Federal Judge allows California Imam with suspected links to Hezbollah back into US despite Homeland Security objections.
Nabi Raza Mir (a.k.a. Nabi Raza Abidi)is the Imam of The Shia Association of the Bay Area (SABA) Mosque, an Islamic center located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California. SABA’s leadership has been known to endorse the anti-American Khomeinist regime in Iran and the activities of the Lebanon-based international terrorist group Hezbollah.
The Northern California mosque’s previous imam, a man named Rafic Labboun, is currently in US prison for credit card fraud that may be linked to fund-raising activities by Hezbollah for money raised in the United States for use abroad as a part of the terrorist group’s activities. Nabi Raza Mir, who has been Labboun’s replacement since 2002, but is not yet a US citizen, left the US temporarily with his family late December, 2010 allegedly to visit his sick mother, but was denied admittance back into the US for his return by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The United States Government did this ostensibly because of his open ties and support of the Khomeini regime in Iran.
So, does Nabi Raza Mir really pose a threat to national security?
It is important to understand where this mullah comes from and the movement he and his relatives spouse from the SABA Islamic Center. Mir’s first permanent residence petition (an I-360 document in U.S. Immigration parlance) was filed by the Shia Association of the Bay Area in 2004 and was repeatedly denied up to as late as December 2006 under the Bush administration. A second I-360 petition to grant him permanent US residence was applied for by SABA back in June of 2007, one year before President Obama took office and was denied in November of that same year. An appeal was filed by SABA and after wending its way through the US courts for three years (Mir was still practicing as the imam and running his business in the Silicon Valley Mosque during this whole time) it was denied in 2011 under the new Obama Administration. If the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the Obama Administration also felt he was a security risk, there must have been more to this cleric than meets the eye. In fact, part of this denial was based on new anti-terrorism laws designed to keep individuals with potential terrorism links out of the United States.
Needless to say, Attorney General Eric Holder’s passion for wanting to get the Gitmo detainees released should suggest that if even he also wants Mir kept out of the country there must be a good reason for it. As mentioned, Mir comes from a remote village in India called Alipur that is a Khomeinist stronghold with strong allegiances to the Iranian regime. He has been staying there pending his legal appeals along with his wife, Gulshan Zahera, and their three younger sons who were also named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the US government. Judge Jeremy Fogel handed down a stipulation agreed to by Mir’s lawyers and US Attorney Melissa S. Liebman just a few days ago that will allow the Khomeinist mullah and his family to come back to California.
The Shia Association of the Bay Area is also working hard behind the scenes to try to get Rafic Labboun released early from prison. That the Shiite Mosque would seek to import another impassioned Hezbollah activist and supporter of the Iranian regime should be alarming enough, but their attempts to release a convicted man, a criminal, with links to a terrorist organization reveal motives that go against the security of every American. Members of the Mosque even distributed a music video calling for Labboun’s release with an image of an armed Malcolm X in the visuals that is very disturbing.
The original lawsuit seeking to allow Nabi Raza Mir back into the United States was filed by the Mosque with the help of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), according to the Mosque’s website. CAIR has been accused of being a Hamas front by members of Congress and is mainly Sunni Moslem inspired. Sunnis and Shiites, as two different sects of Islam do not normally agree, but have been cooperating together in this case because of their mutual animus toward Israel and against the United States.
The legal case was filed as a writ of mandamus, a specific lawsuit that seeks to have government ministers or officials adhere to strict interpretations of the law to fulfill specific functions. In this case, Nabi Raza Mir and his family, it was alleged, were being prevented from returning to the US based on new anti-terrorism laws that Homeland Security sought to use to keep the imam out of the US as a security threat. However, the lawyers for Mir successfully argued that this clergyman should be subject to laws as they were written at the time Mir applied for residency in the United States. Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed with San Francisco attorneys Christine Brigagliano and Marc Vanderhout, both immigration attorneys from the firm representing SABA Mosque, that such was the case.
It should come as no surprise that Mr. Vanderhout and Ms. Brigagliano, Nabi Raza Mir’s attorneys, are both members, and Vanderhout has even been a past president of, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), a radical legal organization some historians have stated was originally started in the 1930’s by Josef Stalin to shield the American communist party from investigations by the US government. The NLG has in the past been described as a subversive organization by authorities within the US government and the organization currently throws its support behind Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas and is an integral part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a communist-anarchist front for the Palestinian revolution. The legal organization is even mentioned in ISM training manuals as a resource to be used to help bring down Israel.
The National Lawyers Guild makes as its purpose to support America’s enemies within US borders, so Vanderhout’s and Brigagliano’s affiliations with the organization should come as no surprise. This makes sense since as one prominent NLG member and Rutgers University School of Law Professor Arthur Kinoy has argued that “the role of the radical lawyer was to facilitate the coming anti-capitalist revolution by weakening the law’s ability to function effectively against law-breaking radicals.” The two attorneys representing Nabi Raza Mir and his family held that Homeland Security’s concerns for the safety of US citizens should not be enforceable based on newer counter terrorism laws because he wasn’t considered a security threat before. Judge Jeremy Fogel apparently agreed.
