The Boston Mosque's Saudi connection

By Jeff Jacoby

"Speaking at a State Department forum in 1999, Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi sheik and leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, sounded an alarm about Muslim houses of worship in the United States.

'The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques . . . is the extremists' ideology,' he said. 'Because they are very active, they took over the mosques; . . . they took over more than 80 percent of the mosques that have been established in the US.' He warned ominously that 'a danger might suddenly come that you are not looking for . . . we don't know where it is going to hit.'

When Kabbani was condemned by other Muslim organizations, he stood his ground. His assessment of the leadership of US mosques, he said, was based on having visited scores of them. In a 2000 interview he explained the extremists' pattern of infiltration." Read more...