News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Ten days after the announcement of his appointment as Barack Obama's campaign coordinator for Muslim affairs, Chicago lawyer Mazen Ashabi resigned, saying he didn't want investigations into his past associations to become "distracting", according to a report by WorldNetDaily.

Mazen Asbahi's connections to Jamal Said, a man believed by the US Department of Justice to be a racketeer and fundraiser for the Muslim jihad organization, Hamas, were revealed early last week in a report by the Internet newsletter Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report which was picked up by the Wall Street Journal.

According to WorldNetDaily, two Detroit Free Press articles last week reported that on the day of Asbahi's appointment to Obama's campaign, Asbahi went to a fundraiser at the home of Dr. Jukaku Tayeb, president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization which has also been accused of fundraising for Hamas.  Asbahi was also tied to Jamal Said, imam at a radical Muslim mosque in Illinois.  When the Wall Street Journal questioned Asbahi about his connections to Said, Asbahi resigned from Obama's campaign.