America’s favorite imam has been caught once again voicing support for known violent extremists. Omar Suleiman, founder and president of the Yaqeen Institute, recently cheered on Facebook, “It seems Sh. Ali may finally have a chance at justice, and his family will get him back in the mean time inshaAllah [God willing].”
“Sh. Ali” is Ali Al-Tamimi. In 2005, he was convicted for “soliciting and engaging others to levy war against the United States and attempting to contribute services to the Taliban.” Before his release, he had been serving a 70 year sentence without parole.
According to testimony by several jihadists, Al-Tamimi also convinced members of a terror cell to travel to Pakistan to “obtain training for jihad” with the designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Further, Al-Tamimi once called for the beheading of Shi’a Muslims, noting, "[I]f we were in an Islamic state... their [Shi’ites’] heads should be, you know, lopped off, that’s what, you know, should be done to these people. They deserve nothing better than to just cut their necks, if we were in an Islamic country... that’s what these people deserve.”
Unsurprisingly, Al-Tamimi has also glorified the use of violence against Americans, declaring “mujahideen killed while fighting Americans in Afghanistan would die as martyrs.”
Suleiman styles himself as a civil rights activist. He protested the Fourth of July celebrations in 2019, for example, claiming that his sympathies truly rested with the innocent victims of America’s incarceration system. Hence, he declared, “Freedom cannot be invoked when we have the largest incarcerated population in the world, and children being locked up in cages.”
This sort of rhetoric has helped Suleiman amass quite a following, collecting 1.5 million fans for the cleric on Facebook. Yet as indicated by his sympathies for Al-Tamimi, Suleiman is anything but progressive – defending convicts who call for beheadings, groom jihadists, and endorse violence against Americans.
Not content with lauding one notorious terror operative, Suleiman’s progressivism faltered again on August 11 when he also called for Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin’s release, despite Al-Amin serving a life sentence without parole for shooting two officers, killing one. “Al hamdulila [praised be the Lord],” Suleiman wrote, “This morning I posted about Imam Jamil and the crimes he was falsely accused of.”
Suleiman has long alleged conspiracy in Al-Amin’s case. He notes, “Far too often, our political prisoners are abandoned out of fear of being associated with the crimes they’ve been unjustly framed with. Imam Jamil (formerly H Rap Brown) is one of those prisoners. We have a confession of a man, Otis Jackson, who committed the murder he has been framed with on record.”
If we’re to believe the Al-Amin was indeed “framed,” then it’s also worth noting Imam Jamil is by no means a role model worthy of commanding Suleiman’s front-and-center attention. He was once a “Most Wanted” criminal by the FBI. He shot a drug dealer four times, and was sentenced for stealing an automobile. He has even been “investigated in connection with more than a dozen homicides,” and once declared, “We’re gonna burn America down.”
In 1995, two members of Imam Jamil’s mosque were convicted for “illegally shipping more than 900 firearms to groups in Detroit and Philadelphia, and to an Islamic gang linked to Sheik Omar [the Blind Sheikh],” who was “convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.”
So when Imam Suleiman refers to Jamil as one of “our political prisoners,” to whose politics is he referring? While much of America continues to swoon over Suleiman, to the extent he was invited last year to deliver the opening prayer before Congress, we must remember that Suleiman is anything but the progressive that he claims to be. Suleiman is an Islamist who unashamedly celebrates those who endorse terrorism, advocate beheading Muslim minorities, and champion the destruction of American flesh and property.
