Does Shoah event protester head a fabricated organization?
Local activist Jafar “Jeff” Siddiqui under the aegis of his group “American Muslims of Puget Sound” (AMPS) has protested college speakers, anti-terror ads, documentary filmmakers even holocaust education organizations. But does his group even exist beyond a letterhead and a logo?
How offensive can one man be? Well if your name is Jafar “Jeff” Siddiqui, the answer is pretty offensive.
As reported last week on The Mike Report, Mr. Siddiqui did all he could to disrupt the recent Washington Holocaust Education Resource Center (WSHERC) Voices for Humanity Luncheon on October 31st of 2013.
Outside the Holocaust Education Resource Center’s Voices for Humanity luncheon in Seattle. 10/31/2013
Siddiqui, along with three others protested outside the event at Seattle’s Westin Hotel, accusing the local Holocaust education center of being motivated by greed and lust for money. The significance of utilizing such loaded imagery towards Jews at a Holocaust memorial luncheon was seemingly lost on Siddiqui.
For nearly a decade Mr. Siddiqui has presented himself as the spokesman for Northwest Muslims under the auspices of American Muslims of Puget Sound (AMPS). With the air of importance afforded him as the representative of a civil rights organization, Siddiqui has endeavored to guide local discussion regarding issues related to Islam and Muslims.
In 2002 Siddiqui attempted to prevent Middle East expert Daniel Pipes from speaking at the University of Washington. In that failed effort he evoked Nazi imagery suggesting that Dr. Pipes may soon “be in the same company as Hitler”.
This was not an aberration; Siddiqui tosses around Nazi and Holocaust themology about as frequently as Dominos tosses pizza. Siddiqui characterized Michael Medved, a national talk show host and active member of the Seattle Jewish community as “on the same track as Hitler and the Nazis.” The accusation was all the more offensive as Medved’s grandparents were Hitler refugees. Siddiqui described “Obsession” a documentary about Islamist extremism as akin to “Hitler’s idea of how to generate hate and violence”.
Appropriating the Jewish historic experience, Siddiqui frequently compares the circumstances of Muslims in the United States to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. While trying to prevent Remond Ibrahim from speaking at Everett College, Siddiqui told NBC news that “America is, if we are not careful we are very close to 1938 Germany, we’ve picked a target and that’s Muslims”. In Nazi Germany, he asserts “there were only two kinds of people among the non-Jews; those who agreed and hated Jews and those who remained silent”. “Today too, there are two kinds of people in America; those who hate Muslims, Islam and Arabs and those who remain silent”.
In fact Siddiqui has a hard time not inserting Jews into just about any bug that happens to be buzzing around in his bonnet. When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) were identified by US Courts as unindicted co-conspirators in a terror financing trial he said it was “akin to the Germans pulling in every Jewish head of household to the village square, to find out who killed their soldier and then listing all those Jews as ‘unindicted murderers.’
Is American Muslims for Puget Sound much more than a logo on a letterhead?
Objecting to the selection of Mark Weitzman, the Government Affairs Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to speak at the WSHERC Voices for Humanity luncheon, Siddiqui invoked the same Nazi themes. Chastising WSHERC for hosting Weitzman, he said it was “rather like David Duke being invited to speak about the equality of all human beings or, to bring it closer to home for WSHERC, like inviting a member of the Nazi Party to speak about fighting hate”.
Defending his attempt to disrupt the Holocaust memorial luncheon, Siddiqui could not help but extract another Third Reich reference, writing on his blog that “we were protesting the folks who were promoting the same kind of hate that the Nazis promoted”.
This sort of language is ironic coming from a man who has parroted some of the most classic anti-Jewish canards and stereotypes.
On Jewish influence Siddiqui said “Jews have integrated in every aspect of business, industry, administration and government thus, making certain they maintain an influence over whatever might have an impact on their fates“. On dual loyalty he opined “they even encourage their children to joining Israeli military instead of the militaries of their birth country“, adding “Jews hold Israel to be almost their Deity, they are willing to give up everything to support Israel” and “these Jews are allied with each other, spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year, to support Israel, to fight Muslims and to oppose Islam.”
Siddiqui has allied himself with the anti-Semitic BDS movement which calls for the boycott of all products from the Jewish state. In 2006 Siddiqui was quoted by avowed anti-Semite, Louis Farakhan. Siddiqui has never condemned Farakhan or objected to his words being used to further Farakhan’s extreme agenda.
Designating himself the arbiter of what constitutes a true threat to the Jewish people and what is merely paranoid fantasy, Siddiqui recently said “Unlike Muslims, Jews are very good about protecting themselves against real AND imagined attacks”.
Siddiqui’s M.O. is remarkably consistent. As with Dr. Pipes’ engagement at the UW and in the case of the recent WSHERC luncheon, Siddiqui demanded that the offending organization cancel the speaking engagement or modify the program to his satisfaction. Always included is an implied or in the WSHERC case a stated threat to disrupt the event or bring negative publicity upon the sponsor if his demands are not met.
Siddiqui’s protests seem to carry weight because they are made under the auspices of American Muslims of Puget Sound. The implied clout of a local human rights organization is often sufficient to persuade the targeted organization to acquiesce to Siddiqui’s demands as was the case when the FBI modified their anti-terrorist ad campaign.
On every occasion that Siddiqui has instigated one of his many advocacy campaigns, he has done so as a representative of American Muslims of Puget Sound.
But is AMPS anything more than a fabricated organization that may or may not exist beyond a logo on a letterhead?
According to the Washington State Department of Revenue American Muslims of Puget Sound is not registered as a non-profit (or for profit). As far as we can tell AMPS has no website and no office (other than perhaps one in Siddiqui’s home). The phone number provided on letters from AMPS is Siddiqui’s private cell phone number. There is virtually no mention of AMPS on the web except in direct reference to Siddiqui and his exploits. Siddiqui’s wordpress blog frequently refers to his leadership role in AMPS but there is no hyperlink, no place to make donations, no address or information on how to reach the organization.
This may explain why Siddiqui was only able to muster three equally outraged citizens to protest the WSHERC event.
In a blog post this week Siddiqui laments “Germany, Israel, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Kampuchea, Pakistan, Bahrain, Syria…examples of genocide continue to dog us as we keep repeating the now vacuous, meaningless slogan, never again“. Throwing Israel in with Germany in his list of criminally genocidal nations is the piece de resistance and should be the final epitaph on whatever shred of legitimacy or respectability Siddiqui manages to command.
One determined man with Jews on the mind and a probably imagined organization can indeed intimidate. But those who call his bluff are likely to discover that he is little more than a paper tiger with a disturbing Shoah fixation.
Related articles
- Islamic group disrupts Seattle Holocaust memorial luncheon (The Mike Report)
- Jeff Siddiqui’s Activist Record (Middle East Forum)
I was sent a link to your blog and I was quite surprised by what I read, you have managed to twist everything I wrote on my blog (www.penjihad.com) into an anti-semitic rant.
If you had ever taken the time to ASK me why we demonstrated against the WHERC luncheon, I would have shared my thoughts with you and you might have agreed that the keynote speaker represented a highly anti-Islam organization.
Similarly with your other accusations, but I doubt if you are interested in having your fantasies corrected.
Jeff Siddiqui