The air is different in the mile-high city, Denver. Its rarefied atmosphere spawns some bizarre denizens. But none more so than Rima Barakat Sinclair. Barakat-Sinclair. As you may recall from a post we did, created consternation in the ranks of local GOP and frankly many constituents in Colorado House District Six, when she won the nod to become the party candidate for the district by a thin two vote margin. She apparently won over those in the district GOP caucus with her strong ‘pro-life’ stand against her nearest ‘liberal’ contender. Pro-life? And that from a self-professed Muslim whose belief system tolerates ‘honor killings’ of young women such as those that occurred in Toronto and Arlington, Texas at the hands of their own fathers- a product of an ‘honor shame society’.

According to a column by Vincent Carroll in the Rocky Mountain News Barakat –Sinclair’s Website trumpets her as a centrist who “continues to work for better understanding among peoples of different backgrounds” and “has regularly participated in interfaith dialogue.”

But Carroll notes what Barakat-Sinclair wrote back in 2006:

“Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces have murdered children for throwing stones at army tanks. Israeli soldiers have claimed that the children represented a ’security’ threat to them. . . . The systematic indiscriminate murder of civilians and the illegal collective imprisonment of a whole nation have been slowly suffocating the life out of the Palestinians. The brutal act of imprisoning 1.4 million people in an attempt to bring a whole nation to its knees is evidence of depraved Israeli policy. The sadistic conduct of preventing medical help from reaching the injured while Israeli soldiers watch is in violation of laws of man and of God.”

Barakat was at the center of a recent kerfuffle, when her contribution to ethics-conflicted Secretary of State Michael Coffman was returned, allegedly because of pro-Israel conservatives complaints.

Barakat, who hailed from a ‘well to do’ Palestinian family grew up in Jordan attended a girl’s Catholic school, before she went on to university and later came to the US to do graduate work at the University of Denver. She became a naturalized US citizen in 1999 and married Roy Sinclair, active in the financial services business in Denver.

She was a contract translator for CNN back in the early days of the Iraq War and acted as a ‘liaison’ to Al Jazeera journalists during an episode in 2005 involving Homaidin Al Turki a relative, living in Denver, of Saudi Prince al Turki, former Ambassador to the US and former President Clinton’s classmate at Georgetown. Homaidin al Turki was accused of enslavement of a domestic employee, Indonesian nanny. Colorado Attorney General John Suthers flew to Riyadh to ‘explain’ Colorado law and cut a deal to quash the 12 charges against Homaidin al Turki in exchange for deporting the suspect and his wife.

Barakat -Sinclair is running in a State House seat occupied by the incumbent Speaker, Andrew Romanoff in a district with a largely Jewish and Democratic registration. That’s like ultimate chutzpah. Barakat is virulently anti-Israel and decidedly pro-Palestinian, some might say, even anti-American in a Saidist post-colonial sense. Otherwise she loves it here with guarantees of free speech to offset her occasional translation work. Back in the summer of 2006, she was captured on a local CBS news interview during the Second Lebanon War saying that Israelis were “baby-killers’. Witness this comment caught on video:

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“Israeli soldiers now are known to be just bombing and killing babies”–Rima Barakat Sinclair, July 2006, in an interview on CBS4

Doubtless she doesn’t say that about Hezbollah and Hamas. If the local Democrats field a worthy successor to term-limited Romanoff then Barakat-Sinclair is just kidding herself that she has a prayer of being elected.

Barakat-Sinclair is also involved in a local Abrahamic Initiative in Denver sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral. St. Johns hired a Shia Cleric from Iraq, Ibrahim Kazerooni, who had been dissident under the Ba’athist regime of the late Saddam Hussein and was imprisoned and tortured before he left in 1974.

Note this comment from the Denver Post at the time he was hired:

Kazerooni is an advocate for a one state solution to resolve the Arab Israeli conflict that if seriously adopted would mean the virtual end of the Jewish State of Israel.

Could this group be acolytes of Dr. Naim Ateek, Anglican priest and head of the virulently anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center of Jerusalem? Ateek showed up at a Denver gathering in 2005 sponsored by the Central Presbyterian Church. We know, because we sent Christian Zionists to protest the gathering. Where both Barakat-Sinclair and Imam Kazerooni inside the Church listening to Dr. Ateek?

Barakat-Sinclair has a bête noire in GOP politics in House District Six, Josh Sharf, an Orthodox Jewi, blogger and web designer. Sharf has begun a conscience effort to oppose Barakat-Sinclair in a petition drive to put his name on the ballot that requires 605 signatures. This Denver Rocky Mountain News column by Bill Johnson, “Muslim candidate seeks detente with own party”, an acquaintance of Barakat-Sinclair, alleges that Sharf is a third of the way towards his goal.

But the occasion of this Johnson column was a meeting requested by Barakat-Sinclair t seeking a ‘hudna’ or cease fire in the district GOP wars. She has painted herself as the victim of virulent Muslim hatred and even death threats that have given rise to concerns by her Husband Roy and ‘his mother’.
Sharf, as you might expect believes this is simply part of Barakat-Sinclair’s ’stealth campaign’.
Witness the opposing views captured in this Johnson puff piece:

After reading this Johnson column, I wonder if he’s done the requisite vetting of his acquaintance, Rima Barkat-Sinclair. By our standards Ms. Barakat-Sinclair is an artless purveyor of hate who manipulates her audiences with her victimhood manqué and supports Islamist terrorists. What do we call it? Ah yes, in Arabic ‘taqiyya’. religiously sanctioned dissimilitude to fool the kaffir or infidel, her constituents.