Iran agents entering US, says Pentagon academic

From: Arabian Business.com

A US Muslim civil liberties organisation has called on the Pentagon to sack a lecturer at one of their academies who claimed Iranian agents were entering the US and were coordinating operations out of American-based mosques.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on the US Department of Defence to drop a lecturer named Reza Kahlili, a former CIA operative in Iran who teaches at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy in Maryland.

Reza Kahili, who delivers his lectures by audio only, uses a pseudonym to protect his identity.

Described by The Los Angeles Times newspaper as “one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the US advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government,” Kahili has allegedly claimed Iranian agents had entered the US through the Muslim Students Association, a religious organisation dedicated to establishing and maintaining Islamic societies on college campuses in Canada and the United States.

He further claimed that Iranian agents were "coordinating operations out of [American] mosques and Islamic centers."

"This is yet another unfortunate example of our nation's military and counterterrorism personnel being trained by individuals who weaken America's security by promoting their own religious and political agendas," CAIR national Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Last month, the US military announced it would stop using a target depicting a Muslim woman wearing a religious head scarf and verses from the Quran at a training facility for Navy SEALs.

CAIR also recently called on the Department of Defence to dismiss an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College in Virginia, who taught fellow officers that only a "total war" on Islam would protect America. He also allegedly told officers they should use "Hiroshima" tactics, target civilian populations, and abandon the Geneva Conventions. The instructor of that course was later relieved of his teaching duties.

Eric Holder Won't Turn "Holy Land Foundation" Docs

From: Family Security Matters

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is in the spotlight after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted to hold him in contempt because he is refusing to provide documents related to the Fast and the Furious scandal. But there's another scandal you should know about. For over one year, he has refused to hand over documents about the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, confronted Holder about the matter on Thursday, June 21. Rep. Gohmert wants Congress to have access to documents from the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Five Foundation officials were found guilty of funding Hamas and evidence introduced by the federal government shows it was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood's secret "Palestine Committee" in the U.S.

CAIR Official Blames Israel for Brotherhood Setback

FROM: IPT

The civil rights manager for New York's Council on American Islamic Relations' (CAIR) chapter advocated for the Muslim Brotherhood political ascension and blamed Israel for the recent events in Egypt in sequential twitter posts Saturday.

Last week, Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court dissolved the newly-elected Parliament, one dominated by the Brotherhood and other religious conservatives, saying a third of them "were chosen on an unconstitutional basis."

CAIR-NY's Cyrus McGoldrick characterized the move as a coup d'etat by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which seized power immediately after Hosni Mubarak's ouster last year, and is comprised of several Mubarak apologists.

"My heart is with Egypt after yesterday's military coup," McGoldrick wrote in a Twitter post. "May Allah protect the revolution & people from the military doing Israel's bidding.

McGoldrick also advocated for the Muslim Brotherhood political dominance, denouncing "the powers" for prohibiting their takeover.

"We should have known the powers would never let the Ikhwan [Brotherhood] in through the front door," he wrote.

On Monday, the Brotherhood claimed its presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi, won elections held during the weekend. Those results have not been confirmed.

Report: Obama's Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians Access to the White House

From: Big Peace.com

From a Middle East correspondent:

Beirut Arab news agency al Nashra reported on Saturday November 22, that [White House Muslim envoy] Dalia Mogahed has succeeded in canceling a meeting between the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon and President Barack Obama. Writing in al Nashra, the reporter said “an unnamed US source told the news agency, that those who sought canceling a visit of (the spiritual head of the Maronite Church) Patriarch Beshara Rahi to the White House are Dalia Mujahid (Mogahed), the highest adviser on Arab and Islamic Affairs in the State Department, who is from Egyptian origins. And that,” according to al Nashra, “heeding a request by the higher leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who consider that US Administration must support the Islamist Sunni current facing the Iranian current in the region.”

The al Nashra report, circulating now widely in the Middle East, but also in the United States and across the Lebanese Christian Diaspora confirms what was already known about the impact the so-called “advisors on Arab and Islamic Affairs” in the White House on Middle East issues in general and on US policies regarding the Christians in the Middle East.

Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rahi

The anti-Middle East Christian lobbying in Washington, attributed to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and sympathizers is not limited to the Maronites, who form the bulk of the two million Lebanese Americans.

