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| Fifth Column |
| Islamic Cultural Center disowns lying Egyptian cleric |
| 2001-10-23 |
Last week we noted that Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, an imam at New York's Islamic Cultural Center, had been quoted as putting forth the conspiracy that the Jews were behind Sept. 11. Now the New York Times has a fascinating account of the backstory. It seems that on Sept. 14 Gemeaha "delivered a sermon in English to an interfaith audience calling for peace, healing and love among people of all religions. Two weeks later, he suddenly moved his family back to Cairo, telling an Arabic-language newspaper that he left because his family had been threatened at their home on the Upper West Side." But Mohammad Abdullah Abulhasan, the United Nations ambassador from Kuwait--which donated two-thirds of the money to build the Islamic Cultural Center--says Gemeaha was never seriously threatened, though Egypt's ambassador says there were telephone threats. Abdulhasan adds that what Gemeaha said about a Jewish conspiracy "does not represent at all the policy and the beliefs of the Islamic Cultural Center, nor what Imam Gemeaha was teaching the Islamic community during his three and a half years here." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |