies as a JI member. He is an alumnus of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami’s branch in Pakistan. Today he runs a “networking” group for its graduates in the United States. Ansari refers to convicted Jamaat-e-Islami war criminal as “heroes” whom the “Pakistani nation will remember... for centuries to come.”
Zahid Bukhari, the Executive Director of ICNA’s Council for Social Justice, openly identifies as a Jamaat-e-Islami support on social media.
ICNA is a partner and funder of the Al Khidmat Foundation, the official “welfare arm” of Jamaat in Pakistan, which openly funds designated terrorist movements such as Hamas. ICNA openly acknowledges its long-standing partnership with Al Khidmat on its website.
ICNA’s international aid charity, Helping Hand for Relief and Development also works with Al Khidmat in Pakistan. According to the Indian BBC journalist Subir Bhaumik, Al-Khidmat “aids militancy and helps to support the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, Jamaat’s armed wing and other groups.”
The Rural Education and Development (READ) Foundation is another Jamaat-e-Islami charity in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, which ICNA and its various sister organizations describe as their “partner.” READ’s social-media posts include a homage to Mumtaz Qadri, an Islamic extremist who, in 2011, murdered Punjab governor Salman Taseer in retribution for Taseer’s public support for a Pakistani Christian woman convicted of blasphemy. Other READ posts include text denouncing the “American Secular Terrorists . . . dirty people” who “destroyed Iraq and killed 150,000 Iraqis” on the “instructions of Iran.”
ICNA’s Helping Hand for Relief and Development is also a partner of the Ghazali Education Trust, another official Jamaat charity.
And so you can imagine that what with AMP, MAS and ICNA’s links to Islamism and terror organizations, Jaber will be keeping interesting company during the conference.
Here is just a small sample of the extremists with whom Jaber will be sharing space:
MAS-ICNA favorite Omar Suleiman will be at the convention.
Suleiman paints himself as a moderate but his words and actions belie that image:
“While Suleiman is widely praised as a moderate Muslim leader, photos published on the imam’s Facebook page show him embracing Zakir Naik, a leading Indian Islamist televangelist and accused terror recruiter.
Naik lives in exile in Malaysia. He has declared that “every Muslim should be a terrorist” and has expressed praise for Osama Bin Laden, claiming to be ideologically “with him.”
Naik is the subject of an extradition request by Indian authorities on charges of money laundering and allegations of terrorism links. Law enforcement blame Naik’s preaching for the radicalization of hundreds of jihadist recruits.
Because of his extremism, Naik is banned from entering a number of Western countries, including the UK and Canada.
Suleiman: “I enjoyed visiting our dear Dr. Zakir Naik (Hafidhahullah) in Malaysia in his home and benefiting from him as always Al Hamdulilah. May Allah protect him.”
Nonetheless, Suleiman wrote: “I enjoyed visiting our dear Dr. Zakir Naik (Hafidhahullah) in Malaysia in his home and benefiting from him as always Al Hamdulilah. May Allah protect him and reward him for his relentless dedication to Deen. Ameen.”
A second photo published by Suleiman shows him warmly greeting Zoubir Bouchikhi, who, Suleiman writes, attended his wedding in Louisiana some 15 years ago.
Bouchikhi preached in 2020 that non-Muslims are “The worst of Allah’s creations, even lower than animals” and advised Muslims to renounce family members who are not sufficiently observant.
That same year, Bouchikhi declared that women may not refuse their husband’s advances.”
Suleiman supports BDS and has frequently demonized Israel, accusing it of apartheid and genocide.
Who else is appearing at the conference?
Mohammed Elshinawy : Director of Systematic Theology at Suleiman’s Yaqeen Institute, Elshinawy had previously been under NYPD investigation for support for “violent jihad.”
“The NYPD's investigation of Plaintiff Mohammad Elshinawy is based on information that he has made statements and conducted activities in support of violent jihad. ln 2005, Elshinawy led a paintball trip with members of NYC-based Muslim Student Associations which he characterized as training for jihad. ln 2006 an individual with direct access to Elshinawy described him as becoming radicalized, spending hours on Islamic websites downloading the most extreme parts of speeches by radical clerics. In 2008, Elshinawy helped organize a camping trip in New Jersey in which participants engaged in martial arts, physical training, and agility drills such as tying long ropes between trees in a webbed formation under which to crawl or between which to run, and forcing one another underwater in a swimming pool for extended periods of time. Campground staff voiced their concern to the NYPD about these activities, which they described as secretive and highly unusual. In his public lectures, including at Masjid At Taqwa, Elshinawy made statements encouraging attendees to follow in the footsteps of Muslims who died while participating in violent jihad against non-Muslims.
According to media reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigated Elshinawy for his possible role recruiting others to travel overseas to train or fight alongside extremist elements. Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, Agron Hasbajrami, Carlos Almonte, and Mohammed Alessa, all mentioned above, attended Elshinawy's lectures at Masjid Al Ansar and elsewhere.
