The following excerpts are taken from Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch:
Why shouldn’t Rick Perry’s Islamic ties be vetted?
The rush to anoint him our next President is overlooking a great deal.
Imagine a candidate for President of the United States who says all the right things: he will cut taxes, he will roll back the disastrous and defeatist policies of his despised and discredited predecessor, he will restore America’s pride and renew America’s hope.
This candidate is handsome, telegenic, articulate, and apparently unafraid to joust verbally with his failed predecessor, as well as with an adversarial press.
Imagine also that this candidate had raised funds for and had a longtime association with a power player in party politics, a man who was owed favors by virtually everyone who had ever won an election for his party, but a man with ties to some extremely shady characters – say, for example, that this power broker had received, for an organization of his founding, a loan of $10,000 and a gift of another $10,000 from a man who was now in prison for raising money for a terrorist murder plot.
Imagine further that the candidate had partnered in educational initiatives with a billionaire who owned, among many other things, to be sure, a bank that had been accused – and never cleared — of funding a terrorist group, and of complicity in the murder of an American reporter. That billionaire also owned a development organization that bore his name, and that partnered in various initiatives with the government of a country listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, and that was now essentially at war with its own citizens.
Do you think that such a candidate would be questioned about these associations, and that he would deserve the questioning, and would be expected to produce honest, full, and serious answers to concerns about whether he was turning a blind eye or would, as president, turn a blind eye to certain kinds of activity that aided and abetted terrorism?
There is such a candidate: his name is Rick Perry. He has occasioned tremendous excitement among Republicans and conservatives, to the extent that those who dare to ask legitimate questions about his associations and beliefs are being attacked and vilified by people who are ostensibly on their own side. I already know of friendships being broken over this candidacy.
* * * * *
[Known Islamist collaborator Grover Norquist is one of Rick Perry’s close buddies]
As David Horowitz pointed out several years ago, Norquist has worked with “prominent Islamic radicals who have ties to the Saudis and to Libya and to Palestine Islamic Jihad, and who are now under indictment by U.S. authorities.” Among them was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was once the most prominent and powerful “moderate Muslim” in Washington, and is now in prison for helping to finance an al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the Saudi king, whom jihadis consider to be inexcusably lax in his Islamic observance (primarily in allowing infidel American troops onto the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War). Alamoudi gave Norquist’s Islamic Institute, a gambit to try to garner Muslim votes for the Republican party, a $10,000 loan and a $10,000 gift.
Norquist is unrepentant; he continues to partner with Islamic supremacists. Is this the sort of man our next president should be associating with? Does Perry really need Norquist to carry over his tax-cutting message? Does he know about Norquist’s unsavory ties? Does he care? Do Republican candidates need Norquist so much that they have to put up with his taint?
[Oily Texas elite are known to have a proclivity for kissy-face with oily Sheikhs, is Rick Perry one of them?]
See, the complete article at Jihad Watch http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/08/why-shouldnt-rick-perrys-islamic-ties-be-vetted.html