Rep. Allen King Takes On C.A.I.R.

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Rep. Allen King (R-FL) Takes In C.A.I.R.

Muslims nervous about King hearings.

The following report by Ben Stein and Byron Tau appeared online at Politico at this link. Muslims nervous about King hearings By: Ben Smith and Byron Tau January 18, 2011 06:12 PM EST American Muslim leaders, who have struggled to present a clear public voice or organize politically in the decade since Sept. 11, are increasingly apprehensive about the direction Rep. Pete King will take when he convenes hearings next month on the threat posed by radical Islam in America. King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, plans to focus on the Times Square bombing attempt and the Fort Hood shooting, both involving American-born Muslims, as well as other incidents and on what he sees as the failure of Muslim leadership to combat extremism. King has been critical of the Obama administration for failing to take the threat of domestic terrorism seriously and has been sparring with Muslim leaders since soon after Sept. 11 for not taking their own steps to combat it. "The leadership of the community is not geared to cooperation," King told POLITICO. His upcoming hearings have caused deep concern and consternation among various Arab and Muslim advocacy groups across the country that fear King's witness list will help define, for the purposes of the American public conversation, which Muslim leaders are legitimate and which should be regarded as extremists. "You can definitely say overall the hearings are seen with great apprehension, suspicion and distaste - sometimes sorrow," said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an expert on Islam and Islamic law at the University of California, Los Angeles. "These hearings have a history of stigmatizing whole groups of people." King insists that the goal of his hearings is not to stigmatize Muslims but to confront the threat of homegrown terrorism and to explore the role of Muslim leaders in dealing with it. "This isn't a question of scoring points," said King. "It's the fact that there's a real threat coming from this attempted radicalization of the community and it's, in many ways, coming from overseas." In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told POLITICO that he's not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism's Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims. King aims, he said, to call retired law enforcement officials and people with "the real life experience of coming from the Muslim community." Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in the House and a critic of the hearings, will likely be a minority witness, according to both King and the Minnesota Democrat. The focus, King said, will be on - among other topics - reported complaints from Somali Muslims that the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other groups discouraged them from talking to the authorities about young men who left to fight for the Islamist cause in Somalia and on cases like that of the imam who - while ostensibly cooperating with the FBI - allegedly tipped off a would-be subway bomber off as investigators closed in. Muslim leaders respond that American Muslims have been key to an array of terror investigations, beginning with the Muslim street vendor who first noticed the smoking car in Times Square. "I hope my colleague from New York .... does not make the mistake of trying to paint all Muslims with a broad, extremist brush," Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), the other Muslim in Congress, said in an e-mail to POLITICO. "Because for one, that's not an accurate depiction of the millions of peace-loving Muslims, and two, our national security depends on us forging strong partnerships with people across the Muslim world." Possible witnesses, according to King, include Dutch critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser is a sharp critic of leading American Muslim groups, whose agenda he calls "Islamist." "We have to admit as Muslims that we need a 12-step program," Jasser told POLITICO. "The first step is acceptance." "If they don't see us leading a charge for reform, they're going to see us as part of the problem," he said. Jasser is a rare Muslim voice welcoming the hearings. Other community leaders who spoke to POLITICO are afraid that their fragmented community is not ready for this fight. "This could be a very damaging hearing. It really could be something that spreads a lot of vitriol and poison, and I'm worried about it, and I don't understand why the community has decided to allow itself to be so unorganized," said Hussein