Elshinawy's status as a suspected sanctioner of violent extremism is strengthened by his familial ties to terrorism. Elshinawy's father Ali Elshinawy was a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman and a fellow member of Gamaa Islamiyya-a US Government-designated terrorist organization. Ali Elshinawy and Osama Elshinawy, an older brother of Mohammad Elshinawy, were both named by the US Attomey for the Southern District of New York as unindicted coconspirators in the Landmarks Plot.”
Akram Kassab: Former secretary to extremist cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi endorsed suicide bombings and killing Jews . Kassab has echoed his former boss’s statements:
"Palestine is Al Quds [Jerusalem] and Jerusalem is Al Aqsa Mosque," speaker Akram Kassab claimed at an Oct. 1 workshop, "Palestine: The Growth & Future of Our Cause." He quoted his former boss, extremist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi: "What would Palestine mean if it has no Jerusalem or Aqsa Mosque? Palestine without Jerusalem is like a body without a head."
In 2010, Kassab took part in the Mavi Marmara flotilla to Gaza in which those aboard the flotilla attacked Israeli forces.
“A Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center report on the Mavi Marmara incident describes Kassab as someone "[e]xtremely hostile to Israel and [who] gives fiery speeches."
The report quotes Kassab justifying his participation in the flotilla: "In my opinion, the role of theologians is not to limit themselves to studies and education and fatwas, and their field of action is not limited to the mosques and study groups, and their weapons are not limited to pens and sheets of paper. What must be emphasized is their role in everything linked to jihad, and they have to leave their mosque pulpits and mihrabs (depressions in mosques pointing to Mecca] [sic] for the battle zones and leave their pens and papers for shells and gunpowder."“
In 2012, Kattab praised Hamas :
"They didn't live in ivory towers, leaving their people to starve and suffer from despair and deprivation," he wrote. "But they meet bullets with their bare chests and they would starve as their people do, and exert efforts as their people do." He also lauded both "martyred" and living Hamas leaders such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Said Siam, Mahmoud al-Zahar, Sami Abu-Zuhri "[who] have given up their sons [and family] to martyrdom."
Nihad Awad: Executive Director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR). CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial).
Awad has publicly expressed support for Hamas.
At an American Muslims for Palestine event following October 7th, 2023, Awad claimed he was “happy” to see “people…walk free into Israel” and that Israel had no right to self-defense.
“Awad’s statements were no momentary lapse, but an expression of an agenda he has pursued since co-founding CAIR in 1994. Awad established the organization after meeting with Hamas members in a Philadelphia hotel room in 1993. During the meeting, which was recorded by the FBI, Awad told his Hamas allies of his desire to portray the Islamist effort to destroy Israel as part of a liberationist campaign palatable to progressives in the United States. Awad agreed with a recommendation from a Hamas representative to speak in support of “restor[ing] the ’48 land.” Awad said he would “address people according to their minds.” In other words, he would talk explicitly about Israel’s destruction with Palestinian partisans and speak of liberation with American progressives.
Already in 1994, however, Awad declared that “I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.” In 2022, Awad eulogized Muslim Brotherhood theorist and inveterate antisemite Yusef Qaradawi as “the most prominent and consequential scholar of Islam of our time.” In sum, Awad is no civil rights activist, but a shill for a genocidal terrorist organization.”
“Within hours of Hamas’s attack and taking of hostages, Nihad Awad, co-founder and executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), tweeted in Arabic, “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, October 8, and every day, in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime.” The Hamas charter rejects peace “initiatives” and “so-called peaceful solutions,” saying that “there is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
Hatem Bazian: Founder of Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine.
And of course - Jaber’s co-panelist for her event, Tarek Khalil. They will be discussing “The Palestinian Relationship with Zionism. How Did we Get Here?
Khalil was a member of SJP and now is the Education Coordinator and Board Member with AMP-Chicago.
In 2016, he appeared in an AMP fundraising video (at 1:50) claiming that “The Judaization and Zionization of Palestine continues.”
Jaber, using her credentials as an employee of Maine West, and Khalil will be discussing how to educate Americans about Palestine:
“To learn the story of the oppressed, you must have a comprehensive understanding of their oppressor.
This session will explore that oppressor/oppressed, colonized/colonizer relationship..”
The theme for this year’s convention is “breaking chains and driving change”
A “liberated and inclusive society” which keeps “boys and girls separated” at all times.
The conference has many sessions focused on advocacy and leveraging community organizations in political advocacy. Here’s a taste of what else is on offer at the conference:
“The people of Gaza show it best: seeking Paradise is worth every sacrifice and every price that needs to be paid.”
“Genderism, sexualism, liberalism etc. All these isms have been propagated by the west…we no longer will accept being shackled by these isms.”
This session is being run by Tasneem Alkiek, a lecturer Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Rutgers University-Camden, and Tom Facchine, the Research Director of Islam and Society at Omar Suleiman’s Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research
“The twin phenomenons of “Muslim Zionism” and scandals involving religious leaders evoke important questions around accountability and transparency.”
For a full list of the program and speakers, see here.
Once again, the Chair of the English Department at Maine West High School surrounds herself with extremists and activists - Jaber herself is unapologetically characterizing an entire people as oppressors and colonizers. Imagine being a Jewish or Israeli student in her classroom…