The
Gray Lady Once Again Sanitizes Radical Islam
by Steven Emerson
IPT News
August 15, 2018
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 For many years now,
the New York Times has sanitized radical Islamic groups, militant
Islamic leaders and even Islamic terrorist attacks. The paper has does this
by deliberately omitting critical details that would discredit Islamist
groups. For example, the Times routinely describes the Council on American Islamic Relations
(CAIR) as either being a civil rights or a Muslim advocacy group. In
reality, CAIR was started as a front for Hamas and continues to serve as
one. But over the course of more than two decades, the Times has
never reported on any of the many government documents and official
transcripts that prove CAIR's role as a front group for Hamas.
And when reporting on many of the Islamic terrorist attacks that have
occurred in Europe in recent years, the Times has often omitted the
key fact that the Islamist attacker often yelled out "Allahu
Akbar" before committing his terrorist atrocity, despite no such
reluctance by European media to report such critical facts.
Last week's Times' reporting on the arrests of Muslim extremists
in a compound with 11 starving children who were being taught to carry out
school shootings offers a glaring case in point.
Local authorities searching for a missing special needs 3-year-old boy discovered his body, and 11 starving children, on a
remote New Mexico compound loaded with weapons. In a story on the discovery and resulting arrests of the adults
involved, the Times omitted a key statement the local New Mexico
sheriff made earlier in the week who said, according to the Associated Press, that the
"adults [arrested] at the compound were considered 'extremist of the
Muslim belief' adding that it was part of the investigation." The AP
reported those comments; why didn't the Times?
And when the Times described Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the father of one
of the adults arrested, it provided a glaringly incomplete and inaccurate
picture:
The elder Mr. Wahhaj has for decades been the imam of Masjid
at-Taqwa, which several people connected to the 1993 bombing of the World
Trade Center either attended or visited around the time of the attack.
During the investigation of the bombing, the elder Mr. Wahhaj was named on
a list of several dozen potential conspirators in the plot, though he was
never charged in the case and the list was later criticized for being
overly broad, some former terrorism prosecutors said.
To be clear, there is no information connecting Imam Siraj Wahhaj with
his son's alleged crimes or his New Mexico camp.
But the Times ignores a key factor, former federal prosecutor
Andrew McCarthy, one of the lead prosecutors in the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing conspiracy cases, explained to the Investigative Project on
Terrorism.
The trial court asked prosecutors for a list of unindicted
coconspirators, a standard procedure before trial, he said. This is a
technical matter, allowing statements that otherwise might be prohibited as
hearsay into evidence.
"The point is to alert defense counsel of people whose statements
might be offered by the prosecution under the coconspirator exception to
the hearsay rule (Rule 801(d)(2)(E)). Under this rule, an out-of-court
statement by a member of the conspiracy, made during the course and in
furtherance of the conspiracy, may be admitted against the
defendants," said McCarthy, who served on the IPT's board from 2009 to
20011.
Consequently, the point of the coconspirator list is not to make an
accusation against anyone. It is in part to alert defense attorneys if they
want to prepare any impeachment material to rebut coconspirators whose
statements are admitted into evidence under this rule.
The government did not make the list public, McCarthy said. Defense
attorneys did. Wahhaj never being charged in the case is irrelevant to his
inclusion on the mandated coconspirator list.
Later, Wahhaj testified as a defense witness, praising
Omar Abdel Rahman as "a respected scholar" and "a strong
preacher of Islam." Abdel Rahman died
in prison last year after being convicted in 1995 of terrorism and
seditious conspiracy for masterminding a blot to blow up New York landmarks
and murder hundreds of people.
"These lists, moreover, are always overly inclusive, for two reasons,"
McCarthy said. "First, they are not filed publicly; the point is to
help the defense prepare for trial, not to smear uncharged people. Second,
if the prosecution fails to put a name on the list, and then tries to offer
a hearsay statement by that person under the coconspirator exception, the
court may suppress the statement on the ground that the prosecutor failed
to provide notice to the defense."
Now, why would the Times not name one of these prosecutors let
alone all of them? It's misleading at best to toss out a phrase like
"overly broad" without identifying a source or providing any
context. It's not too late. Let the Times belatedly name the
"former prosecutors" and explain how the list was "overly
broad" in light of the juridical mandate given to the prosecutors as
explained by McCarthy.
In selectively omitting the role of militant Islam in the New Mexico
arrests or the role it played in the life of the elder Wahhaj, the Times
went on to report:
In Brooklyn, a spokesman for the mosque, Ali Abdul-Karim
Judan, said in a video posted on Facebook Thursday that the news media and
the authorities were engaging in 'propaganda' by wrongfully injecting
mentions of international terrorism and school violence into what amounted
to 'a domestic situation' in New Mexico. 'They're not bringing up accurate
events — they're bringing up false narratives,' Mr. Judan said. 'Look how
this case has turned from a domestic situation, and now they're trying to
create an atmosphere where his son is involved with an extremist radical
group.'
Furthermore, the Times reported that the "elder Mr. Wahhaj
has had a long career as a clergyman, traveling the world and delivering
lectures on Islam, and even once gave a religious invocation in
Congress."
But as we showed in our documentary The Grand Deception, Siraj
Wahhaj's invocation at the House of Representatives in 1991, contrary to
proving his peaceful legitimacy as the Times clearly suggested, was
in fact a ruse to cover up his true militant Islamic beliefs that he had
preached before and after his Congressional invocation.
The following video is a 3-minute compilation of clips of Siraj Wahhaj
beginning with the clip mentioned above from The Grand Deception and
two other clips from radical speeches among many dozens that exist.
The video shows that Wahhaj was spouting poison as far back as 1982,
when he called it "bullshit" for Muslims to pledge allegiance to
the American flag. He later called the United States "filthy and
sick." And in 1991, the same year he gave a congressional invocation,
Wahhaj called it "an honor to die in Jihad."
The omissions of key facts and erroneous statements of unidentified
sources in this Times stare not the worst in the world. But they are
indicative of a much larger and longtime pattern in the Times' reporting about incidents
involving radical Islam.
This is not only unfair to its readers; it is plainly dishonest.
To be sure, the Times is not the only mainstream media outlet
guilty of this de facto cover up in sanitizing radical Islam in the United
States and around the world. It is even done by governments. But the Times
holds itself to the highest of journalistic integrity. The Times
historically has played a prominent role in uncovering corruption and
injustice. But when it comes to radical Islam, it has been blinded by a
corrosive political correctness that has infected the entire paper. And
that's not only a scandal but a tragedy.
Related Topics: Media
| Steven
Emerson, radical
Islam, Siraj
Wahhaj, New
York Times, at-Taqwa
Mosque, World
Trade Center bombing, unindicted
coconspirator lists, hearsay
rule, Andrew
McCarthy, Omar
Abdel Rahman, The
Grand Deception
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