Sajjad Mir, another individual from the same clan as Nabi Raza Mir, is the Chairman of the Shia Association of the Bay Area and the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Hastest Solutions, Inc., with offices located in the same building as the Mosque in an industrial area of San Jose, California. Hastest Solutions tests the viability of products and systems of other companies and has even been involved with high security U.S. military weapons systems produced by the Raytheon Corporation. A similar case involving businesses owned by individuals who support regimes that suborn terrorism having access to sensitive government groups or projects within the US involved the SAAR Foundation prosecutions where supporters of Al Qaeda held religious offices and private businesses also in the same buildings in Northern Virginia. The difference this time, is that while the SAAR Foundation was made up of Sunni Moslems who were supporters of Hamas and Al Qaeda, some who developed relationships in the US government and FBI , the SABA Mosque is open in its support of the Shia Moslems in Iran and of Khomeini’s revolutionary government that declares the United States the “Great Satan” and Israel as the “Minor Satan.” Terrorism support entities when ultimately proven and prosecuted in the US usually follow the same patterns of behavior, infiltration, indoctrination and subversion. In the event the US goes to war with Iran, there certainly could be the possibility of some individuals indoctrinated by the SABA Mosque’s leadership joining internal cadres in the US to attack from within. Loyalty to the US is totally absent at SABA Mosque, but allegiance to the regime of Ali Khameini in Iran exists there. Reverend Jeremiah Wright isn’t the only religious leader who refuses to say, “God Bless America.”
According to a news flash on the SABA Mosque’s website newsletter , “Our beloved Leader/Imam Maulana Nabi Raza Mir (Abidi), was unfairly forced to stay in India by US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while he was visiting his critically ill mother. SABA is filing a case in the district court to order DHS to allow him to return home to be with his family and the community.”
Speaking of family, the main allies of Nabi Raza Mir in the SABA Mosque back in Alipur are his relatives with the same physical traits and political points of view. Arecent video that appears on You Tube featured one of Mir’s close relatives in Alipur giving an inflammatory speech in support of the Ali Khameini regime in Iran and screaming “Kaybar, Kaybar, Ya Yahud!” an exhortation to exterminate the Jews referring to a historical passage in the Koran where Mohammed wiped out a Jewish community and beheaded its male population. The speaker in the video is Qayeem Abbas who is another imam in Alipur and a family relative of Mir’s. Another Toronto-based imam under the watch of Canadian intelligence and known Hezbollah sympathizer, Zaki Baqri, is also related to Mir. All these men are members of the so-called “Sadat” caste as recognized back in Alipur, which openly seeks to dominate and rule the world and sees it as their right to do so. Both mullahs carry the titles “Syed” (Arabic/Persian/Urdu for “master”) and “Maulana” (Arabic for “our lord”) as evidenced the Mosque’s newsletter. In this bizarre system, there are two classes of people: Masters and non-masters. So if these are the masters, what are they teaching the non-masters in their holy mosques to think and do?
The You Tube video, shot in Alipur that is not in English, also ends with Mir’s relations calling for the destruction of America as the Great Satan and “Death to Israel” as the Lesser Satan. It should be noted there are no Jews living in Alipur where this demonstration took place, that the call to exterminate Jews is in following with the Khomeinist regime’s programming from Tehran. Religious leaders from the SABA Mosque have been reported to have made comments disparaging of Christians and Jews at times during sermons and invitations for religious speakers who are known to be virulently anti-Semitic are the norm. Some of these have includedAbdul Malik Ali, an imam from Oakland who calls for genocide against Jews on US campuses such as UC Irvine, as well as Abdul Alim Musa, a former Oakland drug lord turned Shiite Imam who converted in prison and who has stated his goal is to instill a Khomeinist regime as found in Iran here in the United States.
Nabi Raza Mir, while practicing as the imam at the SABA Mosque, before leaving for Alipur, also had expressed praise and regret at the passing of Mullah Sayyed Fallalah who was credited with ordering the bombing of the US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, costing the lives of over 241 US military personnel in what many consider to be the major first terror attack assignment by Hezbollah. At political and religious events in the San Jose area, SABA Mosque leaders have been photographed frequently wearing the paraphernalia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps or of the Basij, both the military wings and enforcers of the dictatorial regime in Iran. Average Americans do not understand the symbolism of Basij scarves or keffiyehs or may think they represent the Palestinian evolution. But many exiled Iranians do know their meaning as identifiers of the secret police back in Iran or Hezbollah.
Dearborn, Michigan, is no longer the only most major center of Hezbollah activity in the United States; Nabi Raza Mir arrived back in the US on April 25th to be hosted at a special reception at the SABA Mosque on Thursday, April 28th as San Jose which now vows for that same distinction.