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May 27, 2014, "State Department Apologizes for Promoting Muslim Cleric Who Backed Killing of U.S. Soldiers," Washington Free Beacon, Adam Kredo
"The State Department’s Counter
Terrorism (CT) Bureau apologized on Tuesday for promoting a
controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed
Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in
Iraq.
The apology came on the heels of a Friday Washington Free Beacon report detailing
the CT Bureau’s promotion of Sheik Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice
president of a radical Muslim scholars group that was founded by a
radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews
and Americans.”
Bin Bayyah himself is one of several clerics who endorsed a 2004
fatwa, or religious order, endorsing the killing of U.S. soldiers
fighting in Iraq.
The CT Bureau apologized multiple times on Tuesday for tweeting in favor of Bin Bayyah and promoting an article on his website.
“This should not have been tweeted and has since been deleted,” the CT Bureau tweeted at users who expressed anger over the original message.
“It was wrong and should not have been tweeted,” the bureau later tweeted in response to other outraged individuals.
Bin Bayyah has long been a controversial figure and his attendance at
a 2013 meeting at the White House sparked a fury among critics of the
Obama administration.
Bin Bayyah has served as the vice president of the International
Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), which was founded by Muslim Brotherhood
leader “who has called for the death of Jews and Americans and himself
is banned from visiting the U.S.,” according to Fox News.
Bin Bayyah also has “urged the U.N. to criminalize blasphemy,” according to reports, and spoke “out in favor of Hamas,” the terror
group that governs the West Bank. The controversial cleric also took heat for issuing a fatwa in 2009
“barring ‘all forms of normalization’ with Israel,” according to Fox.
The 2004 fatwa allowing for the murder of U.S. troops in Iraq
reportedly stated that “resisting occupation troops” is a “duty” for all
Muslims, according to reports filed at the time.
Terrorism analyst Patrick Poole condemned the State Department’s
tweet last week, stating that it must more carefully vet the Muslim
leaders it promotes.
“This administration is continuing to push extremist clerics like Bin
Bayyah as part of a fantasy foreign policy that somehow they are
somehow a counter to al Qaeda,” Poole said. “But in Bin Bayyah’s case,
it was his organization that issued the fatwa allowing for the killing
of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and said it was a duty for Muslims all over the
world to support the Iraqi ‘resistance’ against the United States that
gave religious justification for al Qaeda’s terrorism.”" via Free Rep.
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