Topic: Newsmax
Under the headline "White House Slammed for Radical Cleric Meeting," Lisa Barron writes in a June 26 Newsmax article:
White House officials met this month with Sheik Abdullah bin Bayyah, a deputy of radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the so-called spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who has been banned from entering the United States.
The June 13 meeting took place on the same day the Obama administration announced plans to arm Syria's rebel forces, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
However, even Fox News admits he's not as "radical" as he's being portrayed:
Bin Bayyah, for his part, has urged the U.N. to criminalize blasphemy. His group has spoken out in favor of Hamas and in 2009 issued a fatwa barring "all forms of normalization" with Israel.
In 2010, Bin Bayyah publicly rejected a fatwa that had been used as the justification for Al Qaeda terrorism.
In his criticism of the fatwa, he said: "Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation and has misapplied the revealed texts."
The Muslim scholar has taken criticism from violent extremists for this position.
He has also worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups on global health issues.
By contrast, the IPT is run by anti-Muslim activist Steve Emerson, who most recently was promoting the discredited claim that a Saudi student was involved with the Boston Marathon bombings. Apparently, in Emerson's mind, every Muslim is a "radical."
