Huma Abedin: Will She Repudiate Family's Islamist Views?
Huma Abedin (left) and Hillary Clinton (Photo: © Reuters)
Concerns about Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, both when she was secretary of state and now, as the Democratic presidential nominee, began surfacing in 2012. According to leaked emails, Abedin is slated to become secretary of state if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
In 2012, Rep. Michele Bachmann and four other members of Congress requested information about the influence of Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups and individuals in the U.S. government, including Abedin, who worked for 12 years as an assistant editor of an Islamist journal that spewed extremism.
Abedin’s tenure at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs began in 1996, the year she began working as an intern at the White house.
Clarion Project covered that request extensively, as the Congressional members who made it were pilloried by their colleagues. We also covered the extremism of Abedin’s mother, father and other family members.
Now more information has been uncovered regarding the Islamist beliefs of Abedin’s parents. While it is certainly possible to disavow the ideology of one’s parents, Abedin has remained silent on their extremism as well as her work with on journal. It remains to be seen whether or not she will repudiate these new findings.
Syed Abedin, Huma Abedin’s father who died in 1993, was a Muslim scholar connected to the Saudi Arabian government. According to exclusive video footage from 1971 recently obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Syed Abedin advocated the following:
As Muslim countries evolve, he said, “The state has to take over. The state is stepping in in many countries … where the state is now overseeing that human relationships are carried on on the basis of Islam. The state also under Islam has a right to interfere in some of these rights given to the individual by the sharia.”
In addition, he is quoted as saying, “The main dynamics of life in the Islamic world are still supplied by Islam. Any institution, as I said before, any concept, any idea, in order to be accepted and become a viable thing in the Islamic world has to come through … Islam.”
Abedin’s mother, Saleha, has an especially strong Islamist ties. She is a member of the female counterpart of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Muslim World League. She leads a group called the International Islamic Committee for Women and Child, a subsidiary of a Muslim Brotherhood-led group that is banned in Israel for its links to Hamas.
In 1999 and three years after Huma began working for the journal, the journal and Saleha Abedin’s group published a book in Arabic titled “Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations.”
The book states that man-made law is inherently oppressive towards women, while sharia law is liberating. According to the text, Muslim women have an obligation to contribute to jihad, apostates are to be put to death, adulterers should be stoned or lashed, freedom of speech should be conformed to the boundaries set by sharia and wives must have sex with their husbands on command, “even if she is not in the mood.“
In addition, the organization led by Huma Abedin’s mother “advocates for the repeal of Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to Islamic law, which allows for their practice,” according to an analysis by the Center for Security policy.
The book advocates against laws to assure equality of women, saying, “Man-made laws have in fact enslaved women, submitting them to the cupidity and caprice of human beings. Islam is the only solution and the only escape.”
In terms of women working in high positions, the book states, “Her job would involve long hours of free mixing and social interaction with the opposite sex, which is forbidden in Islam. Moreover, women’s biological constitution is different from that of men. Women are fragile, emotional and sometimes unable to handle difficult and strenuous situations. Men are less emotional and show more perseverance.”
However, an exception does exist: “Women can also participate in fighting when jihad becomes an individual duty.”
The New York Post reports that Saleha is on the payroll of the Saudi government and part of her job is to advocate for sharia law in non-Muslim countries like the United States.
“In 1995, less than three weeks before Clinton gave her famous women’s-rights speech in Beijing, Saleha headlined an unusual Washington conference organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] to lobby against the UN platform drafted by Clinton and other feminists. Visibly angry, she argued it runs counter to Islam and was a “conspiracy” against Muslims.
“Specifically, she called into question provisions in the platform that condemned domestic battery of women, apparently expressing sympathy for men who commit abuse,” reported the newspaper.
We hope that Abedin does not hold the same opinions as her parents or the journal of which she was the assistant editor. And it would certainly be nice to have to tell us that.
Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org
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