Kamal Saleem is a board membeer of Former Muslims United.
On February 19, 2008, the Village Voice reported, “Kamal Saleem, whose real name is Khodor Shami, worked for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for sixteen years, and was hired by Focus on the Family in 2003. In 2006, he launched Koome Ministries, whose mission is to “expose the true agenda of [Muslims] who would deceive our nation and the free nations of the world… America must wake-up and set a continued Christian agenda of Liberty and Truth as a standard to follow throughout the free world.”
His bizarre claim that “in my family was the Grand Wazir of Islam” prompted Calvin College history professor Douglas Howard to investigate Saleem’s background. [NOTE: The title “Grand Wazir of Islam” has never existed.] “I concluded this person is a fraud,” explained Howard after his investigation into Saleem’s claims. Howard says Saleem “preys on people’s lack of information and their worries and their fears and their wanting to find a way to justify their own attitudes toward Islam and Middle East policy.”
Saleem’s claims to being a former terrorist have similarly been debunked. As one example, in 2012 Tim Murphy reported in Mother Jones, “Saleem claims that local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have ‘reached out’ to him to learn about ‘the Islamist mindset and tactics'”. But Kathleen Wright, an FBI spokeswoman, says she has “no information that Kamal Saleem has spoken at an FBI-sponsored event.”
In October 2012, Right Wing Watch posted a video of Saleem and noted that in that video, “Saleem alleged that Obama’s top speech writer and Sasha and Malia’s babysitter are both Islamic fundamentalists that are wielding secret power. ‘The right-hand of our President today, his name is Hasan Rashad, and he is sworn to destroy the United States of America,’ Saleem said (possibly referring to the White House’s representative to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Rashad Hussain), ‘our President’s babysitter wears abaya and keffiyeh just like those ninjas, you don’t see her face everything is covered, that’s the babysitter of his children.'”
Similarly, in January 2013, Right Wing Watch posted video of Salaam bizarrely claiming that a UN Resolution “will subjugate American people to be arrested and put to jail and their churches and synagogues shut down.” Salaam claims this resolution will affect America “as early as January.”
