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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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December 28, 2016
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New
Middle East Forum Manual Spotlights Islamist Apologists
IPT News
December 28, 2016
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 American Islamists
often depend on prominent non-Muslims to disseminate their propaganda. In a
new report,
the Middle East Forum's (MEF) Islamist Watch profiles 15 prominent examples
of people who help promote pro-Islamist views.
Those included continue to propagate the notion that Islamism – a
radical political ideology devoted to spreading Islam worldwide – does not
play any role in violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. Examples of
"useful infidels," as MEF calls them, include President Obama's
CIA director John Brennan, academic John Esposito, New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie and Secretary of State John Kerry.
The MEF report seems to be a direct response to the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC)'s absurd attempt to denigrate people who focus on Islamist
violence and Islamist political activity as bigots. That report was called,
"A Journalist's Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists."
MEF dubbed its response, "A Journalist's Manual: Field Guide to
Useful Infidels."
The SPLC report included MEF founder Daniel Pipes and Investigative
Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson. It also included Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz – a former
member of the radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir – and former Muslim
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an advocate for women's rights and against female genital
mutilation.
An example of Nawaz's alleged anti-Muslim extremism? He republished a
cartoon of Islam's prophet Muhammad and said he was not offended by such
images.
Many of the people profiled in the MEF report try to deny any connection
between Islamist terrorist groups and the faith in whose name they fight.
This requires overlooking the Quranic justification and Islamic imagery
that terrorists offer for their violence.
Many of the non-Muslim figures listed in MEF's report cooperate with
prominent Islamist groups including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has
roots in a U.S-based Hamas-support network created by the Egyptian Muslim
Brotherhood.
Journalists should understand that relying on Islamists like those in
CAIR risks "assisting with the 'normalizing' or 'mainstreaming' of
Islamist supremacist ideology, a belief system just as dangerous and
opposed to American ideals as white nationalism," the MEF report said. It also cautions against getting too caught up in
impressive-looking resumes, noting that "academia includes some of the
most egregious useful infidels."
It encourages people to seek out "moderate Muslims and reformers
[who] are counting on the media to not blindly accept the Islamist narrative
but to question Islamists' self-appointed role as the voice of an imaginary
unified Muslim community."
For example, Georgetown University's John Esposito has advocated for
Islamism as "the best pathway for the Muslim world to enter
modernity," the report said,
also noting his support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.
CIA Director John Brennan is criticized for helping facilitate the removal of any
references to Islamism in FBI training materials. To accomplish the purge,
Brennan actively collaborated with known U.S. Muslim Brotherhood fronts
including ISNA and MPAC, among others. Many of Brennan's related speeches
often sought to divorce Islam from terrorism.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2009,
Brennan rejected the term "jihadists:" Jihad is "a
legitimate term ... meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle
for a moral goal..."
While the term 'jihad' may have multiple meanings, terrorists call
themselves jihadists while waging violent campaigns in an effort to
establish Islamist rule worldwide. Pretending that Islam has nothing to do
with jihadist violence promotes a culture of political correctness that inhibits law enforcement
from tackling the threat from radical Islamism.
Secretary of State John Kerry also plays into this narrative, trying to disassociate any
role for radical ideology in fueling Islamist violence. At a press
conference earlier this year, Kerry said: "Daesh [ISIS] is in fact
nothing more than a mixture of killers, of kidnappers, of criminals, of
thugs, of adventurers, of smugglers and thieves... And they are also above
all apostates, people who have hijacked a great religion and lie about its
real meaning and lie about its purpose and deceive people in order to fight
for their purposes."
Pretending that Islam or Islamism has no role in fueling most global
terrorism today obscures the ideological confrontations required to counter
the appeal of Islamist terrorist groups. This confrontation should be led
by more moderate Muslims who unfortunately are sidelined by too many
politicians and journalists in favor of radical Islamist organizations.
Having prominent U.S. politicians and other non-Muslim officials
publicly engaging in Islamic theological debates regarding who is a true
Muslim and who is an "apostate" is counterproductive and
resembles a strategy that terrorist groups utilize to label infidels.
Moderate Muslims correctly feel that radical Islamists and terrorist
organizations are exploiting their religion to achieve their supremacist
objectives. Yet moderate voices are continuously silenced by the likes of
the people featured in the MEF report.
Click here to read the full MEF report.
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