Ibish, former communications director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who is now a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. "Nearly all Muslim organizations need ... new political leadership, simply because most of the leadership continues to be from the immigrant community. English continues to be not their first language, and their primary education was obtained elsewhere, before they came to the United States," said Fadl. "Eventually, they'll learn." One group that is ready to debate the likes of King and Jasser on cable - CAIR - has not been invited to testify. "If I saw the hearings were sober and objective, I'd have no concerns," said Corey Saylor, CAIR's legislative director. "But King is opting for a political circus approach." The group, which has roots in the Hamas-allied Islamic Association for Palestine in the 1980s, was named as an unindicted cohort in the federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for allegedly conspiring to aid Hamas. And though it fiercely denies any affinity to radicalism - and while the latter designation was formally lifted last year - those two facts have put it largely beyond the political pale. "No one in Washington will deal with CAIR except the [American Civil Liberties Union] - which deals with everyone," lamented a prominent official at one putatively allied group, adding that the group's past makes it "radioactive." Saylor dismissed the alleged Hamas link as a "smear," as well as the claim that community leaders don't encourage cooperation with the authorities. "We consistently advise constitutionally informed cooperation with law enforcement. That is pretty standard for a civil rights group," he said in an e-mail. But between CAIR on one end and Jasser and Hirsi Ali on the other is a wide abyss in terms of organized political activity - despite the efforts of half of a dozen small groups. Organizations like the Islamic Society of North America represent, in theory, hundreds of thousands of American Muslims. But many of those Muslims have little interest in political activity and little ability to project themselves on the political stage. Officials of the society declined to comment on the King hearings. And the community remains defined as much by sectarian, ethnic and political divisions between groups as by what they have in common. The community's most prominent figure at the moment, Ground Zero mosque planner Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the representative of the minority Sufi sect whose ties to interfaith leaders are stronger than those to his fellow Muslims. The disorganization is, at the moment, the subject of broad hand-wringing across the Muslim political leadership. "There's a lot of flailing around," said Suhail Khan, former Bush administration official and senior fellow for Christian-Muslim Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement, describing the Muslim community's response to the Ground Zero mosque and other recent controversies, like a Florida pastor's vow to burn a Quran. Some blame critics of Islam for stigmatizing the community. "You're dealing with an emerging community that's still trying to find its political voice," said Ellison. "There's not that many new American communities [that] have an organized opposition out to thwart them." Others blame CAIR. "They've looked like they're not as strongly behind counter-terrorism polices that needed to happen," said Mohamed Elibiary, Department of Homeland Security consultant and Dallas-based community activist. "That makes them a very easy target," said Elibiary. "We ought to have some kind of national representative body that then can represent us collectively, as opposed to today." "We haven't matured," said Elibiary. "The Jewish community didn't get there until the 50s." There has been talk, two officials of Muslim organizations said, of setting up a politically palatable rival to CAIR, though that plan hasn't been fully realized. In the meantime, the response will likely be led by a group that many on Capitol Hill choose to ignore - the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "If we think that it's political theater, we're also willing to address this in a very public way. We've got a list ready of various law enforcement agents from the local to the federal level who have talked about the work that Muslim Americans have done," said Haris Tarin, director of the group's Washington office. King, for his part, insists the goal of the hearings, which are scheduled for late February, is not to paint an an entire community with a broad brush. "The overwhelming majority of Muslims," he said, "are outstanding Americans."

