Democratic Convention hosts imam from extremist institution

(JNS) The Democratic National Convention hosted an imam from an Islamic extremist institution on Sunday, August 16. Noman Hussain, imam of ISM Brookfield in Wisconsin, was one of the religious leaders who took part in the convention’s “Interfaith Welcome Service.” Hussain is a scholar at the Texas-based Qalam Institute, whose officials have advocated “the use of female sex slaves, the killing of adulterers, and incite hatred against Jews and other non-Muslims,” according to the Middle East Forum. One of the Qalam Institute’s courses, “The Prophetic Code,” warns Muslims to strive for “cleanliness” and “purity,” so that they “do not resemble the Jews.”

The Democratic National Convention did not respond to a request for comment about Hussain’s affiliation with the Qalam Institute. In 2012, Hussain shared a cartoon of an Israeli soldier appearing innocent on TV without it showing the soldier mercilessly shooting people in Gaza.

Middle East analyst and human-rights lawyer Irina Tsukerman told JNS that the Democratic National Convention’s inclusion of Hussain was “extremely troubling.”

“This reflects the concerning and growing trend within the Democratic Party to equate Islamists with Muslims, who are generally deplatformed, silenced, intimidated or targeted by pro-Muslim Brotherhood organizations, and to present these fringe elements as the mainstream in Islam, perpetuating ugly stereotypes about Muslim communities and promoting and fostering radicals, which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle,” she said.

“This also raises questions about the Democratic Party’s willingness to pander to hateful groups and to excuse extremist ideologies, instead of seeking out and building relationships to those preachers and imams in the Muslim world who have a record of opposing this hateful political ideology, which uses religion as a tool of subversion,” she continued.

Biden disavows Linda Sarsour after she speaks at a convention forum

(JTA) – Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, disavowed Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour after she appeared at an online meeting of Muslims who will be campaigning for Biden for president.

“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of antisemitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform,” Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday, August 18 to CNN, referring to Sarsour’s embrace of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. “She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.

Sarsour had appeared that afternoon at the Democratic National Committee Muslims and Allies virtual assembly. Republicans immediately seized on the appearance, with party officials posting a few seconds on social media.

“If Linda Sarsour is the face of the Democrat Party, then the Democrat Party has truly become the party of antisemitism and too toxic for American Jews,” the Republican Jewish Coalition said.

Sarsour, who was a surrogate for Biden’s primaries rival Bernie Sanders, has been embroiled in multiple controversies over her activism related to Israel, including statements seen as crossing the line into antisemitism. Last year she attempted to walk back a recorded statement in which she lambasted progressive Zionists as embracing Jewish supremacy.

“How can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else,” Sarsour said at an event. She later said that she was referring specifically to Israel’s recent nation-state law.

Biden closes convention the way he launched his campaign: Repudiating antisemitism

By Ron Kampeas

(JTA) – Joe Biden closed the Democratic National Convention the way he launched his campaign in April of last year: By invoking what he depicted as President Donald Trump’s callousness to racism and antisemitism.

Biden, speaking late Thursday night to the convention made virtual because of the coronavirus pandemic, recalled the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“Remember seeing those neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists come in in a field with lighted torches veins bulging spewing the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the 30s,” he said to viewers. “Remember what the president said when asked, he said there were quote, very fine people on both sides. It was a wake-up call for us as a country. And for me, a call to action. At that moment I knew I’d have to run.”

Trump, speaking in 2017 days after one of the neo-Nazi marchers killed one counter-protester and wounded others by driving his car into a group of people, said there were “very fine people” in both opposing camps of the rally. In the same remarks he also condemned neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but critics saw his comments as condoning the protesters’ racist message.

Biden launched his campaign in April 2019 in a video with footage from Charlottesville, saying Trump spurred the bigotry that fueled the violence, and the event was one of Biden’s first references in his acceptance speech Thursday night.

“We can choose a path to becoming angry, less hopeful more divided, a path of shadow and suspicion, or, or we can choose a different path and together, take this chance to heal to reform to unite a path of hope and light,” Biden said.

Multiple other convention speakers also invoked Charlottesville.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also explicitly invoked antisemitism as a threat.

“Over these past few years, America’s body politic has been weakened,” Cuomo said. “The divisions have been growing deeper: the antisemitism; the anti-Latino, the anti-immigrant fervor; the racism in Charlottesville, where the KKK didn’t even bother to wear their hoods.”

The theme featured large in multiple Jewish events around the convention, including at a meeting Tuesday of “Jewish Americans for Biden,” a group convened by Matt Nosanchuk, the Democratic National Committee’s Jewish outreach director.

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, who is Jewish, referred to Trump’s equivocations after the violence in Charlottesville.

“We were not surprised to see the white supremacy or antisemites here in America, but we were shocked to see that the President of the United States gave credibility to white supremacy, to the antisemites,” he said. “It was not an isolated example. He’s done that over and over again. There’s a direct correlation between the president giving rise to nationalism, and the rise of antisemitism.”

Biden has said in a campaign message to the Jewish community posted on his website that he would restore funding, cut by Trump, that tracks domestic extremism, priori-tize the prosecution of hate crimes and “Lead a comprehensive approach to battling anti-Semitism that takes seriously both the violence that accompanies it and the hateful and dangerous lies that underlie it.”