OBAMA'S RADICAL PASTOR, JOEL HUNTER

By Theodore Shoebat

To combat the “Muslim Obama” buzz, CNN - in an unbalanced segment - brought Akbar Achmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University and Joel Hunter, Obama's spiritual adviser. While Hunter defends Obama as "definitely a Christian”, the implication is that Time Magazine’s 24% Muslim Obama survey is simply due to public paranoia.

But there are two sides to a story. While Hunter claims that Obama’s “spiritual formation work is simply not public”, suspects wonder as to why His anti-Christian rhetoric is so public? To “Christian” Obama, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount "is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application".

Neither does Obama’s combination burrito God fit the mainstream theology of protestants and Catholics that “All people of faith – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Animists, everyone – know the same God.”

Neither do his pastors Jeremiah Wright or his now defense advocate Joe Hunter fit the bill of the typical American Christian.

Hunter is clearly anti-Israel. On July 29, 2007, the New York Times published a letter that was sent to George W. Bush affirming his "clear call for a two-state solution."

The letter wished for a "creation of a new Palestinian state that includes the vast majority of the West Bank."

But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Hunter displays extreme views that even go further than the typical ones. In an article in the Orlando Sentinel, he even condemned Israel's security fence as having “disrupted the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians and are a major threat to the viability of a future Palestinian state. In the long run, walls and fences and rockets cannot build prosperity or peace."

His partners in bashing Israel were Muhammad Musri, Steven Engel, and Thomas Wenski. Musri, is the president of the The Islamic Society of Central Florida. When Christian convert Rifqa Bary ran away from her Muslim family in order to protect herself from an honor killing, Musri questioned her honesty calling Rifqa "nothing more than a troubled teen" and a "rebellion" caused "by far-right religious groups" to even deny that there’s “no such thing as honor killing in the Koran".

According to the St. Petersburg Times, he declared Arab converts to Christianity were bribed liars “using tales of conversion to get financial backing from evangelical ministries." Musri attended an Islamist event on the theme of "Balancing Civil Liberties and Security" with CAIR members and some of the most extremist Saudi funded Islamists - Zulfiqar Ali Shah of ICNA and MAS and now CEO of the Universal Heritage Foundation in Kissimmee. (1)

Hunter spoke at The Common Word conference sponsored by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal alongside Dr. Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an unindicted co-conspirator with Universal Heritage which gave $12 million to Hamas, the biggest fundraising for Hamas in US history.

A month after 9/11, Mattson described the terrorist Wahhabist ideology as “a reform movement that began 200 years ago to rid Islamic societies of cultural practices and rigid interpretation that they had acquired over the centuries. It really was analogous to the European Protestant Reformation."

In a September 2002 interview with PBS, Mattson stated that she did not see "any difference" between Christian leaders criticizing Islam or al Qaeda on the one hand, and Osama bin Laden citing "Islamic theology to justify violence against Americans" on the other. (2)

Also speaking there was Dr. Aref Ali Nayed. When the pope asked the 9/11 terrorists to convert to Christianity turning "Your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred" Nayed said that there were "genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the Pope's advisers on Islam". (3)

Joel Hunter was even signatory on the Al-Sahafa article, alongside with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of Masjid al-Farah in New York City, supporting the “Arab Peace Initiative", agreed by Yasser Arafat, which called for the complete withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (aka Ground Zero Mosque Imam) is the Muslim peace activist who said that the "United States’ policies were an accessory" to 9/11 because "we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA."

Hunter spoke at The Common Word conference which was sponsored by the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

On October 20, 2009, Rauf and his wife Daisy both received a pledge from Former Muslims United which stated, “we now pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to achieve for former Muslims their unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We claim these rights as the foundation for our right to freedom from Shariah. We urge you to join us.” Neither Rauf nor his wife signed it.

Pastor Joel Hunter never stops talking about peace but yet associates himself with haters of peace.

(1)http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/180
(2) http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9950
(3)http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/04/pope-at-ground-zero-to-call-for-terrorists-to-convert-to-christianity.html