Remember, “taqiyya.”
The cleric for the San Bernardino mosque where terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook worshipped claims he barely knew Farook and didn’t know his terrorist wife at all. But whatdoyaknow, phone records and other evidence uncovered by federal investigators cast suspicion on his story.
According to The NewYork Post, the FBI has questioned Roshan Zamir Abbassi, about his phone communications with Farook. The communications include at least 38 messages over a two-week span in June, coinciding with the deadly Muslim terrorist attack on two military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Roshan Zamir Abbassi
Abbassi (a Pakistani) insists he had nothing to do with the San Bernardino shooting. While he confirms the text messages with Farook, he claims they were merely discussing food donations for his Dar-al-Uloom al-Islamiya of America mosque. Riiiight.
Abbassi maintained at a press conference that he didn’t know Farook any better than he knew the reporters in the room. But whatdoyaknow, members of the mosque say Farook was a fixture there. He had been coming to pray and study at least three times a week for two years. In fact, he memorized the Koran at there, something you cannot do without learning Arabic, a subject Abbassi teaches.
Abbassi’s other assertion is that he never even saw Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik. “No one knows anything about his wife,” assistant imam Mahmood Nadvi agreed. “She never came to prayer.
But longtime mosque member Gasser Shehata, who claimed to have prayed “shoulder to shoulder” with Farook, said Dar-al-Uloom prepared a chicken-and-rice dinner to celebrate the couple’s wedding last year. Reportedly, hundreds of congregants attended the walima reception, including the mosque leadership.
Asked if Farook was radicalized at the mosque, Abbassi snapped, “Never.” He said the mosque teaches only peace, insisting no one has even an “extremist idea.” “In Islam,” he said, “we are against innocent killing.”
But whatdoyaknow, Abbassi recently posted a message on Facebook condemning the United States and other Western nations for their Mideast policies, arguing they are equally guilty of violence to achieve political and religious goals. His mosque’s Web page features a video claiming that the San Bernardino shooting was carried out by the US government in a “false flag conspiracy,” and that Farook and Malik were “patsies” assassinated “by government-sponsored perpetrators.”
And whatdoyaknow, another person of interest is Abbassi’s brother, Mohammad Sabir Abbassi, a Muslim activist who serves as a trustee and English teacher at the San Diego mosque once headed by the late al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
FBI Agent Joel Anderson said in court filings that Farook indicated he was a big fan of Awlaki and listened to a series of sermons about jihad and martyrdom called “The Hereafter.”
Read the rest of the FBI agent’s story and their attempt to identify other associated jihadists and terrorists here.
DCG