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Ohio Mosque At Center Of One-Woman Protest Accused Of Muslim Brotherhood Ties

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
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The Ohio mosque at the center of a recent media love fest has been accused of having previous ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S.

The Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio, welcomed a woman holding an anti-Islam sign into its mosque last week, when she showed up to protest outside of the facility. As the cameras rolled, a Muslim woman approached her and hugged her.

Other members of the cultural center offered her breakfast and a tour of the facility, and she accepted. Only offering her first name as “Annie,” the woman, wearing a Green Bay Packers hat and sunglasses, said she drove from Lancaster, Ohio to protest. She departed after watching afternoon prayers, accepting an English Quran and apologizing for her protest, The Washington Post reported.

Cynthia DeBoutinkhar, the member of the Islamic cultural center who gave Annie the hug, described the incident on her Facebook page:

Something came over me and I went up to her and asked if I could give her a hug. I wouldn’t let go of the hug. I felt her body go from tense to soft and I asked her to please come inside with me. She was actually AFRAID! I asked if I look scary to her. She said I didn’t. I promised her I’d stay right by her side the whole time.

When we walked in, me carrying one of her two signs, everyone was waiting for her in the lobby. We all began applauding. I stayed by her side as I promised.

No media outlet has yet confirmed who “Annie” is. A representative for Noor Islamic Cultural Center told The Daily Caller that it did not know Annie’s last name either.

According to various reports from six years ago, a 17-year-old girl fled her Muslim parents, members of the Noor Islamic Cultural Center, when she converted to Christianity.

Fathima Rifqa Barry then accused her parents’ mosque of having terrorist ties, a charge the mosque denied. Barry never went back to her parents in Ohio and went into hiding.

Court documents filed through the young woman’s attorney John Stemberger claimed the religious director and founder of the Noor Center Hany Saqr was a former leader at Omar Ibn El-Khattab Mosque in Columbus. Federal authorities previously charged three men who went to the Omar mosque with terrorist-related crimes between 2003 and 2007.

Saqr told the AP that he was never a full-time leader at the Columbus mosque and only led prayers there as a student. Saqr was reportedly quoted as being a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

Additionally, U.S. Islamic Cleric Salah Soltan, also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was described in court documents as Noor Islamic Center’s “de facto resident scholar.” During a December 2008 interview on the Egyptian TV network al-Nas, Soltan called for the murder of Jews, and said that the “U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust.”

By March of this year, Soltan was sentenced to hang by Egyptian authorities after being found guilty on charges of inciting murder.