Carol Swain says she supports Hagerty for the U.S. Senate. Meh.
Swain’s endorsement is highly unlikely to convince anyone who hasn’t already decided whether to go with the establishment choice or vote for Dr. Manny.
Actually, Swain hasn’t done Hagerty any great favors by resurrecting Hagerty’s “Samar problem” at the start of early voting.
Early on in the campaign, Hagerty was confronted with questions about his Sharia finance hire. During the 2012 First Tuesday event when Hagerty defended hiring Samar, he described her as having “tremendous credentials, and we are fortunate to have her in our office.” In fact, Hagerty was so committed to keeping Samar on staff, that he refused to accept her proffered resignation.
On the campaign trail, however, Samar became a one-off hire as a way to deflect more troubling questions about why he hired her and how Hagerty used the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development to pay his political IOUs.
Now Carol Swain suggests that Hagerty hired a Samar Ali who was somehow different than the one she became after leaving Hagerty’s department “on less-than-favorable terms.”
Swain’s attempt at spin is laughable and makes Hagerty look incompetent. Samar’s resume which reportedly her father asked Hagerty to review, documented the “tremendous credentials” Hagerty referred to in defense of her hiring.
Among those “tremendous credentials” was Samar’s Sharia finance background and her appointment as an Obama White House fellow.
Let that sink in – a Sharia finance specialist receives an appointment from Obama.
Before the White House fellowship, Samar worked for Hogan Lovells and opened the law firm’s office in the United Arab Emirates. Her firm viewed Sharia finance as “ethically driven” and that “…many eminent Sharia scholars commonly recommend us [Hogan Lovells] to financial institutions that approach them for advice.”
While working for Hogan Lovells, Samar donated $500 to Obama’s 2008 Victory Fund.
The dark side of Sharia compliant finance comes along with “eminent Sharia scholars” who are the determiners of whether any particular financial instrument is sharia compliant. One such “eminent Sharia scholar” is the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi who is credited with characterizing Sharia compliant finance as “jihad with money.”
For unknown reasons, while defending his decision to hire Samar, Hagerty trivialized Sharia finance by comparing it to the Napoleonic code. “Any firms that do a lot of international transactions has someone who can do Sharia compliant finance (SCF). There is nothing sinister about that.” In the same breath, he called the questioning of Samar’s hiring, “bigotry.”
How elitist of Hagerty.
Samar went from Hogan Lovells to the White House fellowship.
Samar’s White House bio and the Global Islamic Finance Magazine touted Samar’s Sharia finance expertise as well as being a “founding member of first U.S delegation to the World Islamic Economic Forum.” The WIEF is where key leaders declared Sharia finance to be “dawa” (proselytizing) activity to promote Islam and Sharia. In addition, Samar’s White House bio noted that she was the “transatlantic liaison for the development of the Palestine Diabetes Institute” a project of the Jerusalem Fund overseen by her father.
Under her father’s leadership, the Jerusalem Fund has become vocally anti-Israel employing executive directors who advocate for Israel’s destruction through the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Hagerty’s statement about Samar’s father passing on her resume does make one wonder how well Hagerty and Samar’s father knew each other.
All this information was either in Samar’s resume or easily know. For whatever reason, Hagerty willingly chose to ignore the red flags. It’s equally disingenuous for Carol Swain to suggest that the information right in front of Hagerty’s face was no reflection on the person he chose to hire.