In February 2010, Obama named Patel to his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Patel, a Muslim activist from Chicago, is the founder and executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core, which says it promotes pluralism by teaming people of different faiths on service projects.
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In an October 2009 article in a Newtopia Magazine, a liberal cultural publication, Obama's faith adviser made the controversial comparison. The article was adapted from the text of a speech given by Patel to the Interfaith Education for a Global Society Conference in New York City in January 2002.
Stated Patel: "The problem is that we live in a time when the Muslim totalitarians are dominating. Why? Because they are building powerful institutions that propagate their interpretation of Islam – just as the Christian totalitarians in America have powerful institutions; and the Jewish totalitarians in Israel have powerful institutions; and the Hindu totalitarians in India have powerful institutions.
"What do I mean by institutions?" asked Patel. "Lobbying groups that pass policies, political organizations that get people elected, television and radio and magazines and publishing houses which articulate ideas, schools and universities, youth organizations and women's groups, bodies which raise and distribute money."
Patel then stated, "Al-Qaida is a network of institutions. Schools and mosques which teach 8-year-olds a certain ideology; organizations which lead them to Afghanistan; training camps which make them soldiers; manuals which offer advice on the prayers to whisper while engaging in violence. The religious identity – which is to say, the ways of being, believing and belonging in relation with the transcendent – of too many young Muslims is being shaped by these institutions."
Patel explained his reference to Christian "totalitarianism" stems from a piece by New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Thomas Friedman who wrote that World War III will be fought against "religious totalitarianism."
"Religious totalitarianism is not just the belief that one religion is right," added Patel, "but also that there is only one correct interpretation of that religion and everyone should practice it or else."
Patel failed to explain that so-called Muslim totalitarians, like al-Qaida, use terrorism to spread their belief system.
American freedom, equality are just 'myths'
The Obama faith adviser recently has made other controversial remarks.
WND reported last week Patel blasted what he called the "myths" of America – describing them as beliefs that the country is "a land of freedom and equality and justice."
Patel explained how he used the "faith-based movement" to channel his rage at America "in a direction far more compassionate and far more merciful."
Patel further implied that had he grown up in the 1960s, he may have joined the Weather Underground terrorist group led by William Ayers.
Like Obama, Patel is deeply tied to Ayers.
In a 2007 interview with NPR to promote a book he wrote that year, Patel was asked about his "affinity" toward the radicalism of Ayers, as described in the book.
Patel replied that his own life story "is much closer to Bill Ayers," explaining he "grew up in the same hometown" that Ayers did.
Continued Patel: "I was kind of taught the same myths about America, a land of freedom and equality and justice, et cetera, et cetera."
"And then, when I got to college, I saw people eating out of garbage cans for dinner, and I saw Vietnam vets drinking mouthwash for the alcohol, and I thought to myself, this is not the myth that I grew up with. And, in a way, I was so, I think, immature at that time politically, that all I could do was rage."
Patel explained how he used religion to channel his rage toward America.
"And it was a faith-based movement that came into my life that kind of directed that rage in a direction far more compassionate and far more merciful."
Obama's faith adviser went on to say how he may have joined Ayers' terrorist group if he was around as an activist in the 1960s.
"One of the things that I write about in this book is, you know, had it been one of the people involved in the Weather Underground, who were sitting at my kitchen table when I was 18 years old and raging, my life could have been very different," he said.
"That I really thank God that it was a set of people who came into my life with a very clear vision of justice. But a sense of justice emanating from Divine Mercy."
Patel has a much deeper relationship with Ayers than he admitted in the NPR interview.
In 2005, he co-authored a book with Ayers' adopted son, Chesa Boudin.
The book, "Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out," was co-written by several young radicals, including Ismail Khalidi, the son of Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi.
WND was first to report on Obama's close relationship with Khalidi, who has been tied to the Palestinian Liberation Organization and who has described Israel as a "racist" state with an "apartheid" system.
The preface of Patel's 2005 book, meanwhile, was written by Ayers' wife, Weather Underground co-founder Bernardine Dohrn.
Dohrn describes the book as "a clarion call of hope, defiance, critical analysis, humor, irony, and self-conscious insistence that the queer, the Palestinian, the immigrant, the privileged, the children of prisoners and hip-hopsters have arrived."
The back cover of the book boasts an endorsement from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop-killer and former member of the Black Panther Party.
On the acknowledgments page, Patel and co-authors thank Ayers himself for "guidance" and "encouragement."
Hamas co-conspirator
Patel is part of the official speaker's bureau of the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas.
From his own comments, Patel apparently is a member of ISNA. Upon the August 2007 election of the group's president, Ingrid Mattson, Patel told USA Today, "I'm proud to have her elected as my president."
Patel also served last year on a panel at ISNA's annual convention in Washington.
He has written columns for the Washington Post and Huffington Post that promote ISNA events.
Ground Zero mosque
Patel is also tied to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the controversial Islamic leader behind the proposed $100 million, 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks.
Rauf wrote the afterword to Patel's 2006 book, "Building the Interfaith Youth Movement: Beyond Dialogue to Action."
Patel is listed as one of 15 "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow" on the website for the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which is led by Rauf.
In Patel's 2007 book, "Saving Each Other, Saving Ourselves," he recounts discussing with Rauf the future of Islam in the U.S.
Rauf "understood the vision immediately and suggested that I visit him and his wife, Daisy Khan, at their home the following evening," Patel recalled.
Khan founded the society with her husband and has aided him in his plans for the mosque near Ground Zero.
"The living room of their apartment on the Upper West Side was set up like a mosque, with prayer rugs stretched from wall to wall," wrote Patel in his book.
Continued Patel: "I arrived at dusk, prayed the maghrib prayer with Daisy and Imam Feisal and then talked with them about how America, with its unique combination of religious devotion and religious diversity, was the ideal place for a renewal of Islam.
"In the 20th century, Catholicism and Judaism underwent profound transformations in America," Patel observed. "I think, this century, in America, Islam will do the same."
'Critical mass' of Muslims in U.S.
"Islam is a religion that has always been revitalized by its migration," Patel wrote. "America is a nation that has been constantly rejuvenated by immigrants. There is now a critical mass of Muslims in America."
Patel last March wrote a Huffington Post piece referring to Obama's former "green jobs" czar Van Jones as a "faith hero."
"In my last post on Van, I called him an American patriot," wrote Patel. "That is high praise in my book. But watching Van's speech at the NAACP, I have another title for him, one that I reserve for the true giants of history. Van Jones is a faith hero."
Jones resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. Jones also called for "resistance" against the U.S.
Jones previously stated his advocacy for green jobs was part of a broader movement to destroy the U.S. capitalist system.
WND reported that one day after the Sept. 11 attacks, Jones led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as with what he called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world.
With research by Brenda J. Elliott
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