According to research showing the links between Presidential adviser Dalia Mogahed and the Muslim Brotherhood, and to NGOs representing Middle East Christian groups in the US, blocking Middle East Christian meetings at the White House and the State Department have been associated with the work of the “advisors” and their allies in the Islamist camp in Washington such as CAIR and MPAC.

Coptic Solidarity International which has been trying to obtain meetings at the White House or with Secretary Clinton at State to expose the horrors committed against the Christian Copts of Egypt, were not granted such access. “Probably because of fear that American Copts will expose the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt” said an official with Coptic NGOs.

Also and despite the many massacres against Christians in Iraq over the past two years, representatives from the Assyro-Chaldeans of the US were not received in the Oval Office or by Secretary Clinton, at a time Islamist linked groups are on the roaster of invitations to the White House. Indicatively, Administration officials declined invitations to speak at the annual Assyrian Christian convention this year, few months from the start of the withdrawal from Iraq.

US official attitudes towards the Middle East Christians are, according to this behavior, dictated by the “Muslim Brotherhood friends” now very influential in the Obama Administration. Of late, CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) are pushing to eliminate any intelligence analysis focused on Islamist and Jihadist violence in general and directed against the Christian communities in the Middle East in particular.

This could explain why Maronites, Copts and Chaldo-Assyrians have been cut off the Administration.
Observers believe that the campaign against Americans from Middle East Christian descent has also reached Terrorism experts and congressional advisers and NGO leaders whose field focuses on the Islamist and Jihadist movements. Indeed, in a report published this year, John Esposito, the chair of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (and an associate to Mogahed) endorses sharp attacks against experts and analysts, always charging “Islamophobia.”

Blocking the Maronite Patriarch from the White House is a move that is directed to all Middle East Christians in the United States and can have significant effects in the region and even on US politics. Brooklyn Bishop for the Maronites in the US, who are part of America’s Catholic Church criticized President Obama for not meeting the Patriarch during his visit. Bishop Mansour wrote:

Patriarch Rai’s warning about the future of Christians in Syria is not taboo. Christians are in a state of peril in the same way that Christians of Iraq were a few years ago when two-thirds of them migrated out… A new day is dawning in the Middle East. The Arab Spring is happening with little vision for the summer that will ensue.

However, for advisors in the Administration to rebuke the spiritual head of a main Middle East Christian community, and engage in a witch hunt against Middle East Christians, including US citizens, for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood is a serious matter the American public should not tolerate.

The Maronites are Middle Eastern Christians who count about a million people inside Lebanon with more than 10 millions in the Diaspora. There are about one and a half million Americans who are Maronites and five millions in Brazil. There are Maronite members of the US Congress such as Congressman Charles Boustany of Louisiana or former Congressman Ray Lahoud, current secretary of transportation. Maronites are among the 25 millions of Christians in the Middle East, including the 15 million Copts in Egypt, the one million Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, another million Syriacs and Orthodox in Syria as well as Iranian Christians and African Christians in Sudan. Americans who are from Middle East Christian ancestry are about 86% of all Americans from Arab or Middle East Christians and count two times the size of American Muslims.

Hezbollah and CAIR Attacks on U.S. Jihad Experts are Synchronized

From: Family Security Matters.org

Al Manar – the official broadcasting arm of the terrorist group Hezbollah – is again attempting to discredit (and thus silence) respected American national security experts. And as a means of doing so, they are touting a now-public letter by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which refers to respected foreign policy analyst Dr. Walid Phares as “an associate to war crimes” and a “conspiracy theorist.”

The issue stems from the fact that the Mitt Romney presidential campaign has named Phares to its team of national security advisors.

CAIR, which authored the letter and sent it to Romney, doesn’t approve of the appointment. Neither does Hezbollah.

In a posting on Hezbollah's official TV broadcast arm al Manar, the terrorist organization (implicated by a UN Tribunal in the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon) attacked Professor Walid Phares. 

They cited an article which was based on a CAIR letter leveling vicious attacks on the Jihadism expert and author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East. The Hezbollah propaganda arm warned that, by appointing Phares as one of his advisors on Middle Eastern affairs, Republican hopeful Mitt Romney is echoing the appointment by the State Department of Heinz Mahoney as deputy ambassador for the US in Damascus. 

