Brief Update: Fort Hood Shooter's Former Imam had Terrorist Ties

Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan Malik was a lifelong Muslim.

"I got the impression that he was a committed soldier," Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan's desire for a wife...

Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.

"We hardly ever got to discussing politics," Khan said. "Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist."

Was Khan doing nothing more than talking to Hassan about his wife hunt?

Faizul Khan is not just some Imam. He is on the board of directors of ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America. ISNA's links to terrorist are extensive and well known.

The Islamic Society of North America is a Wahhabi Islamist group co-created by Sami Al Arian, of the Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Islamic Jihad.

Islam scholar Stephen Schwartz describes ISNA as "one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States."

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, ISNA "is a radical group hiding under a false veneer of moderation"; "convenes annual conferences where Islamist militants have been given a platform to incite violence and promote hatred" (for instance, al Qaeda supporter and PLO official Yusuf Al-Qaradhawi was invited to speak at an ISNA conference); has held fundraisers for terrorists (after Hamas leader Mousa Marzook was arrested and eventually deported in 1997, ISNA raised money for his defense); has condemned the U.S. government's post-9/11 seizure of Hamas' and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's financial assets; and publishes a bi-monthly magazine, Islamic Horizons, that "often champions militant Islamist doctrine."

Adds Emerson: "I think ISNA has been an umbrella, also a promoter of groups that have been involved in terrorism. I am not going to accuse the ISNA of being directly involved in terrorism. I will say ISNA has sponsored extremists, racists, people who call for Jihad against the United States."

Emerson further reports that "In September 2002, a full year after the 9/11 attacks, speakers at ISNA's annual conference still refused to acknowledge Bin Laden's role in the terrorist attacks."

That's who we're playing with here and Faizul Khan is not just a member, he's on the Board of Directors and held down a major Saudi funded mosque in Washington. Khan was also the Administrator and Assistant Director of Rabita, the Muslim World League.

The Muslim World League is one of the larger Saudi funded Islamist groups.

MWL promotes Wahhabism, the extremist form of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. In the 1980s, the League's Pakistan office was run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood and brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. Khalifa was the co-founder of the Benevolence International Foundation and he helped to finance Operation Bojinka, a foiled 1995 plot that would have simultaneously detonated bombs aboard eleven U.S.-bound airliners, blowing them up in mid-flight over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.

In addition, two members of an al Qaeda sleeper cell based in Boston worked at MWL's Pakistan office. One worker, Nabil al-Marabh, number 27 on the FBI's list of wanted terrorists, was arrested by federal agents in Detroit shortly after 9/11; it was reported that he "intended to martyr himself in an attack against the United States." The other operative, Raed Hijazi, was apprehended and tried in Jordan on charges that he planned to blow up a hotel filled with Americans and Israelis on New Year's Eve in 2000.

In his book The Two Faces of Islam, Stephen Schwartz reports: "In 2000, the Muslim World League (a provider of funds to Osama bin Laden) hosted 100 prominent American Islamic personalities on hajj [a pilgrimmage to Mecca]. They were accompanied by a delegation of 60 Latin American 'academics and specialists.' All expenses for the latter were paid by Prince Bandar, Saudi ambassador to the United States."

After all this it's certainly possible that Faizul Khan and Hassan Malik did nothing but chat about Hassan's search for a wife, but considering the overview of the kind of extreme Wahhabi groups we're dealing with here, it is entirely possible that Imams like Khan helped shape Hassan Malik's radical Islamist worldview. Especially since it dates back to his time in Maryland, rather than being the product of army frustrations, as the media spin is attempting to portray it as.

Nidal Hassan had written online

Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.

One wonders who exactly those scholars were.