Turkey to Build $100 Million Mega-Mosque in Maryland; Connected to Islamic Extremists

On May 15th, the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and two leaders linked to the Muslim Brotherhood visited Lanham, Maryland to celebrate the future opening of a $100,000,000 mega-mosque. The project is being funded by the Islamic government of Turkey.

Erdogan has seen his share of controversy. In February, he stated that Zionism is a "crime against humanity." In June 1997, he stated, "The Jews have begun to crush the Muslims of Palestine, in the name of Zionism. Today, the image of the Jews is no different from that of the Nazis."

Erdogan

The Muslim Brotherhood and their connection to antisemitism and hatred needs no introduction.

Yet cheering him on at the ceremony "was the Maryland Secretary of State... and likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, Martin O’Malley." He even made a speech promoting the "sister city relationship" that Maryland and Turkey has.

O'Malley

At the ceremony, the Prime Minister "placed a ceremonial stone on a 15-acre construction site." That 15-acre construction zone represents something greater. In fact, the mosque will become "the largest and most striking examples of Islamic architecture in the western hemisphere," according to Muslim Link Paper.

The Clarion Project details the two Muslim Brotherhood members who attended:

The first, Naeem Baig, is the president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo, which says its “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within,” lists ICNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” It even refers to meetings with ICNA with talk about a merger. 

ICNA is linked to the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami and its conferences feature radical speakers. A former ICNA president was recently indicted for horrific war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 succession from Pakistan – the torture and murder or 18 political opponents. 

The second official from a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity that attended the event was Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA and several of its components are listed as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the same 1991 Brotherhood memo. ISNA was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, dubbed the largest Islamic terror-funding trial in the history of the U.S. Federal prosecutors in the case also listed ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

Construction of the mosque is scheduled to be finished by 2014.