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Gov. Josh Shapiro attended an ‘iftar’ dinner at a mosque where an imam had previously declared that “Jews are the vilest people”, and announced a huge grant for the hate mosque.
The $5 million grant, described as the largest ever given to a Muslim institution, came only 5 years after the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philly was forced to apologize for posting hateful Islamic sermons by an imam delivered at its mosque declaring that the Arabs were superior to all races, that Jews were the “enemies of Allah” and the “vilest of all people”.
The imam also appeared to call on Muslims to take over the world.
“By Allah, if faith had taken root in our hearts, things would have been different. We would have imposed the word of Islam upon the world, like those before us did,” Imam Abdelmohsen Abouhatab told the congregation at Al Aqsa.
He also quoted a Hadith describing the eventual Muslim extermination of the Jews.
The Al Aqsa Society, whose name is the Islamic one for the conquest mosque planted by the invaders on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was created by a group of ‘Palestinian’ migrants out of Hebron, and had been previously in the news as part of the Fort Dix terror plot by six Muslim terrorists who had prayed at the mosque and even done free roofing there.
Even though the hateful sermons had been praised in person and featured online by the mosque, public outrage led mosque leaders to disavow them, declaring that “hatred against any group of people or religion will not be tolerated.”
But earlier this year, the Al Aqsa Society promoted a ‘Gala for Gaza’ featuring Holocaust denier Norman Finkelstein and Sheikh Mohammed Elshinawy whom the NYPD had described as an “acolyte” of the Blind Sheikh linked to the World Trade Center bombing and whose father had reportedly been an unindicted co conspirator in that same Islamic terror attack on America.
The NYPD stated that the sheikh had “made statements encouraging attendees to follow in the footsteps of Muslims who died while participating in violent jihad against non-Muslims” and that the FBI had investigated “Elshinawy for his possible role recruiting others to travel overseas to train or fight alongside extremist elements.” Elshinawy had reportedly responded to the Oct 7 atrocities by arguing “do not equate the violence of the oppressed with that of the oppressor”.
The mosque had also featured a video from Imam Omar Suleiman who had previously justified sex slavery and called for the destruction of Israel during an earlier conflict with Hamas.
According to Gov. Shapiro, who is Jewish, however the massive $5 million grant was necessary because “as we’re facing tumult overseas, and we’re facing a lot of rising hate here at home.”
“This is a moment where I think communities are fearful of the federal government and that’s deeply concerning to me and I want the Muslim community to know that they’re welcome here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said, in a dig at the Trump administration. “I’ve got their back and I’m going to protect them and I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure that their rights are protected here in the commonwealth.”
The $5 million giveaway could also be seen as a kind of political payback since Marwan Kreidie, the director of the Arab American Development Corp, is a spokesman for the mosque and had come to Shapiro’s defense during Kamala’s ‘Veepstakes’ when he was being accused of ‘Islamophobia’. Kreidie wrote an op-ed claiming that Shapiro had phoned to check on him the day after the Oct 7 attacks, hates Netanyahu and is angry over the deaths of Muslims in Gaza.
Shapiro “appointed the highest ranking Muslim to ever serve on a cabinet seat in Pennsylvania. He proclaimed April as Arab American Heritage Month. He visited Arab American mosques and churches. He spoke at an Eid-al-Fitr prayer,” he gushed.
It didn’t get Shapiro the VP nomination, but he’s still working on his appeasement.
The Al-Aqsa Islamic Society is politically influential, hosting Philly mayors Michael Nutter and Jim Kenney. After a pig’s head allegedly appeared on its doorstep, Councilman David Oh, who later ran for mayor as a Republican, signed a pledge to combat bigotry. And Gov. Shapiro claims to have a long history with the powerful hate mosque.
The original ‘Palestinian’ center had been bolstered by refugee resettlement agencies planting Iraqis, Syrians and Afghans there to further get out the vote for Democrats in Philly.
And Philly Democrats brought them into their coalition.
That’s why Gov. Josh Shapiro, who hadn’t been picked by Kamala as her VP in part due to a whispering campaign suggesting that his Jewishness made him a liability among the party’s new pro-Hamas base, showed up at Al-Aqsa’s iftar dinner to talk about the mosque as “a place I have felt welcome at for many, many years” and had been coming there for over ten years.
“I’m really proud that we’ve been able to work with your leaders here to invest $5 million in making this place an even greater center of activity in the community.”
Part of the $5 million is supposed to be used to expand the school. However the Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy, the Society’s school, which was started to service its Arab Muslim membership but increasingly draws black students, was sued in 2023 by a teacher over accusations of racial discrimination. And last year, a man was shot and killed ‘execution-style’ on the way to the mosque.
According to Gov. Shapiro though, a mosque where Jews were called the “vilest people” is a very special place where he always feels welcome. That may say more about him than about the mosque.