Hezbollah charged that Mahoney "is an American spy, married to a Syrian, speaks Arabic fluently, and is an expert in recruiting agents and spies." On Phares’s non-related appointment, the Iranian regime’s proxy wrote: "imagine what the coming days will bear in terms of surprises, accusations and explosions." 

To validate its statement, Al Manar cited the above-noted (US-based) Daily Beast article by McKay Coppins that trashed Professor Walid Phares by referring to the CAIR letter sent to Romney asking for Phares’s removal. McKay's article was based on CAIR's letter and Hezbollah used it to attack Phares. 

Observers noted that this wasn't the first time CAIR and Hezbollah media campaigns converged to the point of merging. Last Spring, CAIR, accused by many to be a front for the terror group Hamas, also sent a letter to Rep. Pete King demanding the removal of Professor Phares from the list of expert witnesses in the hearings on Jihadi radicalization. That letter was also picked up and publicized by the Iranian-backed daily al Akhbar in Lebanon.

Writing in as Siyassa of Kuwait, Hamid Ghuriafi said "the campaign of incitement waged by Nihad Awad, director of CAIR, against Professor Walid Phares, a Congressional advisor, is full of lies and misrepresentations. It was executed at the request of the Iranian regime after Phares appeared in an American movie (“Iranium”) released two weeks ago. In that film, Phares called on the Obama Administration and the international community to expedite a regime change in Tehran by supporting the democratic Green revolution in Tehran, which could lead to the crumbling of the Khamenei-Ahmedinejad regime." (See: CAIR Director Accused of Sectarian Incitement Against Congressional Advisor). Many in the Arab world view CAIR as a force of extremism inside the United States as reported in al Qanat. 

CAIR Taps Hizballah Apologist For Tampa Office

From: Big Peace.com

For a group which claims to stand against terrorism, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) made an odd choice for the new chief of its Tampa chapter.

Hassan Shibly has a track record of defending terrorist groups and acting as an apologist for radical Islam. Following the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War, Shibly granted legitimacy to Hizballah by characterizing it as a “resistance movement” that provides valued social services to the Lebanese people. “They’re absolutely not a terrorist organization,” Shibly said, and “any war against them is illegitimate.”

As a testament to his support for Hizballah’s cause, Shibly even expressed a desire to travel to Lebanon to aid the group’s war effort.

When asked to explicitly condemn Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups, Shibly wouldn’t. “Of course we condemn every single act of violence directed against—by Hamas and by Hizballah—directed against civilians,” Shibly said in a Feb. 28 lecture at a church in Youngstown, N.Y. “But the trick we fall into is when we want to condemn them as a whole we completely cut off any chances for having a peace process.”

To the public, however, CAIR offers a gentler face for Shibly.


His CAIR biography casts him as a man who works actively with inter-faith and social service organizations to “promote cooperation and understanding between diverse faiths and cultures.”

In a statement to the Tampa public, Shibly wrote “It is essential we work together as a community, with all those who stand for peace, freedom, love, and mutual respect, to counter those who wish to promote fear, hatred, and violence.”

But on his own Facebook page, Shibly defended a radical imam killed by the FBI after he opened fire on agents moving in to arrest him. In an October 2009 post, Shibly questioned the use of force against Imam Luqman Abdullah even though the criminal complaint against him made it clear Abdullah advocated violent jihad and urged followers never to surrender peacefully to authorities.

CAIR also championed Abdullah’s case, with the executive director of its Michigan chapter, Dawud Walid, unleashing a series of conspiratorial tirades against the government for its actions against the armed imam.

Shibly’s online profile also features American-born Islamic cleric Khalid Yasin as an “Interest.” Yasin is known for his controversial views, including a 2005 interview in which he says that Muslims cannot be friends with non-Muslims; that suicide bombings are understandable; and that the U.S. orchestrated 9/11 to wage a war against Islam. “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend,” he said. “If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs [disbelievers] over the clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that’s on most of those clothings is (sic) faggots, homosexuals and lesbians.”

Yasin goes further, encouraging children to take up the “honor” of throwing stones and confronting Israeli soldiers when there are no more men left to do it.

