Americas Independent Movement

Obama adviser compared U.S. Christians to al-Qaida: Also likened feared terror group to Jewish ‘totalitarians’ in Israel.
By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – President Obama’s faith adviser, Eboo Patel, compared al-Qaida to what he called Christian “totalitarians” in the U.S. and Jewish “totalitarians” in Israel, KleinOline has learned.

In February 2010, Obama named Patel to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Patel, a Muslim activist from Chicago, is the founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which says it promotes pluralism by teaming people of different faiths on service projects.

In an October 2009 article in a Newtopia Magazine, a liberal cultural publication, Obama’s faith adviser made the controversial comparison. The article was adapted from the text of a speech given by Patel to the Interfaith Education for a Global Society Conference in New York City in January 2002.

Stated Patel: “The problem is that we live in a time when the Muslim totalitarians are dominating. Why? Because they are building powerful institutions that propagate their interpretation of Islam – just as the Christian totalitarians in America have powerful institutions; and the Jewish totalitarians in Israel have powerful institutions; and the Hindu totalitarians in India have powerful institutions.

“What do I mean by institutions?” asked Patel. “Lobbying groups that pass policies, political organizations that get people elected, television and radio and magazines and publishing houses which articulate ideas, schools and universities, youth organizations and women’s groups, bodies which raise and distribute money.”

Patel then stated, “Al-Qaida is a network of institutions. Schools and mosques which teach 8-year-olds a certain ideology; organizations which lead them to Afghanistan; training camps which make them soldiers; manuals which offer advice on the prayers to whisper while engaging in violence. The religious identity – which is to say, the ways of being, believing and belonging in relation with the transcendent – of too many young Muslims is being shaped by these institutions.”

Patel explained his reference to Christian “totalitarianism” stems from a piece by New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman who wrote that World War III will be fought against “religious totalitarianism.”

“Religious totalitarianism is not just the belief that one religion is right,” added Patel, “but also that there is only one correct interpretation of that religion and everyone should practice it or else.”

Patel failed to explain that so-called Muslim totalitarians, like al-Qaida, use terrorism to spread their belief system.

American freedom, equality are just ‘myths’

The Obama faith adviser recently has made other controversial remarks.

KleinOnline reported last week Patel blasted what he called the “myths” of America – describing them as beliefs that the country is “a land of freedom and equality and justice.”

Patel explained how he used the “faith-based movement” to channel his rage at America “in a direction far more compassionate and far more merciful.”

Patel further implied that had he grown up in the 1960s, he may have joined the Weather Underground terrorist group led by William Ayers.

Like Obama, Patel is deeply tied to Ayers.

In a 2007 interview with NPR to promote a book he wrote that year, Patel was asked about his “affinity” toward the radicalism of Ayers, as described in the book.

Patel replied that his own life story “is much closer to Bill Ayers,” explaining he “grew up in the same hometown” that Ayers did.

Continued Patel: “I was kind of taught the same myths about America, a land of freedom and equality and justice, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And then, when I got to college, I saw people eating out of garbage cans for dinner, and I saw Vietnam vets drinking mouthwash for the alcohol, and I thought to myself, this is not the myth that I grew up with. And, in a way, I was so, I think, immature at that time politically, that all I could do was rage.”

Patel explained how he used religion to channel his rage toward America.

“And it was a faith-based movement that came into my life that kind of directed that rage in a direction far more compassionate and far more merciful.”

Obama’s faith adviser went on to say how he may have joined Ayers’ terrorist group if he was around as an activist in the 1960s.

“One of the things that I write about in this book is, you know, had it been one of the people involved in the Weather Underground, who were sitting at my kitchen table when I was 18 years old and raging, my life could have been very different,” he said.

“That I really thank God that it was a set of people who came into my life with a very clear vision of justice. But a sense of justice emanating from Divine Mercy.”

Patel has a much deeper relationship with Ayers than he admitted in the NPR interview.

In 2005, he co-authored a book with Ayers’ adopted son, Chesa Boudin.

The book, “Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out,” was co-written by several young radicals, including Ismail Khalidi, the son of Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi.

KleinOnline was first to report on Obama’s close relationship with Khalidi, who has been tied to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and who has described Israel as a “racist” state with an “apartheid” system.

The preface of Patel’s 2005 book, meanwhile, was written by Ayers’ wife, Weather Underground co-founder Bernardine Dohrn.

Dohrn describes the book as “a clarion call of hope, defiance, critical analysis, humor, irony, and self-conscious insistence that the queer, the Palestinian, the immigrant, the privileged, the children of prisoners and hip-hopsters have arrived.”

The back cover of the book boasts an endorsement from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop-killer and former member of the Black Panther Party.

On the acknowledgments page, Patel and co-authors thank Ayers himself for “guidance” and “encouragement.”