Jafar
'Jeff' Siddiqui: The Islamist Who Served on the Electoral College

by David J. Rusin
Pajamas
Media
July 31, 2009

http://www.meforum.org/2419/jafar-jeff-siddiqui-islamist-electoral-college

Send

RSS

Election 2008 proved historic on a number of
levels, but one milestone passed without the recognition it deserves. When
the Electoral College convened on December 15 to ratify the citizens'
choice of Barack Obama as the next president, Jafar
"Jeff" Siddiqui of Lynnwood, Washington, became the first known
Islamist to cast an electoral vote.

Siddiqui — a real
estate agent, former
chairman of the Islamic School of
Seattle, and founding
member of the American Muslims of Puget Sound activist group — was
named a Democratic elector after his impromptu
speech at the state party convention, in which he pledged to fight
"the hate and bigotry that are being promoted in this country." The
Post-Intelligencer gushed, "His mission is to counteract the image
of Muslims as fanatical terrorists and extremists that, he believes, is
propagated in the media, popular culture, and even the government."

Yet Siddiqui has a long record of airing his
own extreme views in local papers and the American Muslim magazine,
a truth that was noted by an alert
blog but predictably ignored by the mainstream press at the time of
his appointment. As detailed below, Siddiqui is a textbook "lawful" Islamist who
dreams of imposing at least one element of Shari'a on the West: curbing
speech that is critical of Islam. In keeping with the Islamist modus
operandi, he also paints opponents of radical Islam as Nazis, portrays
America as oppressive, denies the religious rationale of Muslim
terrorists, and insists that Muslims are victims even when they take part
in violent aggression. These factors should have more than disqualified
him for the privilege and responsibility of serving on the Electoral
College, a key safety valve in the selection of the
commander-in-chief.

Siddiqui put himself on the map in 2002, when
he sought
to derail a talk by Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes at the University
of Washington. Slandering him as a "rabid Muslim/Arab hater" who might
soon "be in the same company as Hitler," Siddiqui led a campaign urging
organizers to "withdraw your sponsorship or, at the very least, publish a
letter expressing regret over this sponsorship. You can also invite a
member of the Muslim community to speak for about ten minutes after Pipes
has had his day bashing us." Professor Edward Alexander refused,
explaining that under the First Amendment "there is no requirement that a
lecture touching on radical Islam must be 'answered' by an Islamic
radical."

Siddiqui's discomfort with free speech resurfaced
in 2006, as he chastised Denmark for not prosecuting the publishers of the
infamous Muhammad cartoons. Nor was he pleased about Obsession: Radical Islam's War
Against the West being distributed
via U.S. newspapers in 2008. Despite purporting to back free speech
"without preconditions," he argued
that it "stops at the production of the DVDs" and that "dissemination and
promotion of the same is no longer an exercise of freedom of expression" —
a disturbingly narrow view of First Amendment rights.

In line with other Islamists, Siddiqui smears
all who combat radical Islam. Obsession is "like
Hitler's idea of how to generate hate and violence." Dutch MP Geert
Wilders is "a blond
Aryan who would make Nazis proud." Conservative radio hosts are "on
the same
track as Hitler." Anti-Shari'a attorney David Yerushalmi's ultimate
goal is to "strike
all mosques and all Muslims down." Most hyperbolically, the
designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
as an unindicted
co-conspirator in a recent terror
financing trial is "akin
to the Germans pulling in every Jewish head of household to the
village square, to find out who killed their soldier and then listing all
those Jews as 'unindicted murderers.'"

Siddiqui must feel fortunate to have survived
long enough to cast his electoral vote, given that Muslims barely can
venture onto the streets in the despotic America he imagines. "It appears
that the military, along with the rest of the government agencies (down to
the Department of Agriculture), are in high gear to persecute people
because they are Muslims," he wrote
in 2004. After two
teenagers were detained a year later on suspicion of terrorism,
Siddiqui claimed
that "Muslims could be justifiably shot as they walk in public places in a
coat with a fanny pack around their waist." (No shots were fired during
the teens' arrest.)