In an interview with Pajamas Media in July 2010, Shibly said he was unaware of Yasin’s contentious remarks and appreciated being informed of them. Yet almost a year later, Yasin still appears on Shibly’s profile.

These negative representations of Shibly become less surprising when one considers his religious inspiration. Shibly’s understanding of tolerance and justice admittedly come from his father, who studied under Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the former Grand Mufti of Syria, and his protégé, Sheikh Rajab Deeb.

While Kuftaro promoted interfaith cooperation on his English-language site, in Arabic, he accused the “Jewish lobby” of controlling world opinion and of being “the killers of prophets.” He also asserts that “all Muslims are obligated to do jihad upon the Zionists.”

Similarly, Deeb wrote that Jews “want to remove and destroy every trace except for their footsteps… and eradicate every race except their race, and they claim to be God’s Chosen People.”

CAIR Loses IRS Status

From: ITP

Donations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) no longer are tax deductible after the organization was among 275,000 tax-exempt organizations purged earlier this month by the Internal Revenue Service.

The groups failed to file required annual reports, known as form 990s, detailing their revenues and expenses, for three consecutive years. CAIR had been a non-profit on its own, but in 2007, the IRS approved a separate tax-exempt CAIR Foundation. The foundation never filed any subsequent reports. Both the foundation and CAIR national are on the purge list.

CAIR has 30 state chapters throughout the country, many of which have their own non-profit designations which remain active.

While the IRS believes most of the organizations stripped of status have shut down, those still operating can apply for reinstatement. Meanwhile, CAIR's web site continues to solicit donations by touting them as tax deductible two weeks after the IRS issued the list and notifications were sent to all 275,000 purged groups.
Donors still could deduct the money on their tax returns if CAIR is reinstated between now and April 15. All the purged organizations have 15 months to seek reinstatement. But it is unclear whether CAIR will file the required papers or whether their explanation about past reporting failures will be enough to satisfy the IRS.

"This listing should have little, if any, impact on donors who previously made deductible contributions to auto-revoked organizations because donations made prior to the publication of an organization's name on the list remain tax-deductible," an IRS statement said. "Going forward, however, organizations that are on the auto-revocation list that do not receive reinstatement are no longer eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions, and any income they receive may be taxable."

To regain its exempt status, CAIR must file the missing three annual reports, along with a new application for exempt status. Finally, it must explain why it failed to file the 990s for three consecutive years and explain any new procedures which will ensure future compliance.

The annual reports include financial information on donations and other sources of income, operating expenses and names and payments given to directors and key staff members.

The CAIR Foundation won exempt status in 2007 and then never filed any annual reports. That year, the Washington Times reported that CAIR's membership plummeted by 90 percent, from a high of 29,000 people in 2000 to less than 1,700 in 2006. CAIR vehemently denied the report when it was issued. But a year later, when the organization sought to have its name removed from a list of unindicted co-conspirators in a Hamas-financing prosecution, CAIR attorneys tied the diminishing support to the 2007 co-conspirator list.

CAIR’s Nezar Hanze "Shocked! Shocked!" At Arrest of Miami Taliban Imam and Sons

From: Big Peace

The American Hamas, i.e., the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR ) South Florida Chapter Executive Director, Nezar Hanze, claimed to be “very shocked…very shocked” (he characterized other members of the South Florida Muslim community as merely “shocked”) at the arrest of the Miami Taliban Imam & Sons.

DOJ Source: Gov’t Muslim ‘Outreach’ Jeopardized Active Terror Investigations

From: Pajamas Media

UPDATE: On the heels of last week’s article by Patrick Poole, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has sent a letter to Eric Holder this morning demanding answers as to why the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute CAIR, its co-founder Omar Ahmad, and others regarding the Holy Land Foundation case.

————————————–
The nearly six-hour interview I conducted earlier this year with a top Department of Justice official on the condition of anonymity brought forth a number of revelations about serious problems within the U.S. government’s homeland security and law enforcement community.

