 | Middle East Forum | |||
| MEF Home Research & Writings Middle East Quarterly | ||||
Related Islamist | ||||
 Send |  RSS | Share:    |
"Our Koran is off limits," said Hussam
Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR)
Los Angeles chapter. "Our youth, who they try to radicalize, are off
limits. Now is the time to tell them, 'We're not going to let this happen
anymore.'"
The above statement, taken out of context,
might read like a condemnation of radical Islamists who target young
American Muslims. It's not. The "they" and "them" in the quotation above
refer not to al-Qaeda, but to the FBI. That such a conflation is possible
is indicative of how leaders of "mainstream" American Muslim organizations
have distorted the critical issue of confronting homegrown terrorism.
Ayloush was responding to the arrest in
February of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a naturalized American of Afghan
descent who is accused of perjury, naturalization fraud, misuse of a
passport obtained by fraud, and making false statements to a federal
agency, including denying that he had met with Amin
al-Haq, his brother-in-law and Osama bin Laden's former security
coordinator, in Pakistan in 2005.
Instead of dealing with the facts of the case,
the Islamists at CAIR and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California
attacked the credibility of the state prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Deirdre Eliot, and the government's primary witness, 46-year-old FBI
informant and father of four Craig Monteilh. In their magazines and in the
blogosphere, the Islamists accuse Eliot of anti-Muslim sentiments and note
that Monteilh has served time in prison. The facts of the arrest itself
are relegated to later paragraphs or not mentioned at all.
In Focus, CAIR's magazine, asserts that
Eliot "runs the risk of being guilty by association herself for supporting
a right-wing group that has promoted anti-Islamic rhetoric on its
websites." The group the magazine is referring to is the Lincoln Club of Orange County, an
organization dedicated to "limited government, free enterprise, the rule
of law, and the preservation of individual liberty." Defaming Islam,
apparently, did not make the cut.
Nor is the Niazi case unique; there are many
parallels in Islamist tactics responding to the arrest
of four alleged terrorists in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx
on May 20, accused of plotting to attack two synagogues and to bring down
U.S. military airplanes.
The alleged Bronx terrorists met at Masjid
al-Ikhlas, a mosque in Newburgh, New York, whose head, Imam Salahuddin
Muhammad, blames the FBI informant who discovered the plot for inciting
his congregants. Like his peers in California, Muhammad disparages the
informant as a convict.
"I am very concerned that the hard work of
building bridges here in Newburgh over the last quarter of a century will
now be dismissed, because of the actions of a convicted felon," Muhammad
says.
These conspiracy theories are echoed and
expanded by other prominent Islamists and their apologists. According to
Adem Carroll, the executive director of the Muslim Consultative Network,
the government has co-opted Islamic extremists for its own ends.
"These plots are being used to drive funding
for the war on terrorism," Carroll says.
CAIR
has made an even more peculiar claim, saying that the Bronx incident
may be an FBI conspiracy to "drive a wedge between two American religious
minorities" — Jews and Muslims.
Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the Riverdale
Jewish Center, one of the sites targeted in the plot, fails to see how
ignoring threats to his community's security improves Muslim-Jewish
relations.
"It is clear that the aspiration to do harm and
the commitment to fulfill that aspiration runs like a dark thread through
this entire thing, and that's not the FBI," Rosenblatt says.
The Islamists have begun openly to undermine
the FBI's ability to confront terrorism. On the CAIR-New York website, an
article entitled "Visited by an FBI Agent? Know Your Rights" was
published, detailing how to legally avoid providing information to the
agency.
The Islamists' penchant for conspiracy theories
is not benign: it is a calculated effort to deny inconvenient truths and
an excuse to remain passive in the face of homegrown terrorism. By blaming
the FBI for radicalized members of their community, the Islamists
effectively discourage American Muslims from complying with their
country's efforts to ensure their security and that of their fellow
citizens.
In choosing to side with fringe elements of
their population — like Niazi and the alleged Bronx terrorists — over the
FBI, the Islamists effectively portray these radicals' worldview as an
accepted norm in their community. The Islamist leadership's actions are
detrimental to the image of American Muslims and a betrayal of their
constituency's broader interests.
Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/islamist-groups-push-conspiracy-theories-in-homegrown-terror-cases/
Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York
University, majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an
intern at the Middle East Forum. Shireen Qudosi is a writer on Islam in
the 21st century and editor-in-chief of The Qudosi
Chronicles.
Related
Topics: Conspiracy theories, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslims in the United States Brendan Goldman Shireen Qudosi
To subscribe to the MEF mailing lists, go to http://www.meforum.org/list_subscribe.php
You may post or forward this text, but on condition that you send it as an
integral whole, along with complete information about its author, date,
publication, and original URL.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment