The saga of the duplicitous Cleveland imam continues. After imam Fawaz Damra of the Islamic Center of Cleveland was charged with federal terror-related crimes on Tuesday morning, his mosque voted to retain him Tuesday night:

But the meeting was rancorous, according to sources, and some mosque members are urging their leadership to find a way to remove Damra soon.

"I believe I speak for the educated, silent majority when I say it's time to ask Imam Damra to re sign," said Walid Dardir, who de scribes Damra as a friend and mentor.

Dardir, the contracting manager for Cuyahoga County, said Damra's increasing notoriety is hurting all Arab-Americans.

"It's not about whether he's right or wrong," he said. "It's about moving forward, for the betterment of our community. It's time to ask him to resign." [Cleveland.com]

Given all he has dragged them through, this seems logical to me. But it also IS about whether he is right or wrong, and any objected look at the evidence would seem to indicate WRONG.

Arab-American groups that had stood with Damra kept a wider distance Tuesday.

The local American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee issued a statement saying only: "We really do not know the exact details of what happened. We only hope that due process will be followed."

That sounds like washing their hands and feet of him.

Two new stories in the Cleveland Plain Dealer today - Amanda Garrett:

Far beyond the shattered glass and bloody bodies, across a desert and vast ocean, it started with a Cleveland dollar.

....Federal investigators say the Cleveland money was mixed with donations from across the country and ultimately ended up in Israel, where it paid for suicide bombers who blew up themselves and scores of Jews on buses, on streets and in cafes.

The charity, it turned out, was merely a front for Hamas, the largest of the Palestinian terror groups, investigators said, and the widows and orphans were the families of suicide bombers.

....it might be his connection to three of the most significant terror-funding investigations in the United States that most interests the government, said Tally Aharony, an analyst with the Investigative Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

"Damra is a known fund-raiser in these circles, and they probably want to know what he knows," Aharony said.

Damra is connected directly to the cases of Sami Al-Arian in Florida and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Texas, and indirectly to a third, the Safa Group in Virginia, because it connects Al-Arian to the Holy Land Foundation.

Investigators say that Al-Arian is the North American chief of Islamic Palestinian Jihad and that the Holy Land Foundation is a front for Hamas. The Safa Group has helped both, investigators said, funneling more than $50 million out of the country for unknown purposes.

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