DAR AL HARB - U.S.A. - CONNECTICUT: A MOSLEM SPEAKER THAT ADVOCATES STONING IS A FEATURED SPEAKER @ THE ISLAMIC CIRCLE OF NORTH AMERICA CONFERENCE

Stoning advocate to address Connecticut crowd
Imam who forecast 'crumbling' democracy to address 'Islamophobia' event

Christian pastors often will speak of the sin in the world, or in their nation, and call for repentance, but an expert on terrorism says when imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the unindicted co-conspirators of the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, preaches in his mosque, he goes one step further.

"Christian pastors will say the [nation] has taken the wrong course, but they don't say the U.S. is going to be destroyed unless everyone converts to Christianity right now," Steven Emerson, one of the nation's leading experts on terrorism, told WND.

But Wahhaj, who is speaking this coming weekend in Hartford, Conn., at the 32nd annual Islamic Circle of North America conference, an event shared with the Muslim American Society, blends into his sermons the "evil" of the United States and the need for an Islamic state.

That, Emerson said, is adding the political to the religious and is when the sermons "become a problem."

"This is the whole problem of these conferences. They end up inserting a political message into an innocent message, then they politicize the situation. They're basically mobilizing the Muslim public," Emerson said.

"He has a message of Islam reigning supreme, and mixed with his message is the fact of the U.S. being an evil country, and defending terrorism," Emerson said.

"All together that leads someone to become radicalized," said Emerson, considered one of the leading authorities in Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations.

He's also the executive director of The Investigation Project on Terrorism, one of the world's largest storehouses of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups.

The conference is set up to "address growing Islamophobia," according to sponsors who have titled their event "Muhammad: Mercy To Humanity and Beyond."

Wahhaj is on the program as a featured speaker, but it's not the comments about his faith that concern those who monitor radical groups; it's sentiments such as:

"In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam."

"If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it's the obedience of Allah and his messenger – nothing personal."

Those quotes were documented by several organizations watching the activities of Islamics they consider radical, such as Wahhaj, who was put on the U.S. attorney's list of potential co-conspirators to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and soon after was a witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called "Blind Sheikh," who was convicted in the bombing.

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1) Stoning advocate to address Connecticut crowd