Memphis Sheik Joins Islamist Linda Sarsour and CAIR Founder to Oppose Supreme Court Decision on Travel Ban

Memphis Sheik Yasir Qadhi joined Islamist activist Linda Sarsour and fellow activist and Hamas supporter Nihad Awad to collectively state their opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding key parts of President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) while attending the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) 54th annual convention in Chicago earlier this month.

Their opposition to the ban was captured in this tweet:

Government shouldn't be in the business of defining "bona fide relationships" & excluding grandparents, etc. Unacceptable. #NoMuslimBanEver pic.twitter.com/qrndrFwe7x

— MPower Change (@MPower_Change) June 29, 2017

The temporary travel ban from Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iran and Yemen remain in effect except for those refugees “who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” although they must still satisfy all security vetting. The EO’s limit of 50,000 refugee admissions for the current fiscal year was also upheld by the court.

Iraq was dropped from the revised travel ban after it agreed to accept Iraqi deportees from the U.S.

Sheik Qadhi is the resident scholar at the Memphis Islamic Center, Dean of Academic Affairs of AlMaghrib Institute and an “expert” with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA).

Linda Sarsour recently gained notoriety when she called for a “jihad” against President Trump’s policies. She is devout in her anti-Israel activism working to delegitimize the State of Israel through the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement. She is the director of the Arab American Association of New York.

Nihad Awad is a co-founder and Executive Director of CAIR, and a supporter of the terrorist group Hamas.

Sheik Qadhi’s opposition to the Court’s ruling is not surprising, given his statement in 2007 suggesting that he will not necessarily follow the law of the land – “we are loyal to our countries insofar as it does not conflict with our religion of Islam.” Similarly, in another of his youtube videos Manifestations of Kufr (Disbelief) he disavows the authority the U.S. Constitution vests in the judicial and legislative branches of government to articulate the governing law:

[i]t is not my right to legislate or your right to legislate. No Supreme Court, no system of government, no democracy where they vote. Can you believe it, a group of people coming together and voting and the majority vote will be the law of the land? What gives you the right to prohibit something or allow something?

The three activists are regularly featured speakers at Islamist political conferences. In fact, Sarsour and Qadhi were featured speakers at ISNA’s April conference in Memphis. ISNA is a named unindicted co-conspirator in the federal 2008 successful Holy Land Foundation (HLF) terrorism financing prosecution.

Awad’s organization CAIR, was also named an unindicted co-conspirator in the same prosecution and like ISNA, was denied having that status removed. In his ruling, the federal judge held that:

[t]he Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF [Holy Land Foundation], the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), and with Hamas

In 1994, Awad was a panelist at a university symposium on the Middle East when he publicly declared “I am in support of the Hamas movement.” The following year, the U.S. government designated Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization.

Immediately after the Supreme Court issued its decision on the EO, Awad claimed that the travel ban was based on “anti-Muslim bigotry” but ignored the fact that the Obama administration also restricted travel from the same countries.

The message Sarsour delivered at the ISNA convention in Chicago earlier this month is even more direct:

Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community. It is not to assimilate and to please any other people in authority. Our obligation is to our young people, is to our women, to make sure our women are protected in our community, and our top priority, even higher than all those priorities, is to please Allah and only Allah.

We are never to cower to the powers that be, we are never to give up any part of our identity so somebody else can open a door for us. If a door does not open, guess what we do? We build a new door and walk through our own door, because we have that right in this country to also open opportunities for us and other communities.

Sarsour, Awad and Qadhi are free to object to, protest, speak out against and even stir up resistance to the Court’s holding, but in our constitutional republic, they won’t have the last word.