Obama meets with members of his national security team following the Boston Marathon bombings investigation. Pictured, from left, are: FBI Director Robert Mueller; Lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Attorney General Eric Holder; Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken; and Vice President Joe Biden.
oped: This is a long read but well worth it..!
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Why has the U.S. government called
certain Islamic groups supporters of terror in federal court, and then
turned around and called these same organizations “moderates” and
embraced them as outreach partners? In a number of cases from the
Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, the leaders of these
organizations (some of whom are now in federal prison) were under active
investigation at the same time they were meeting with senior U.S.
leaders at the White House and the Capitol and helping develop U.S.
policy. Now these same Islamic organizations and leaders have openly
encouraged a purge of counterterrorism training that have effectively
blinded law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence agencies to
active terror threats as seen in the inaction of the FBI concerning the
Boston bombing suspects and other terror cases. This study poses
serious questions as to the efficacy and even security concerns about
U.S. government outreach to Islamic groups, which often turn out to be
Islamist militants, enemies of Islamic moderation, and even supporters
of terrorism.
The aftermath of the April 15, 2013
bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, has focused attention on the failure
of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to carry out an adequate
investigation of the suspected bombers despite warnings from Russian
authorities. This failure has partially been attributed to a full scale
campaign of political correctness waged inside the bureau and throughout
the U.S. government under the Obama administration against any attempt
to link jihadi terrorism with anything remotely connected to Islam of
any variety (the most radical versions included).[1] This has extended into other segments of the government as well, particularly the Department of Defense.[2]
One of the primary contributors to this
widespread political correctness campaign has been the U.S. government’s
disastrous Muslim outreach policies extending back to the Clinton
administration and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. The U.S.
government’s historical outreach program, regardless of whether it has
been a Democrat or Republican in the White House, has been based on a
schizophrenic policy: In many cases federal prosecutors have gone into
federal court and identified American Islamic organizations and leaders
as supporters of terrorism, and no sooner have left court before
government officials openly embrace these same organizations and leaders
as moderates and outreach partners. In several notable cases, the FBI’s
outreach partners have been under active FBI criminal investigation and
were later convicted on terrorism-related charges at the time the
outreach occurred.
In the case of the Cambridge,
Massachusetts, mosque attended by the suspected Boston marathon bombers,
when the plethora of extremist ties to the Islamic Society of Boston
were reported, a mosque spokesman replied that they could not be
extremists since they regularly participated in outreach programs with
the FBI, Department of Justice and Homeland Security.[3]
OUTREACH FAILURE: THEN AND NOW
When President Obama hosted his annual
Iftar dinner in August 2010 to commemorate the Muslim celebration of
Ramadan, the list of invitees published by the White House was curiously
missing the names of several attendees–all of whom were top leaders of
organizations known to be purveyors of jihadi ideology and implicated by
federal prosecutors in financing terrorism.[4]
Yet it was not like they had crashed the
party. In fact, one of the individuals missing on the official White
House list, Mohamed Majid, president of the Islamic Society of North
America (ISNA), was pictured in a news service photograph sitting at the
front table just a few feet from the president as he spoke.[5] When Majid was hailed by Time Magazine
in November 2005 as a “moderate Muslim cleric” who was helping the FBI
fight terrorists, he quickly published an open letter to his
congregation on the mosque’s website assuring his congregants that he
was doing no such thing, stating that his relationship with the FBI was a
one-way street only to communicate Muslim community concerns–not to
report on individuals suspected of terrorist activity.[6]
It was just a few years ago the attorney
general of the United States was canceling Muslim outreach events for
the sole reason that Majid would be present at the meeting, because the
Department of Justice had just named the ISNA as an unindicted
co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in American
history.[7]
Majid’s connection to terrorism,
however, goes back even farther than that, since the offices of the
mosque he leads, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, were
raided by U.S. Customs authorities in March 2002 in a wide-sweeping
terror finance investigation.[8]
In an affidavit requesting a search warrant for the raids, Customs
Agent David Kane testified that Majid’s mosque was being used to launder
hundreds of thousands of dollars for the targeted terror finance
network that shared offices with ADAMS.[9]
An appendix to the Customs Service affidavit also names eleven ADAMS
Center officials as targets of their terror finance investigation.[10] Yet Majid and the ADAMS Center are still considered legitimate outreach partners by the FBI as of the writing of this article.[11]
This was just the most recent episode in
the disastrous attempts at outreach to the Muslim community since the
September 11, 2001, attacks. In addition, with the release in 2011 of
President Obama’s strategic plan to combat “violent extremism” to expand
outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present administration
seems intent on compounding the disaster wrought by previous
administrations.[12]
Prior to the September 11 attacks, there were two prime examples of how
the government’s Muslim outreach policy failed spectacularly: Abdul
Rahman al-Amoudi and Sami al-Arian.
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