Jihad 101: An open letter to the 112th Congress from ACT! For America.

FYI -

An open letter to the new Congress concerning Radical and Political Islam and the dangers of Sharia Law.

For Liberty,
Aaron

Jihad 101 for Congress 

Dear Friends, 

Clifford May’s open letter to Congress (below) parallels our Keep America Safe and Free appeal to Congress. We are very encouraged by the early signs being sent by Members of Congress like Rep. Peter King regarding the threat of radical Islam. 

Having said that, there remain within Congress and the Obama administration many ideological and political obstacles to their acknowledging what we are really up against in the so-called “War on Terror.” 

Late in February or early in March we want to deliver a strong message to Congress from the American people—our ten point platform for keeping America Safe and Free. Some 30,000 people have signed it—but many of our members have not yet done so. 

Can we count on you to add your name today and forward this email to everyone you know? 

Jihad 101: An open letter to the 112th Congress: by Clifford May  Scripps Howard News Service  January 6, 2011  http://www.cliffordmay.org/8586/jihad-101  Dear Member of the New Congress:  A few things you need to know about the War Against the West.  Last month, Americans celebrated the holidays without a terrorist attack on American soil. That should be a source of relief but not complacency. Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, and the Philippines were not so lucky.  The hard fact is a global conflict is underway. You, as an incoming member of the 112th Congress, need to understand that. You need to know who is waging this war, what motivates them, and what their goals are. Without such knowledge, you will not be able to make informed — much less wise — legislative and policy decisions. So here's a very brief briefing:  In 1979, there was a revolution in Iran. Those who took power established thefirst modern nation dedicated to Jihad — holy war against Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims who do not accept their radical Islamist agenda. Iran is a predominately Shia country but its revolution inspired the rise of militant groups among the more numerous Sunni Muslims of the broader Middle East as well. Al-Qaeda is only the best known.  Sunni jihadis and Shia jihadis are rivals, not enemies. They cooperate and collaborate against common enemies — us, for example. The evidence for this is abundant.  What is the goal of jihad? It was articulated concisely by the scholar Ibn Khaldun: "In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and the [obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. . . . Islam is under obligation to gain power over nations."  Perhaps Ibn Khaldun was speaking out of anger, considering the continuing incarceration of Muslim combatants at Gitmo, the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the sufferings of the Palestinians? I'd guess not — since Ibn Khaldun died early in the 15th century.  Most Muslims do not embrace this interpretation of Islam or view it as appropriate for the 21st century. But a supremacist reading of the Koran caters to the pride and vanity of a significant minority of the world's more than 1.3 billion Muslims. Also important: In what we have come to call the "Muslim world," modernizers and reformers do not control the lion's share of the money (oil money) and power (which, in most countries, is not democratically derived).  The Muslim world is an expanding world: The Saudi-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) claims 56 member states. Some are not — or not yet — Muslim-majority nations. The OIC is the most powerful bloc at the United Nations, an organization that the U.S. continues to generously fund. (You may want to consider whether such expenditures still make sense.) Meanwhile, the Muslim population of Europe is growing rapidly while what might be called the continent's natives are in ademographic death spiral.  The "Hard Jihad" is fought with violence. There is also the "Soft Jihad" — an effort to destroy liberal democracies from within, to use Western values and institutions to undermine Western values and institutions.  The most important organization promoting Soft Jihad is the Muslim Brotherhood and its many affiliates. Twenty years ago, an American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood issued an internal memorandum acknowledging — boasting, actually — that it was engaged in a "grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within" by "sabotage." Anytime you are approached by members of a "moderate" Muslim group, you should ask about their links to the Muslim Brotherhood and their views of the Muslim Brotherhood.  One weapon of the Soft Jihad is "lawfare." To take just one example, Soeren Kern, senior fellow at the Madrid-based think tank Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos (GEES), recently reported on a Spanish high-school geology teacher who is being sued for having "defamed Islam" by mentioning pork products in his classroom. Specifically, during a lecture on Spain's regions, he noted that Andalusia offers the perfect climate for curing the world-famous delicacy known as jamón ibérico – Spanish ham.  Kernn writes that though "Spanish legal scholars are divided over whether the lawsuit has merit, nearly everyone agrees that the case has potentially major implications for free speech in Spain. They also agree that the constant threat of lawsuits will force Spanish school teachers to carefully consider their choice of words in the future."  Lawfare also embraces efforts to spread Sharia, Islamic law, for example by insisting that Western firms provide "Sharia-compliant financing," which gives Islamic clerics say over investment decisions and, potentially, siphons off funds to "charities" that support terrorism.  And then there is this: Last week, a Danish court charged three men with plotting an armed assault on the office of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that in 2005 published satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Most significant is the message this sends: Under traditional interpretations of Islamic law it is forbidden for Muslims to portray Mohammed pictorially. Now, however, these religious prohibitions are to apply equally to non-Muslims in non-Muslim majority countries. And, apparently, there is no statute of limitations. If the OIC were a moderate organization, it would object to that. Instead, it has been pushing in the U.N. for international laws that would limit free speech where Islam is concerned. The U.S. has an ambassador to the OIC. He should be vigorously opposing such efforts. You might want to inquire into why it does not appear that he is.  If you've followed me this far, here are three policy implications: (1) While the War Against the West is different from previous wars, it is not simply a "law-enforcement" problem as too many people (including, it seems, James Cole, just recess-appointed by President Obama as deputy attorney general) prefer to believe. (2) Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — these are not separate wars but rather fronts in a single global conflict. (3) Make up your mind that the jihadis in Tehran will not acquire nuclear weapons — not on your watch.The sanctions imposed by the U.S. in 2010 are an important part of the effort but only a part.  Final point: 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden is alive. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a plan. Are you confident the U.S. has an adequate strategy for frustrating their ambitions? And by the way: Welcome to Washington.