Siddiqui employs another tactic popular among
Islamists: obfuscating the nature of jihad, which he characterizes as a
beneficial institution that "does
not mean 'holy war.'" "Jihad means 'struggle,'" he told an
audience several months before 9/11, citing "jihad against sickness,
jihad against hunger, jihad to increase your knowledge, jihad to rid the
world of evil." On the other hand, he stated, "If someone takes that word
and says, 'We're going to commit jihad against any non-believers,' that's
not Islam's problem."

Following naturally is his assertion that
Muslims have no responsibility to denounce terrorism carried out in the
name of their faith. At a 2005 briefing on
Islam that Siddiqui conducted for FBI agents — analogous to the sensitivity
workshops offered by the Islamists at CAIR — he was asked why more
Muslims don't "stand up and say [terrorism] is unacceptable." "We have
held Muslims hostage to that question," Siddiqui replied. "The common man
cannot bring terrorists to justice." In 2007 he objected
again: "People assume that if I ... am not walking around with a sandwich
board condemning terrorism then, by default, I must be supporting it."

True to form, Siddiqui was reluctant to comment
on the 2006
attack against a Seattle Jewish center, in which a gunman reportedly
identified himself as "a Muslim American, angry at Israel," before killing
one woman and wounding five others. Ultimately Siddiqui did issue a strong
denunciation, but he revealed that he and his Washington-based group
had "struggled for some time about whether a statement should be sent out
or not, because we would like this to be recognized for the grievous crime
that it is, rather than an event that calls for an explanation or apology
by Muslims."

Terrorism against Jews in the Middle East,
however, provokes little soul-searching. Similar to other Islamists,
Siddiqui views Hezbollah and Hamas as "resistance
organizations" whose "social welfare work … cannot be questioned by
anyone." He also believes
that President Obama violated the bounds of decorum in demanding that Iran
cease all support for terrorists: "Etiquette 101 teaches that one does not
call someone ugly, dirty, and smelly, if one wants a cordial or friendly
relationship with them; it is not generally welcomed."

Siddiqui's Islamist mindset was on display once
more after the November 2008 terror
attacks in Mumbai. While he deplored the carnage, his words kept
drifting back to Muslims' alleged victimhood. "Can these
killers not think about the reactive violence that will now most likely be
unleashed upon all Muslims in India?" he asked. (No such outbreak
transpired.) Shockingly, Siddiqui also empathized with any terrorists
captured by security forces: "Even though they were involved in butchery,
one cannot help but feel sorry for them because of the tortures they will
be subjected to, at the hands of the Indians."

Less than three weeks after expressing his
concern for the well-being of jihadists who had murdered scores of
innocents in Mumbai, he was in Olympia, Washington, delivering Barack
Obama one of his 365 electoral votes. That Siddiqui encountered no
opposition on his way to this significant posting — despite a readily
accessible, decade-long paper trail of anti-American and unabashedly
Islamist statements — says much about the gullibility that Islamists
exploit to gain access to the mainstream and thereby influence those who
craft both public opinion and public policy.

Why did an Islamist sit on the Electoral
College? For the same reasons that Islamists have achieved
a foothold in countless American institutions: the press ignores their
radicalism, federal agents legitimize them as representatives of the
Muslim community, and the political establishment embraces them with open
arms. In short, though he maintains that the media and the government
conspire to promote hatred of Islam, the case of Jeff Siddiqui
demonstrates how they all too often promote Islamists just like him.

Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-islamist-who-served-on-the-electoral-college/

David J. Rusin is a research
associate at Islamist Watch
and a Philadelphia-based editor for Pajamas Media. He holds a Ph.D. in
Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania. Please feel
free to contact him at rusin@meforum.org.

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.

The Middle East Forum