Huma Abedin has been Hillary Clinton’s closest aide for 20 years and currently serves as vice chairwoman of Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, but not much is known about Hillary's “notoriously private” right-hand woman.
Abedin has been thrust into the limelight after more emails from Clinton’s private server were discovered by the FBI on Abedin’s estranged husband and former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop during an investigation into his sexting scandals.
Despite being off the campaign trail for a week due to this situation, Abedin could have a monumental role in the White House -- possibly even as chief of staff -- if Clinton is elected. So let’s dig deeper and find out just who Huma Abedin really is.
1. Huma Abedin Ran a Muslim Brotherhood-Affiliated Student Group.
Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to Muslim Pakistani parents. When she was two years old, she and her family moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she lived for 16 years before moving back to the U.S. for college at the age of 18. She began school at George Washington University in 1994.
During her time there, she became an executive board member of the Muslim Student Association, a group with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood here in the U.S.
Patrick Poole, a terrorism expert who investigated the MSA, told CBN news in 2011, "The Muslim Students Association has been a virtual terror factory. Time after time after time again, we see these terrorists -- and not just fringe members: these are MSA leaders, MSA presidents, MSA national presidents -- who've been implicated, charged and convicted in terror plots."
Just two years after Abedin left the MSA, Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic preacher to 9/11 hijackers, became chaplain of the same student organization at GWU.
2. Abedin interned at the White House while working for her family’s radical Muslim publication.
In 1996, after living in the country for just two years, Abedin was hired as an intern at the White House and assigned to then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. That same year, Abedin began working at her family’s business called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, started by her father Syed Abedin, a devout Muslim and advocate of sharia law.
According to the New York Post, the journal is known for opposing women’s rights and blaming the U.S. for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Abedin’s name was listed as an editor on the periodical from 1996 to 2008. Her name was taken off the list of editors when she began working for Clinton and the State Department.
Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the Post after the Post published its story in August, “My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period. She did not play a role in editing at the publication.”
Abedin’s brother, Hassan, is a book-review editor at the journal. Her sister, Heba, is an assistant editor, while her mother, Saleha Abedin, is currently editor-in-chief of the publication.
Examples of Saleha’s articles include one from 1996, when she wrote that Hillary Clinton promoted a “very aggressive and radically feminist” agenda that was not in accordance with Islam because it empowered women, claiming that “'Empowerment’ of women does more harm than benefit the cause of women or their relations with men.”
Saleha also wrote in a 2002 issue of the JMMA that the U.S. was to be blamed for 9/11 for their “injustices and sanctions.” An excerpt for her article reads:
The spiral of violence having continued unabated worldwide, and widely seen to be allowed to continue, was building up intense anger and hostility within the pressure cooker that was kept on a vigorous flame while the lid was weighted down with various kinds of injustices and sanctions…It was a time bomb that had to explode and explode it did on September 11, changing in its wake the life and times of the very community and the people it aimed to serve.”
Saleha Abedin happens to be a leading figure in the Muslim Sisterhood, the female division of the Muslim Brotherhood. She is a sharia activist that has translated and edited a book entitled, "Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations." The book includes 22 citations from Qutb, a Muslim who has inspired terror organizations like Al-Qaeda for violence against non-Muslims. The book supports a number of radical Islamic ideas, including the mutilation of female genitals, the murder of those who leave the Islamic religion, and the stoning of adulterers.
The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs repeatedly cites and approves ideas from thought leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood including Qaradawi and Sayyid Qutb.
The New York Post noted in August that Saleha is being paid by the Saudi government to spread sharia law in non-Muslim countries like the U.S.
Find excerpts and analysis of Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations right here.
3. Abedin was accused in 2012 of having ties to Muslim extremists.
Five Republican members of Congress sent a letter to the State Dept. Inspector General on June 13, 2012, claiming that Huma Abedin had “immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations,” one of which was the Muslim Brotherhood. The letter stated that she “has three family members—her late father, her mother and her brother—connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the secretary and to policymaking.”
The letter notes that the Muslim Brotherhood’s stated purpose, as established in U.S. court, is “destroying the Western civilization from within.”
Republicans who signed the letter included Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), and Rep. Thomas Rooney (R-Fla.).
The letter was generally rejected and condemned after being disavowed by Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). For his part, Boehner said, “I don’t know Huma. But from everything that I do know of her, she has a sterling character, and I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) also refuted the allegations saying he didn’t know Abedin, but heard she is “a professional and hardworking patriotic American who loves her country.”
Exactly one year later, on June 13, 2013, the same date the original letter was sent, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry inquiring about Abedin’s activity. He made no mention of Abedin’s alleged ties to Islamic terror groups, but asked a number of questions surrounding her activity as a “special government employee." The title was new for her, changed from “Deputy Chief of Staff” in June 2012 around the same time as Bachmann’s original letter was sent, according to the New York Times. The new title freed her from the obligation of disclosing her private financial earnings.
In the 2013 letter, Grassley acknowledges that one of Abedin’s clients included a global strategic consulting firm known as Teneo. He then writes:
It has been reported that Ms. Abedin earned approximately $135,000 from the State Department while receiving $355,000 in consulting income for representing outside clients, as she remained a Federal employee and a trusted advisor to Secretary Clinton. This raises important questions about whether her dual role was adequately disclosed to government officials who may have provided her information without realizing that she was being paid by private investors to gather information.
Grassley then asks a list of 18 questions about Abedin, including,
When did Ms. Abedin change her status to “special government employee”?
Who supervised Ms. Abedin once she assumed her position as a SGE?
What effect, if any, did the change have on her security clearance and her access to classified information?
For what companies, through Teneo, did Ms. Abedin consult?
What steps were taken to assure there would be no conflicts of interest between Ms. Abedin’s work with the State Department and any clients of Teneo with whom she consulted?
Grassley gave a June 27 deadline for John Kerry to reply, which came and went as both Kerry and Abedin ignored his inquiries.
4. The Abedin family business and the Muslim World League have the same exact address.
Which is: 46 Goodge Street, London, WIT 4LU, U.K.
The address is publicly listed to both Huma Abedin’s family business as well as the Saudi-funded Muslim World League, which was reported by Newsweek to have been one of two organizations used by Osama Bin Laden to finance his operations. The Muslim World League has long been known to funnel money to Al Qaeda, as confirmed in a Harper’s magazine article from 2005.
Click here to see the address for the Muslim World League on their official website. And click here to see the same address listed for the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, Abedin's family-owned business. In plain sight.
5. Abdullah Omar Nasseef — the former secretary general of the Muslim World League and funder of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda — co-started Huma Abedin’s family business with her father, Syed.
Abdullah Omar Nasseef co-started the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs with Syed Abedin, Huma’s father in 1979. Nasseef was Chairman of the IMMA, the Abedin family business, for seven of the 12 years Huma Abedin spent working there. Nasseef served as the Muslim World League's Secretary General for a decade, beginning in 1983. The U.S. State Dept. found Nasseef guilty of funding Al-Qaeda terrorism.
If Huma Abedin's connections to these Islamic extremists seem wildly suspicious, it’s because they are. At the very least, this information raises major red flags. Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin have never come forward with any information -- nor answered any questions -- relating to these suspicions, largely because they haven’t been asked. If the media would do their job and simply ask, maybe, just maybe, we might get some answers.