OPINION: Senator Kaine and the Muslim Brotherhood

Sen. Timothy Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s choice for VP, has a history of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood and taking campaign donations from multiple Islamist organizations.

Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, want a global Islamic government with strict Sharia law. They are not “moderate.”

In 2007, while governor of Virginia, Timothy Kaine appointed Dr. Esam Omeish, a Hamas supporter and president of the Muslim American Society, to his state’s Immigration Commission. Kaine was criticized by a Muslim organization against Islamism, for his reckless vetting process.

Omeish was also president of the National Muslim Students Association and served on the board of the Islamic Society of North America. He was vice president of the al-Qaida-linked Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Northern Virginia (where Anwar al-Awlaki was an imam).

Videotapes surfaced of a speech Omeish gave in 2000 where he praised Palestinians who chose the “jihad way” to liberation and of a 2006 speech in which he bashed the “Israeli war machine.” Omeish was on the record claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood was “moderate” and admitting that he was influenced by the Islamist group. Omeish made his extremist beliefs plain well before Kaine made his appointment.

Yet, somehow Kaine missed it. His staff missed it too. Apparently no one did a simple background check. Not even a Google search. Gov. Kaine was forced to “re-think” his appointment when he learned about Esam Omeish’s radical Islamist roots.

In 2008, federal prosecutors identified the Muslim American Society as the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamic extremist group that has been outlawed in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but not in the United States!

The Muslim Brotherhood in America has established a complicated network of surrogate groups that provides financing, fundraising, public relations and other services, including political action and campaign contributions.

The Muslim Brotherhood is linked to the New Dominion PAC, which gave Timothy Kaine more than $40,000 in donations to his 2003-2005 gubernatorial campaign. According to the Clarion Project, the New Dominion PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America, both Muslim Brotherhood front groups, gave thousands more to Kaine’s 2011-2012 Senate campaign.

In 2011, a Virginia think tank, the International Institute of Islamic Thought donated $10,000 to the New Dominion PAC. That same year, Timothy Kaine spoke at a New Dominion PAC event honoring an International Institute of Islamic Thought co-founder, Jamal Barzinji. Once again Kaine hadn’t done his homework.

The radical Islamist Jamal Barzinji was a board member of the Islamic Society of North America and a past president of the National Muslim Students Association. Barzinji was a founder and/or senior official in virtually every Muslim Brotherhood front group in America and was very nearly prosecuted for his activities. In 2009, Barack Obama became president, and Obama believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is “moderate,” so his Justice Department dropped the indictment.

In March 2013, the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Virginia presented an award to Jamal Barzinji, recognizing him for his decades of “service.” He was unable to attend the ceremony, so his grandson Zaki went in his stead.

Zaki Barzinji is a past president of the Muslim Youth of North America, which describes itself as the youth wing of the Islamic Society of North America. He is third-generation Muslim Brotherhood. In July 2014, Zaki Barzinji became the deputy director of intergovernmental affairs for Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (who took $15,000 in campaign contributions from the New Dominion PAC).

Then, during the last week of May 2016, President Barack Obama appointed 27-year-old Zaki Barzinji, the grandson of a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect, to be the new White House outreach liaison to the Muslim-American community.

The Muslim Brotherhood is here, it is persistent and it is generational. It is intertwined, in an unholy alliance, with politics and money. It is from this cauldron that Hillary Clinton selected her running mate.

I submit to you that Sen. Timothy Kaine is unfit for higher office.

Snyder is a resident of Kalispell.