Last Thursday, I reported here exclusively at PJM on a DOJ memo dated March 31, 2010, from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. The memo effectively ended the prosecution of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Omar Ahmad — in addition to the prosecution of other prominent American Muslim leaders — for helping support the Hamas terrorist organization. This decision, according to my source, was not made based on the overwhelming evidence that had been compiled over the past decade by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, but was made due to potential political embarrassment for the Obama administration and out of fear of inflaming the American Muslim community.

But another troubling claim came out during our interview: “Muslim outreach” programs by U.S. government agencies to terror-tied Islamic groups have directly interfered with ongoing terrorism investigations.

My source began by complaining about the counterproductive nature of such programs:

In all my years working for the U.S. government I have rarely seen anything as mystifying as our outreach to Muslims. Do we really need it? Sure. We need to be reaching out to the Muslim leaders who are working to prevent radicalization, not the ones who are making it happen. But that isn’t what we’re doing.

Instead we’re having countless meetings from the Cabinet level on down with groups and individuals that we know are bad guys and who we’ve repeatedly said in court are actively working to support terrorist groups overseas. We even had [FBI General Counsel] Valerie Caproni meeting regularly with these Hamas guys to get their guidance. What advice do you think they were giving her?

And she knew exactly who she was dealing with. It was the FBI who went into federal court and said that CAIR is Hamas.

But at the same time that FBI agents were testifying in the [Holy Land Foundation] trial that CAIR is a Hamas front there was serious disagreement inside DOJ and the FBI about whether we should continue to work with CAIR or cut them loose. So now we do both.

We say publicly that we don’t have an official relationship, but CAIR still has most of the staff in [Attorney General Eric] Holder and [FBI Director Robert] Mueller’s offices on speed dial. Don’t think for a minute that we stopped dealing with them.

And what exactly is our end game for doing this? Nobody knows. Are we getting anything by reaching out to CAIR? Of course not.

Now think for a minute about what we’re doing in any other context. Thirty years ago we didn’t have government liaisons to the IRA. The FBI doesn’t have an interfaith outreach program to the Mafia. Janet Napolitano doesn’t sit down and have lunch meetings with the Mexican drug cartels. And we don’t appoint members of the Crips and Bloods to our advisory boards on gangs. Well, not yet, at least [laughs].

It sounds really silly when you put it like that, but we have been allowing the bad guys to dictate our national policy on terrorism since the World Trade Center bombing [in 1993]. Let’s not forget that during the Clinton administration we had one of al-Qaeda’s top operatives in America — Abdurahman Alamoudi — organizing iftar dinners at the White House! The same guy who stood beside President Bush right after 9/11. Two years later he’s in prison, but his people are still popping up all over Washington.

Then we had [CAIR Executive Director] Nihad Awad advising Al Gore’s aviation security commission back in the late 90s. We said absolutely nothing even though we had him on our wiretaps five years before at a major Hamas meeting in Philadelphia. Nobody from DOJ or the FBI said a goddamn word because CAIR was advising every single federal agency dealing with terrorism at the time. We wouldn’t have these problems if we had cut them off then and there.

Stuff like that really makes me wonder what in the hell are we doing. I could easily give a dozen more examples going on right now. This bizarre fetish we’ve had about Muslim outreach since 9/11 has even damaged ongoing terrorism investigations and is eventually going to get people killed. I really believe that.

I asked for an example of how these outreach programs jeopardized investigations:

Well the best example was the investigation into the missing Somali kids in Minneapolis two years ago.

When Al-Shabaab started gaining support in the Somali community after the Ethiopian invasion in late 2006 and early 2007, all of the government agencies started doing outreach to the Somali imams. But when these kids went missing in Minneapolis, did we get a call from these imams we were reaching out to?

Did Obama and Holder Scuttle Terror Finance Prosecutions?

From: Pajamas Media

During the House Homeland Security hearing last month on the topic of radicalization in the American Muslim community, one exchange between L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN) concerned the relationship between the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Hamas terrorist front the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Sheriff Baca told the congressman:

We don’t play around with criminals in my world. If CAIR is an organization that is a quote “criminal organization,” prosecute them. Hold them accountable and bring them to trial.

But according to a high-ranking source within the Department of Justice, who spoke exclusively to Pajamas Media on the condition of anonymity, Sheriff Baca, a long-time supporter of CAIR, was probably already in on the joke.

