- Khaled Saffuri
Khaled Saffuri is an Arab-American political activist, and the co-founder (with
Grover Norquist ) of theIslamic Free Market Institute .Background
Brought up as a stateless exile in Kuwait, [ [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_2004_March_1/ai_113363777 Saffuri's Ties to Terror Suspects; Is Khaled Saffuri, a prominent Palestinian activist with connections to terror suspects, exerting undue influence on the Bush administration, or is he getting a bad rap? - Special Report | Insight on the News | Find Articles at BNET.com ] ] Saffuri came to U.S. a student in 1982, and started college in San Diego, eventually receiving a bachelors degree in Business Administration and a Masters degree in Management Science from the
University of Redlands , California.Career
Saffuri moved to Washington, DC in 1987 to work as Development Director with the
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee , a civil rights group founded by former US SenatorJames Abourezk In 1990, he joined theNational Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA) and served as an Assistant Executive Director until September 1993.Saffuri was Executive Director of
American Task Force for Bosnia (ATFB), an organization he established in December 1992 to consolidate efforts among mainstream Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other ethnic organizations in the United States to end the conflict in Bosnia. Saffuri was also the director for government affairs for the American Muslim Council from September 1995 until December 1997.In the 1990s Suffuri was also an executive directory of the
American Muslim Council (AMC).Saffuri was a partner in a Jack Abermoff firm known as The Lexington Group where they lobbied for Islamic Banks.
Islamic Free Market Institute
In 1997 Saffuri, along with
Grover Norquist , one of the most politically-connected Republican lobbyists, founded theIslamic Free Market Institute (often called simply the Islamic Institute) to build Republican support among Muslim Americans. The Institute operates out of the headquarters of Norquist'sAmericans for Tax Reform . [New Republic, 11/1/2001] The start-up money largely comes from Middle Eastern sources. Saffuri’s former boss at the AMC American Muslim Council,Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi , gives at least $35,000. TheSafa Trust donates at least $35,000, and theInternational Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) contributes $11,000. Both organizations are part of the SAAR group and are among the organizations that were subject to a spectacular March, 2002 raid under the auspices ofOperation Green Quest .References
External links
* [http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=khaled_saffuri CooperativeResearch - Khaled Saffuri]
* [http://www.namebase.org/xrut/Khaled-Saffuri.html NameBase - SAFFURI KHALED]
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