Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Young Muslims 'Miss Martyr' camp at the YMCA's Camp Bernie in New Jersey
Young Muslims 'Miss Martyr' camp at the YMCA's Camp Bernie in New Jersey
August 18, 2006
Miss Martyr Camp at the Y
By Joe Kaufman
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23959
YMCA stands for Young Men's Christian Association. That being the case, why would the athletic group allow an anti-Christian young Muslim girl's organization to use their facilities for a jihad camp?
On the heels of their counterpart Young Muslims brotherhood's secret camp, the Young Muslims Sisters (YMS) will be holding their own camp, today, August 18th through the 20th, at the most unlikely of places – Port Murray, New Jersey's YMCA Camp Bernie. While the destination may be different, and the attire might have changed, the speakers at the event will be just as radical.
YMS is a subsidiary of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim Brotherhood front that has, in the past, been investigated for possible ties to Al-Qaeda. Young Muslims, for many years, has held children's camps through ICNA. Prior to the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the events were referred to as "Jihad Camps."
One of the "Jihad Camps" took place only two weeks before 9/11. Three of the advertised invited speakers for the YMS happen to have been three of the featured speakers at the 9/11 camp. They are:
- Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the Imam of the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn and a listed potential co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. About the stoning of women accused of adultery, he stated, "If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it's the obedience of Allah and his messenger -- nothing personal."
- Sheikh Ibrahim Negm, the Director of ICNA's Islamic Learning Foundation. In his speech, entitled ‘The Passion of the Youth,' which is found on the Young Muslims website, he indoctrinated his audience with an ultimatum, by repeating the bigoted statement, "With Islam youth are going to be something, but without Islam they are going to be nothing."
- Dr. Obeydullah Choudry, the former President of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at Rutgers University and one of the founders of Young Muslims. He tried to put a good face on the term "jihad" (holy war), when in his review of the book ‘Jihad in Islam,' he stated, "The disbelievers were fought by the Muslims not for their disbelief but because they showed belligerence or hostility to the Islamic state," and jihad "may be offensive, with Muslims taking the lead in averting the enemy's conspiracies and impending plots."
Some of the other YMS invited speakers have expertise in teaching the concept of death to easily influenced young minds. One of them, Br. Nouman Ali Khan, a former MSA representative, gave a February 2005 speech sponsored by the MSA of Hofstra, entitled ‘Preparation for Death.'
Another, Sr. Iman Badawi gave a speech at a June 2003 camp sponsored by the Muslim American Society (MAS) of Minnesota, entitled ‘The Life in the Grave.' One of her former campers had this to say about her, "…Iman Badawi and her wonderful style of talking about our deen [religion] always made our camps something else. Sitting outside in the night while listening to one of her talks on death is something to remember…" Badawi, like Ali Khan, is also a former MSA representative. In March of 1997, she was one of two coordinators for the MSA East Zone Conference featuring Ali Al-Tamimi, an individual who received a life sentence for urging his followers, after 9/11, to join the Taliban and attack American troops.
And lastly, Br. Jawad Ahmad wrote a piece about the afterlife, entitled ‘Do You Want Paradise?' He began it by stating, "This should be our goal in life, ‘I want to go to Jannah (Paradise).'" Later in the piece, he stated, "So brothers and sisters, be LOVERS of Knowledge, be seekers of Knowledge. ‘Yes, where is my Qur'an, where is my Hadeeth Bukhari.'" It must be noted, in Hadeeth Bukhari, in the section called ‘Fighting for the Cause of Allah (Jihad),' it is stated, "The Prophet said, ‘Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's Cause).'"
Does Mr. Ahmad or any of his colleagues really want to be teaching something like this to impressionable children? That question is not meant to be answered, for it is brutally obvious that, given the past actions of these individuals, this type of talk is standard fare and perfectly acceptable.
No, the real question is why would the YMCA allow an event such as this to take place on its premises, in the first place?
This past April, reports surfaced about how the terrorist organization Hamas, due to anti-Christian sentiment, had taken measures to shut down the YMCA branch office located in the West Bank. Recently, the YMCA office was firebombed. One of the reports quotes Deputy Mayor and Hamas member, Hashem al Masri, as stating, "I know it is not civilized to attack it, but it is a challenge to the feeling of our people." How ironic that one YMCA is being attacked by Islamic militants, while another is opening its arms to them.
Printer-friendly version 
Email this item to a friend