- Daughter of Saleha
Mahmood Abedin, a pro-Sharia sociologist with ties to numerous Islamist
organizations including the Muslim
Brotherhood
- Longtime assistant to Hillary Clinton
- Wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner
- Longtime former employee of the Institute of Muslim Minority
Affairs, which shares the Muslim Brotherhood's goal of establishing
Islamic supremacy and Sharia Law worldwide
See also: Saleha Abedin Hassan
Abedin Anthony
Weiner
Institute
of Muslim Minority Affairs Hillary Clinton
Huma
Abedin was born in 1976 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her father, Syed
Abedin (1928-1993), was an Indian-born scholar who had worked as a
visiting professor at Saudi
Arabia's King Abdulaziz University
in the early Seventies. Huma's mother, Saleha
Mahmood Abedin, is a sociologist with ties to numerous Islamist
organizations including the Muslim
Brotherhood, and is known
for her strong advocacy of Sharia Law.
When
Huma was two, the
Abedin family relocated from Michigan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This
move took place when Abdullah
Omar Naseef, then-vice president of Abdulaziz University (AU), recruited
his former AU colleague, Zyed Abedin, to work for the
Institute
of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA),
a
Saudi-based Islamic think tank that Naseef was preparing to
launch. A number of years later, Naseef would develop close ties to Osama bin Laden and the terrorist group al Qaeda.
It is vital to note that IMMA's "Muslim Minority Affairs"
agenda was, and remains to this day, a calculated foreign
policy of the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs, designed, as journalist Andrew C. McCarthy explains, "to grow an unassimilated, aggressive population of
Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the
character of the West." For details about this agenda, click here.
At
age 18, Huma Abedin returned to the U.S. to attend George Washington
University. In 1996 she began working as an intern in the Bill Clinton White
House, where she was assigned to then-First Lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton.
Abedin was eventually
hired as an aide to Mrs. Clinton and has worked for her ever since,
through Clinton's successful Senate runs (in 2000 and 2006) and her
failed presidential bid in 2008.
From 1997 until sometime before early 1999, while still interning at the White House, Abedin was an executive board member of George Washington
University's (GWU) Muslim Students Association (MSA), heading the organization's “Social Committee.”
It is noteworthy that in 2001-02, soon after Abedin left that executive board, the chaplain and "spritual guide" of GWU's MSA was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al Qaeda operative who ministered to some of the men who were among the 9/11 hijackers. Another chaplain at GWU's MSA (from at least October 1999 through April 2002) was Mohamed Omeish, who headed
the International Islamic Relief Organization, which has been tied to
the funding of al Qaeda. Omeish’s brother, Esam, headed the Muslim
American Society, the Muslim Brotherhood’s quasi-official
branch in the United States. Both Omeish brothers were closely associated with Abdurahman Alamoudi, who would later be convicted and incarcerated on terrorism charges.
From
1996-2008, Abedin
was employed by IMMA as the assistant editor of its in-house publication, the Journal
of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA). The
first seven of those years overlapped
with the al Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Omar Naseef's active presence at
IMMA. Abedin's last six years at the Institute (2002-2008) were spent as
a JMMA editorial
board member; for
one of those years, 2003, Naseef and Abedin served
together on that board.
Throughout her years with IMMA, Abedin remained a close aide to Hillary
Clinton. During Mrs. Clinton's 2008 presidential primary campaign, a New
York Observer
profile of Abedin described her as "a trusted
advisor to Mrs. Clinton, especially on issues pertaining to the
Middle East, according to a number of Clinton associates." "At meetings
on the region," continued the profile, "... Ms. Abedin’s perspective is always sought
out."
When Mrs. Clinton was appointed as President
Barack
Obama's Secretary of State in 2009, Abedin became her
deputy chief of staff. At approximately that same point in time, Abedin's
name was removed from the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs' masthead.
Apart from their working relationship, Abedin and Mrs. Clinton have also developed a
close personal bond over their years together, as reflected in Clinton's 2010 assertion
that: “I
have one daughter. But if I had a second daughter, it would [be]
Huma.” In 2011, Secretary
Clinton paid a friendly visit to Abedin's mother, Saleha, in Saudi Arabia. On that occasion,
Mrs. Clinton publicly described her aide's position as “very
important and sensitive.”
On
July 10, 2010, Huma Abedin, a practicing
Muslim, married then-congressman Anthony
Weiner in
a ceremony officiated
by former president Bill
Clinton. A
number of analysts have noted
that it is extremely rare for Islamic women—particularly those whose families have
ties to the Muslim Brotherhood—to marry non-Muslims like Weiner, who is Jewish. Indeed, Dr.
Anwar Shoeb, the
highest-ranking faculty authority at the prestigious College
of Sharia
and Islamic
Studies in Kuwait, formally declared
that Abedin's marriage to Weiner was “null
and void” under the dictates of Sharia Law, which explicitly forbids
matrimony between a Muslim woman and an "infidel"; in fact, Shoeb classified the Abedin-Weiner union as a form of “adultery.”
Abedin went on maternity leave after giving birth to a baby boy in early December 2011. When
she returned to work in June 2012, the State Department granted her an
arrangement that allowed her to do outside consulting work as
a “special government employee,” even as she remained a top
advisor in the Department. Abedin did not disclose on her financial report either the
arrangement or the $135,000
she earned from it, in violation of a law mandating
that public officials disclose significant sources of income. Abedin's outside clients included the State Department, Hillary
Clinton, the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and Teneo (a firm
co-founded by Doug Band, a former counselor for Bill Clinton). Good-government groups warned of the potential conflict-of-interest inherent in an arangement where a government employee maintains private
clients.
In June
2012, five
Republican lawmakers (most prominently, Michele Bachmann) sent
letters
to the inspectors general at the Departments of Homeland Security,
Justice, and State, asking that they investigate whether the Muslim
Brotherhood was gaining undue influence over U.S. government
officials. One letter, noting that Huma Abedin's position with Hillary Clinton "affords her
routine access to the secretary [of state] and to policymaking,"
expressed concern over the fact that Abedin
“has three family members—her late father, mother and her
brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or
organizations.” Some other prominent Republicans such as John
McCain and John Boehner disavowed
the concerns articulated in the letters.
On February 1, 2013—Hillary Clinton's final day as Secretary of State—Abedin resigned her post as Mrs. Clinton's deputy chief of staff.
On March 1, 2013, Abedin was tapped
to run Clinton’s post-State Department transition
team, comprised of
a six-person “transition office” located in Washington.
Huma Abedin's
brother, Hassan
Abedin, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and is currently an associate
editor with the JMMA. Huma's sister, Heba Abedin (formerly known as “Heba A. Khaled”), is an assistant editor with JMMA as well. Indeed, she served alongside Huma prior to the latter's departure.
|