The joke is that a number of leaders of Islamic organizations (all of whom publicly opposed the King hearings on Muslim radicalization) were about to be indicted on terror finance support charges by the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, which had been investigating the case for most of the past decade.

But those indictments were scuttled last year at the direction of top-level political appointees within the Department of Justice (DOJ) — and possibly even the White House.

Included in those indictments was at least one of the co-founders of CAIR, based on “Declination of Prosecution of Omar Ahmad,” a March 31 DOJ legal memo from Assistant Attorney General David Kris to Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler. A second DOJ official familiar with the investigation independently confirmed these details. Omar Ahmad is one of CAIR’s co-founders and its chairman emeritus.

He was personally named, along with CAIR itself, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror finance trial in 2007 and 2008. During the trial FBI Agent Lara Burns testified that both Omar Ahmad and current CAIR executive director Nihad Awad were caught on FBI wiretaps attending a 1993 meeting of Hamas leaders in Philadelphia.

Dean Boyd, public affairs representative for the DOJ National Security Division, declined to provide me a copy of the March 31, 2010, memo dropping the Omar Ahmad prosecution. Directing me to submit a FOIA request, Boyd did say that “as a general rule, internal DOJ deliberation memos spelling out arguments for or against potential prosecution of any particular suspect are not public.”

Pajamas Media will be filing a FOIA request for all the related documents in this case.

According to my source, the chief reason outlined in the DOJ memo declining to prosecute CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad was the issue of potential jury nullification. The first Holy Land Foundation trial in 2007 ended in a hung jury. When the case was retried in 2008, all five defendants, former executives of the Holy Land Foundation, were convicted on all 108 counts.

CAIR Chapter - Local Police Shouldn't Work with FBI Task Force

When are we going to realize that CAIR is not working in the national interest? They have consistently obstructed law enforcement efforts regarding terrorism. The following is an aposted by article that was posted at

From: IPT

When we called attention to a flier published by the Council on American Islamic Relations' (CAIR) San Francisco chapter in January, urging people to "Build a Wall of Resistance" to the FBI, officials insisted it wasn't what it looked like.


CAIR supports law enforcement, they said, and the poster was created more than 30 years ago. Since then, however, the organization has filed two lawsuits against the FBI. Now, the same chapter that published the anti-FBI flier has joined several other groups in calling on the San Francisco and Oakland Police Departments to stop collaborating with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) immediately.

The Department of Justice created the JTTF after 9/11 in order to better coordinate information sharing between federal, state and local law enforcement.

CAIR and the other groups argued Tuesday that Bay Area law enforcement assigned to the JTTF would be forced to violate the California Constitution, which prohibits intelligence gathering without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.Additionally, the groups condemned the police departments for not releasing "their now-secret agreements with the FBI," which they said would "provide assurances that their officers are adhering to the standards of state and local law."

Peter King Hearings Highlight the Problem of CAIR in the Muslim Community

Peter King Hearings Highlight the Problem of CAIR in the Muslim Community: "pIt’s now painfully clear why the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was so forcefully opposed to the House Homeland Security Committee’s hearings on homegrown radicalization in the Muslim-American community. According to many speakers at the hearing, one of the major obstacles to solving the problem of homegrown Islamic radicalization appears to be Muslim-American advocacy [...]/p"

What Do They Fear From Peter King?

From: American Thinker

I was educated as a social scientist; and as a social scientist, learned that if I wanted to understand a phenomenon and recognized a variable common to many examples of it, I would be remiss if I did not investigate it. It would be foolhardy to claim that a supposed defense of Islam has not been common to many terrorist events or to claim that there is no such thing as radical Islam. Now, if the political correctness crew wants to rename it something like "radicals-who-claim-they-represent-Islam-but-really-don't-and-certainly-cannot-be-used-to-call-all-Muslims-terrorists," they are welcome to do so; but for the sake of brevity, I will call it radical Islam, and they can consider it short for their mountain of PC qualifiers.

