Report: Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Imam Facing Indictment
Posted on March 31, 2012 by creeping
A former leader and current member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) may soon be charged with crimes stemming from activities during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence.
The country’s International Crimes Tribunal reportedly will indict Ashrafuz Zaman Khan for the suspected murder of pro-independence intellectuals.
The war divided Pakistan and Bangladesh into two separate nations, but not before Islamist unionists and the Pakistani army launched systematic massacres of civilians and intelligentsia supporting independence.
Khan is alleged to have been an active participant and to have even functioned as an executioner.
Ironically, Khan gave a speech last April during an anti-war rally in New York, in which he decried the harm done by the war on terror.
“In Iraq, the U.S. had more than 150,000 troops plus 190,000 contractors. One million people were killed and the whole infrastructure of the country was destroyed,” Khan said. “On behalf of the Islamic Circle of North America, I [sic] ordering you and all other peace loving people to continue this struggle to end the wars and terrorism to make this world as a peaceful abode.””
Khan has been active in ICNA, a group that bills itself as “a leading grassroots organization in the American Muslim community.” He served as secretary general in 2000 and vice president in 2001, and was the president of the ICNA New York chapter when he made the speech.
But ICNA itself has had a checkered past. It was founded by activists from the extremist organization Jamaat-e-Islami, the South Asian equivalent to the Arab world’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has expressed support for violent jihad against American forces and other non-Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere. The Jamaat also salutes the jihad of groups like Hamas, Hizballah, and Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir.
ICNA’s constitution is largely copied from Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan’s founding documents, including the goal of promoting Islam as an alternative to Western society. Its education platforms teach books by Jamaat founder Syed Abul Ala Maududi, which are banned in Bangladesh for reasons of incitement. And the group is suspected of inciting young members to participate in foreign jihads, as was emphasized in a 1997 article in the group’s magazine.
Read it all.
Also read ICNA Leader in His Own Words:
Indeed Islam came to tear down the pillars of kufr and replace them with the pillars of Islam.
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