Muslim Brotherhood cleric declares his support for the Islamic State

Wagdy Ghoneim, just expelled from Qatar along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, used to live in the United States. He served as imam at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, California in the early 2000’s, and raised funds for Hamas-linked Muslim charity KindHearts. How many people are still in the United States today who learned about Islam from Wagdy Ghoneim?

And why doesn’t this Muslim cleric, who has dedicated his life to understanding and teaching the Qur’an and Sunnah, see what Barack Obama and David Cameron and Tony Abbott and so many other non-Muslims see so clearly, that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam?

“Video .. Wagdy Ghoneim after being expelled from Qatar announces support for ISIL,” my translation of the Arabic article “بالفيديو.. وجدي غنيم بعد طرده من قطر يُعلن تأييده داعش” by Hassan Bahi, Al-Masry Al-Youm, September 16, 2014 (thanks to Coptic Nationalism):

Islamic preacher Wagdy Ghoneim on Tuesday announced his rejection of the war being organized against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and his “support for them, despite differences on some issues,” he said, and asked for “unity in the face of the Crusader alliance against Muslims.”

Ghoneim said, in the first video he recorded and put his on Facebook page after being expelled from Qatar, under the title, “Do not crusade against the Islamic State”: “America is heating up the world against ISIL. The West and America and the Crusaders in general are vengeful against Islam and Muslims, and they desire evil for Islam.”

He added: “Our enemies are Crusaders, their faith is based on bloodshed and murder, and this is evident in their Bible,” accusing the West of fabricating videos depicting the “slaughter of hostages in Iraq at the hands of ISIL.”

He continued: “America is the largest terrorist state, and the West, too. We will not forget what it did to America’s Indians, and the Abu Ghraib prison, Allah is sufficient for me, the most excellent in whom I trust, and yes, America threw the body of the martyr bin Laden into the sea, is that respect for human beings and human rights?”

He explained: “I am with my brothers in ISIL in some matters, but I advise them always to adhere to the Qur’an and Sunnah and to unite against their enemies, and I reject the Crusader alliance to defeat them.”