Via DhimmiWatch
 An imam slated to be sworn in Friday as the second Muslim chaplain in Fire Department history said he questioned whether 19 hijackers were responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and suggested a broader conspiracy may have brought down the Twin Towers and killed more than 2,700 people.
| Just fire the idiot now and get it over with. Isn't everybody tired of that claptrap by now? |
In a telephone interview Thursday, Imam Intikab Habib, 30, a native of Guyana who studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, said he doubted the United States government's official story blaming 19 hijackers associated with al-Quaida and Osama bin Laden. "I as an individual don't know who did the attacks," said Habib, 30, a soft-spoken man who immigrated to New York in July 2000 after spending six years in Saudi Arabia getting a degree in Islamic theology and law. "There are so many conflicting reports about it. I don't believe it was 19 ... hijackers who did those attacks."
| Then you shouldn't be affiliated with the FDNY. Period. Go back to Soddy Arabia. Stay there. Don't come back. |
Asked to elaborate on his reasons for doubting that story, he talked about video and news reports widely disseminated in the Muslim community. "I've heard professionals say that nowhere ever in history did a steel building come down with fire alone," he said. "It takes two or three weeks to demolish a building like that. But it was pulled down in a couple of hours. Was it 19 hijackers who brought it down, or was it a conspiracy?"
| Fire, explosion, and hatred. Now go back to Arabia and don't bother people who aren't nuts. |
Questioned about who he believed was responsible for the attacks, Habib said he didn't know. He said, however, that he did not expect to raise his doubts with rank-and-file firefighters -- nor did he share them two weeks ago when he participated in several Sept. 11 memorials on behalf of the Fire Department. "My position as a chaplain is that whoever did it, it's a tragic incident," he said. "I feel sorrow for the families who lost loved ones and for the firefighters who died in it. Whoever did it, it was a very wrong thing. It's always wrong to take an innocent human life."
A spokesman for the Fire Department, Frank Gribbon, said that Habib was recommended by the department's Islamic Society and was hired "based on his credentials as a religious person. We don't ask new employees about their political views before we hire them." Stephen Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, could not be reached for comment.
| What His Holiness is expressing aren't political views, but a denial of the reality that affected FDNY and cost the lives of too many of its people. If he's too goddamned lazy or illiterate to research the evidence in favor of an attack by 19 krazed killers, which was available within 36 hours of the attacks, then he shouldn't be associated with FDNY. |
Habib's remarks about the attacks came in response to questions about whether he thought firefighters would accept a chaplain who had been educated in Saudi Arabia. He said he did not expect that to be an issue because "I come from a country where you're accustomed to living with people of different ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds."
| What different religious backgrounds? Salafist and non-Salafist? |
When pressed further about whether the hijackers' backgrounds -- 15 of whom were Saudi -- might make his training an issue for still-grieving firefighters, he went on to express his own doubts about the hijacker story.
| That, to me, indicates a mind that doesn't work right. If the question involved him and his involvement with Satan's Kingdom, and he answered another question about 19 other guys, then he either wasn't paying attention or he didn't want to answer the question about himself. Either way, they don't need him. |
Habib was one of several imams recommended for the chaplain's job by the Islamic Society for the Fire Department, as a result of his work teaching junior high students at Al-Ihsan Academy in Ozone Park, a private Islamic school, where he worked for about five years. "He's a good man," said Hakim Braxton, president of the Islamic Society. "Any statements he's made, he's responsible for ... But I would ask that the citizens of this city give him a chance and judge him on his actions."
| His job involves words, not actions. That's what he does for a living. Now, when you talk for a living, generally people expect that what you say makes a sort of sense. |
Braxton also stressed that neither he nor anyone in the Islamic Society would agree with anyone who tried to justify the terror attack in any way. "I lost friends, family, co-workers," he said. Braxton described Habib as a "humble, grounded and family man, which is a good thing in this job, because he's trying to help everyone and he's representing a very diverse community."
| The very diverse community he's representing appears not to believe that Soddy terrorists were responsible for the attack on the WTC. They think it was a conspiracy, maybe by Jews or by the U.S. gummint or by Esquimeaux or Samoans. |
Habib himself said he saw his role as ministering to every member of the Fire Department, not just to Muslims. "Being a chaplain in the Fire Department, I serve the whole Fire Department," he said. Imam resigns as incoming FDNY chaplain after report
September 30, 2005, 12:04 PM EDT: An imam slated to be sworn in today as the second Muslim chaplain in Fire Department history, instead resigned after making controversial remarks on the Sept. 11 attacks in an interview with Newsday. "The Fire Department this morning received the resignation of Imam Intikab Habib from his position of FDNY Chaplain," said FDNY Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta. "Based on comments he made to Newsday, Imam Intikab Habib would have been unable to effectively serve in the role he was appointed to." "I did not want to (resign), but it was best for the department," Habib told NY1 today.
| Was it something I said? I'd like to think so... |
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