Islamists
Continue to Push the Wrong Questions in Boston Shooting
IPT News
June 4, 2015
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 The campaign
by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamists to
cast Tuesday's shooting of terror suspect Usaama Rahim as unjustified
continues, despite the lack of any genuine foundation.
Law enforcement officials say they opened fire after Rahim repeatedly
made aggressive moves toward them with a military-style knife. In a
criminal complaint filed Wednesday against an accomplice, the FBI said it
tracked Rahim's orders of three such knives from Amazon and verified the
delivery of at least one of them.
As we have noted, CAIR and other Islamist activists immediately
embraced claims by Rahim's brother that police shot the 26-year-old in the
back as he waited at the bus stop. Rahim also was allegedly on the
telephone with his father at the time, in order to have a witness against
the impending police "brutality." The video shows Rahim was not
on the telephone.
The Boston Herald reports that Rahim did, in fact, call his
father Tuesday morning. But it wasn't to create a witness for the looming
confrontation with authorities as his brother originally claimed. It was,
law enforcement sources told the Herald, to say goodbye.
During an afternoon news conference, family attorney Ronald Sullivan
confirmed that phone records show a call between Rahim and his father, but
said he did not know what was discussed.
At this point, there is zero evidence that casts the shooting in doubt
in any way. But that hasn't slowed the Islamist messaging that because
police shot a black Muslim, it had to be anyone's fault but Rahim's.
Video of the incident, shown to some community activists Wednesday,
shows officers did back away from Rahim and debunked the claim he was shot
in the back. CAIR national spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, appeared on MSNBC
Thursday to say "the video somewhat supports the police and FBI
version of events," but, because of the video quality, was
"ultimately inconclusive" about whether Rahim brandished a knife.
This comment is from the same organization that initially glommed on the false narrative about Rahim
being shot in the back. Despite this, local authorities inexplicably
invited CAIR officials to participate in viewing the video of the shooting
Wednesday afternoon. The FBI's policy since 2007 has been to prohibit outreach activity with CAIR due to questions
about it and its founders' connections to Hamas.
Think about what this "inconclusive" claim implies. Hooper
acknowledges the video shows the key elements of the original narrative –
that police were the aggressors who shot Rahim in the back – were false.
But, to him, that doesn't rule out other malfeasance – to the degree that
the knife might have planted?
There's a picture of it being picked up from the scene. An
affidavit filed Wednesday as part of a criminal complaint against an
alleged accomplice says the FBI was aware he ordered the knife and others
from Amazon, that they even x-rayed the package before it was delivered. They
heard Rahim talk about the knives in intercepted conversations. They heard him say hours earlier that he was going after the
"boys in blue" ... "Cause, ah, it's the easiest
target..."
The complaint indicates Rahim originally talked about beheading a
specific target outside of Boston, reportedly Pamela Geller, who recently organized a
contest involving cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
But hey, we're still not sure, the Islamists like Hooper say. What if
Boston Police and the FBI made it all up, despite putting it in charging
papers they'll have to substantiate in open court? All of that just might
be part of the cover up of their unjust shooting of the innocent man.
Everything is a conspiracy until you prove to our satisfaction that it is
not. That is a threshold that history
shows us simply does
not exist.
 Hooper's
dubious tone Thursday was echoed by the same CAIR officials and other
Islamist activists who immediately embraced Rahim's brother's false
narrative that police shot Usaama Rahim in the back. In separate Twitter
posts Thursday, CAIR-Michigan chief Dawud Walid said he remains skeptical
despite the disclosures about the video and in the complaint against
alleged accomplice David Wright.
 Under the
hashtag "PoliceBrutality," CAIR-San Francisco Executive Director
Zahra Billoo tries to couch her anti-law enforcement message as part of a
higher philosophical approach: "question everything."
 Asked on
Twitter how many questions she had remaining after Wednesday's disclosures,
Arab American Association of New York Executive Director Linda Sarsour wrote simply, "Many."
See, it's all about asking questions, not about trying to plant false
narratives about how law enforcement treats Muslims. But if they really
just want to ask questions about Rahim's death, they have ignored others
with the potential to help avoid future Usaama Rahim tragedies. Among them:
o
What makes a guy in Boston even contemplate
beheading someone?
o
What makes any American Muslim think the
penalty for blasphemy should be death? He's not the first. Remember that
two Muslim men were shot and killed in Garland, Tex. last month when they tried
to storm, guns blazing, a Muhammad cartoon contest Geller organized.
o
What makes him think a cold-blooded attack
on police is a good idea that somehow advances the cause? What kind of
cause can be advanced by such brutality?
o
Why is it ISIS seems to be making greater
in-roads here, exhibited by the dozens of people arrested this year as they
planned to travel to Iraq/Syria to join the jihad?
Some answers already are available. Law enforcement was "working on
the premise that he had been in contact with terrorist elements," U.S.
Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., told the Boston Herald after being briefed on
the case. "Now, I don't know if that was ISIS or if it was simply that
he was radicalized by terrorist elements. ... I got the sense that they
were acting on the premise that he was in contact with terrorists."
Rahim's Facebook page included a "like" for ISIS and featured
other posts embracing radical Islam and jihad, the Boston Globe reported Thursday. An analyst who follows jihadist
movements described Rahim's Facebook page to the newspaper as fitting
"the general profile of online activity we would expect to see in both
actual foreign fighters . . . and the fan boys who have no intention of
traveling but do as much as they can to disseminate and support" the
Islamic State.
ISIS has repeatedly called on Muslims in the West to attack police and
other targets, including Geller.
And, spin aside, the terrorist group's ideology is deeply rooted in
Islamic theology, as Monterey Institute of International Studies Associate
Professor Jeffrey Bale explained in an article for the Investigative Project
on Terrorism last fall.
"[T]he perpetrators of these violent actions not only proudly insist that their actions are inspired by the
Qur'an and the exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad himself (as recorded
in the canonical hadith collections), but explicitly cite relevant Qur'anic passages and the reported
actions of their prophet to justify those actions," Bale wrote.
"Therefore, to argue that jihadist terrorists are not directly
inspired and primarily motivated by their interpretations of Islamic
doctrines and by clear precedents from early Islamic history, one must
stubbornly ignore what the actual protagonists keep telling the entire
world."
Or, one can simply issue dark, empty hints that it's law enforcement's
fault.
 Thursday
afternoon, attorney Glenn Katon with Muslim Advocates, posted the first
volley in what will be the next line of attack against the investigation.
None of this would have happened without some meddling informant!
All of these people have a right to their opinions, no matter how much
they stem from cynicism and creative imaginations. We, in turn, have a
right to evaluate those opinions in determining whether these officials
should be considered responsible, reasonable mouthpieces for the American
Muslim community.
As we have said throughout the week, the "questions" in the
Rahim case feed into the notion that there's a "war on Islam."
That false notion has been the rationalization of many attacks on U.S. targets and is a key element in terror recruitment among Westerners. The
message that Muslims in the United States are being targeted solely because
of their faith is equally false and inflammatory. In this case, the
insinuation is that police acted improperly without a shred of evidence to
substantiate that allegation. These messages remain available online and
could influence future radicals to believe they have to act out.
It's difficult to imagine anything more reckless and irresponsible.
Related Topics: , Usaama
Rahim, ISIS,
CAIR,
Ibrahim
Hooper, Dawud
Walid, Zahra
Billoo, Linda
Sarsour, Stephen
Lynch, Jeffrey
Bale, Gordon
Katon
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