THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 167, August 5, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ISLAMIST GROUPS PUSH CONSPIRACY THEORIES
IN HOMEGROWN TERROR CASES
By Brendan Goldman & Shireen Qudosi
AMERICAN SECURITY & THE INTERNAL ISLAMIST THREAT: THE ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMN IN THE U.S.A. --
TERRORIST PLOTS & OTHER SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES -- EFFORTS OF ISLAMIST GROUPS OPERATING WITHIN AMERICA'S
BORDERS TO UNDERMINE EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT & INTERNAL SECURITY FUNCTIONS BY
NATIONAL, STATE, & LOCAL GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES
FULL STORY:
Hussein Ayloush, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Los Angeles chapter,
states:
"Our Koran is off limits. 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-Qa'ida, but to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. 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, 2009, 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 U.S. 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.
Focus, CAIR's magazine, asserts that Eliot "runs the risk of being guilty by association herself for supporting a
Rightwing 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, 2009, persons 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 coopted 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.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorism & American Homeland Security
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
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 Twenty-first Century and Editor-in-Chief of
The Qudosi Chronicles.
The foregoing article by Goldman and Qudosi was originally published in Pajamas Media, August 3, 2009, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/2423/islamist-groups-conspiracy-theories-homegrown-terror)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 5, 2009
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