To hear a bevy of usual suspects tell it -- from the White House and Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) to hip hop mogul Russell Simmons -- Congressman Peter King (R-NY) should be outfitted with a white sheet and hood for daring to hold hearings on the threat of radical Muslims in the United States. Ellison criticized King for singling out a religious minority. Okay, well let's see. When was the last time a Christian "terrorist" flew an airplane into a skyscraper, killing thousands? Or how about an Irish one (since Ellison specifically warned us not to single out the Irish)? When was the last time those big, bad Jews strapped on a suicide bomb vest and blew themselves up in a Pakistani shopping mall? If Ellison and his PC compatriots want to offer us some balance by investigating the threat posed by Conservative Christians or Orthodox Jews, I suppose he can find a way to do it. He certainly has a ready-made venue in MSNBC. These were also the same people who claimed after 9/11 that our own actions caused the attacks by angering "Muslims." Today, however, they find the very same linkage offensive -- a linkage they blithely made.

More to the point, however, is the question of what Ellison and the others have to fear from King -- who after all, as the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee is being quite serious about carrying out his responsibilities. In fact, we might consider him derelict in his duties if he did not investigate this threat after foiled plots over Detroit and in Times Square; not to mention plots like the Ft. Hood massacre that unfortunately was not stopped. They claim that the hearings themselves create divisions among Americans; but judging from the reaction of most Americans to the proposed Ground Zero mosque, it appears that ship has already sailed. Besides, they never chide the administration's purveyors of "identity politics" for doing that very thing.

Are they afraid that King's inquiry might turn up something ominous? What if they found most American Muslims good people, but determined that their leaders have failed to uproot radical "charities" or mosques within their midst? Perhaps the Obama White House fears that hearings might find that it is more concerned about political correctness than it is about protecting the homeland. From their incessant opposition to such things, they seem to believe that admitting any modicum of terrorism in the name of Islam damns the entire community -- which I do not think has ever been King's position. There was a German Fifth Column operating in the United States during World War II, but it did not mean that the German-American community was disloyal. Somehow the PC brigade has a tough time with that intellectual operation.

Beyond that, we should understand that the left's head-in-the-sand policy is more than annoying; it's dangerous, and we have a case study that demonstrates it. I just returned from an extended stay in India, a nation with the world's second largest Muslim population. The government's rigid adherence to secularism has given rise to what many Indians call "pseudo-secularism": a policy that in its fear of giving offense to the Muslim minority actually gives it preferential treatment instead. For a while, this meant things like oddball allocation of funds. For instance, I have been in India during two budget debates, which resulted in the government giving subsidies to Muslims going on hajj, but not a penny for the countless Hindu refugees from Islamic oppression living in abysmal conditions. In fact, if you ever find yourself at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, you might notice that the government built a special terminal to be used exclusively by Muslim pilgrims going on the annual pilgrimage noted above.

More recently, India's PC policy has given rise to far more sinister effects. I have been going there for four years and have yet to be there when there was not a terrorist attack that resulted in the loss of innocent life. Most westerners have heard about the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, but discussion of the arson (set by Muslims) that burned 59 Hindu pilgrims to death was out of bounds in the public arena. Just last month, however, a court found that the arson was set deliberately by members of the Muslim community, acquitted about two thirds of the defendants, and sentenced another eleven to death. While the deadly arson does not justify a general riot against the Muslim community, it shows that the entire incident was not a problem of "radical Hindus," as the left and apologists claim, but one of inter-community violence, which if confronted head-on back then might not have the strength it still does today. It should be noted that the government long ago arrested those it accused of the riots-including a member of parliament -- but justice took nine years for the arson victims and their families.

Worse still, India's PC refusal to confront these issues has led to a situation in which, as I wrote recently, "Jihad has come to India." There are uninvestigated and significant demographic shifts along India's open borders (another topic they -- and we -- do not wish to address) with Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan, which has made formerly mixed Hindu-Muslim towns Hindu rein. The numbers have been documented thoroughly, but the human impact of this policy is more dramatically seen in the faces of hundreds of Hindus I have interviewed as they talked about their fear, the inability of their women to move outside of the home without being harassed or worse, of their children being abducted and other attacks that the authorities do not prosecute for fear of angering the Muslim community or being called anti-Muslim.

Whether we call it Islamic terrorism or just plain terrorism (carried out by Allah-knows-whom), there is no question that the same process which now threatens the world's second largest country and a nuclear power to boot, is -- progressively -- finding its way to our shores. Whether or not Congressman King is afforded the freedom of speech and free inquiry to hold effective hearings will signal to us whether we can expect to face the same PC-generated terror that India does.

