Jihad is a Harsh Mistress

Back in June, I wrote about President Bush’s visit to the Washington Islamic Center, the largest and most prestigious mosque in our nation’s capital. It was a quintessential act of dhimmitude, to journey to the heart of radical Islam in D.C. and speak deferentially to the Muslim Brotherhood representatives of the Religion of Peace.

The groups represented at the President’s speech included CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, etc., which are known fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood and related Islamic terror groups, and help channel money to all the different “charities” which fund terrorist activities.

Always on Watch, in a post at Northern Virginiastan links to an interesting news story this morning about the Washington Islamic Center. According to The Washington Post, there’s somewhat of a kerfuffle over the alleged misappropriations of funds by the mosque’s bookkeeper.

Bear with me, because this story is somewhat convoluted, and there seems to be more to it than meets the eye:

Mosque Bookkeeper Alleges Payments to Director’s Mistresses

A man charged with embezzling $430,000 from a prominent Washington mosque said in court documents filed yesterday that the mosque’s director was actually paying him for rent and other expenses for the director’s mistresses.

The motions were part of the defense’s argument in the federal government’s case against Farzad Darui, a former manager at the Islamic Center of Washington, the city’s oldest mosque and a landmark on Embassy Row. Darui has been indicted for allegedly taking checks that he was supposed to use to pay the mosque’s regular bills and directing them instead toward his own private businesses.

But Mr. Darui also insists that he was also trying to prevent the mosque from being hijacked by Saudi extremists who were controlling the flow of funding:
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The 140 pages filed by Darui’s attorneys describe him as a patriot who was trying to keep extremists from seizing control of the mosque, whose board is made up largely of ambassadors from various Islamic countries. Darui says in motions that he was being pressured by Saudi funders of the center and its director, Abdullah M. Khouj, to allow in “individuals who adhered to a radical form” of Islam.

“For over 25 years Farzad Darui . . . has been dedicated to preventing radical fundamentalists from taking over Washington D.C.’s Islamic Center,” one of the briefs begins.

Assuming this is true, then what’s the deal with the checks made out to Mr. Darui’s company?

According to Darui’s filings, the Saudi government was funneling money secretly to Khouj. The filings don’t explicitly give a reason but assert a Saudi desire to control the influential mosque. The briefs say that Khouj used some of the money to pay for housing for two mistresses in apartments Darui owned and other expenses for the women, which is Darui’s explanation of why checks to Darui’s companies have Khouj’s signature.

So here’s a hypothetical — but plausible — scenario for the series of events:

1.		The Saudis routed money to Mr. Khouj for the purposes of funding radical activities through the Washington Islamic Center.
2.		Mr. Khouj took a cut off the top, presumably the customary procedure, so that he could support himself and his mistresses in their lavish lifestyle.
3.		Mr. Khouj quartered his mistresses in premises owned by Mr. Darui, in order to encourage the latter’s cooperation, and also to make him vulnerable in case the screws needed to be twisted later on.
4.		Mr. Darui resisted Mr. Khouj’s efforts to radicalize the mosque.
5.		The screws were duly twisted on Mr. Darui, so that now he must face his day in court trying to explain a mess that looks very, very bad for him.

As I said, this is only hypothetical. The whole affair could be just what it seems, a simple case of venality on the part of the mosque’s bookkeeper. Or it could have yet another explanation; given the labyrinthine nature of Middle Eastern political intrigue, it’s hard for an uninformed outsider to tell.

As Always on Watch says:

One could hope that the funds indeed went to support a mistress and not a Wahhabist push to control the oldest mosque in Washington, D.C. But, somehow, I doubt that outcome. After all, it is well known in counter-jihad circles that Wahhabists have funneled money into mosques throughout Western nations and, thereby, have spread Wahhabism to attendees of the mosques. Also, many imams in mosques have direct ties to Saudi and to Wahhabism. Funds supporting a mistress would be more palatable than the Wahhabist funding of mosques and would not undermine the very existence of the United States.

For a Wahhabist, Jihad is a demanding mistress.