CAIR CAUGHT DOCTORING FOOTAGE

An Internet video showing U.S.-flag-waving crowds yelling at men, women and children attending an Orange County fundraiser for an Islamic charity relief agency is making worldwide headlines and quickly turning into a he-said she-said scuffle.

But a Villa Park city council member who is prominently featured in the video says it was craftily edited to change the meaning of her words, and falsely make her look like she wanted Muslims raising money to feed the homeless to be killed by Marines.

Indeed, video of protestors hurling insults at the Muslims were shot in darkness, apparently several hours after a sun-splashed afternoon rally where two Congressmen and Villa Park council member Deborah Pauly spoke Feb. 13. That organized rally criticized the Muslim charity's invitations to two Islamic leaders who have supported Hamas or Hezbollah and anti-American policies in the Mideast.

The video features flag-waving protestors chanting, “go back home, go back home” at people wearing Islamic garb. As a family with children left the event, one woman protestor shouted “Why don't you go beat up your wife like you do every night? Maybe you ought to go have sex with a nine-year-old, and marry her.”

In the midst of those shots, Pauly points to the side and says “I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.” The video is apparently edited to imply she is referring to the people inside the fundraiser, but she maintains she was referring to violent jihadists in the Middle East.

Waqas Syed, a spokesman for the Islamic Circle of North America, said the protest against the fundraiser preached intolerance and hate from within the Republican Party. Pauly is first vice chair of the Orange County G.O.P. Organizing Committee, and a Tea Party activist.

“This kind of protest from elected officials advocating murder is unprecedented,” Syed said on Saturday. “We need to address this kind of hate.”

Syed said his group will demand that Pauly resign her G.O.P. post and apologize.

The video features flag-waving protestors chanting that people wearing Islamic garb should “go back home, go back home.” As a family with children left the event, one woman protestor shouted “why don't you go beat up your wife like you do every night? Maybe you ought to go have sex with a nine-year-old, and marry her.”

In the midst of those shots, Pauly says “I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise,” but the video implies she is referring to the people inside the fundraiser.

“This was edited to completely change the context,” Pauly said on Saturday. “I was referring to terrorists who believe their actions of violence will lead them to paradise, and not the people at the fundraiser.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations posted a video of the protests, and the charity fundraiser inside, on the web. Since then, the video has been featured on Internet news sites like the Huffington Post, Salon and has been broadcast by Al Jazeera.

Insults and jeers directed at the men, women and children raising money for the Islamic charity was videotaped in the dark, hours after Pauly and two congressmen had addressed a rally that was called because the two headliners at the fundraiser are supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah and opposed to U.S. policies in the Mideast.

The video shows a small group of protestors taunting and chanting outside the charity fundraiser as people entered and departed that night. Spliced into it were sections of speeches from earlier that afternoon, when Pauly and congressmen Ed Royce and Gary Miller spoke at a rally.

Syed stressed that the fundraiser's headliners, Siraj Wahhaj and Amir Abdel Malik Ali, are entitled to hold their own political views, but stressed the charity group that met in Yorba Linda does not share those views or support any political cause.

“We do not have any views on the Middle East,” he told City News Service Saturday. “We have excellent relations with all religions, Christian and Jewish and other.”

He dismissed claims by the protestors that they were targeted because of the Hezbollah or Hamas connections with the speakers. “We had a meeting with the protestors eight days before the event, and nothing short of actually canceling the event would have satisfied the protesters.”

“The event raised $60,000 for a homeless shelter, food bank and ‘feed the hungry’ program in the city of Riverside,” said Syed.

Pauly stressed that the protest rally was aimed only at the two speakers, and not at Muslims in general. As it was ending, she said, a small group of more-radical people gravitated to the fundraiser's doors and started hurling insults and chanting.

“We don't even know who these people are, they arrived as our event was ending,” Pauly told City News Service. “They are a splinter group.”

Syed said people attending the fundraiser recognized many of the insult- hurlers as persons who had issued similar anti-Muslim statements in Temecula in recent months, where the City Council unanimously approved construction of a mosque that was opposed by extreme Christian elements.