RUTHFULLY YOURS

The annual meeting of CPAC ^[1], the American Conservative Political Action Conference, is just around the corner. It’s a big deal, attracting some 10,000 conservatives to the nation’s capital each year. The roster of speakers is a who’s who of conservative celebrities: pundits and politicians, authors and activists, people with names like “Palin,” “Gingrich,” “Coulter,” “Romney,” “Breitbart,” and “Cheney.” Panels include “Policy Recommendations for Real Immigration Reform,” “Traditional Marriage as a Cure to Poverty,” “Next Steps: The Pro-life Movement’s Plans and Goals,” “Repealing Obamacare: In The States, In Courts, and In Congress.” In other words, it’s the sort of gathering calculated to send a different sort of thrill up Chris Matthews’s leg and prod Sheriff Clarence Dupnik ^[2] into another bout of frenzied incoherence on the subject of “right-wing hate speech,” etc. Just think what it would do to disgraced Hack Columnist Paul Krugman ^[3], Keith Olbermann (goodbye, Keith ^[4]!), or Frank Rich.

I am planning to drop in at some point during the festivities at CPAC this year, and since I happen to be in favor of real immigration reform, traditional marriage, and repealing ObamaCare, I expect to like a lot that I hear.

There has been a lot of virtual ink deployed about the fact that several traditional participants, including the Heritage Foundation, will not be attending ^[5] this year because GOProud ^[6], a gay conservative group, is included as a participating organization. I dissent sharply from some of GOProud’s actions — its attack on Jim DeMint ^[7], for example.  But to my mind, far more troubling than the presence of GOProud (which, after all, declares itself “committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy”) is the composition of the governing board ^[8] of CPAC’s umbrella organization, the American Conservative Union. I see several friends listed there. But then there is Suhail Khan, self-appointed Republican Muslim ambassador to the conservative world.  Remember the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing? Keep it in mind as you ponder Mr. Khan.

One of the panels I am especially looking forward to at CPAC is “The Sharia Challenge to The West.” As regular readers of Roger’s Rules know, I believe that Sharia, i.e., Islamic law, does “challenge,” i.e., threaten, the West. Here, for the record, are a few bits of evidence about my position:

• Islam vs. the West: What you Need to Know ^[9]

• Civilizational Suicide: the 12-step program ^[10]

• Accommodation or resistance? ^[11]

I wonder what Mr. Khan will think of “The Sharia Challenge to The West.” It’s a subject he knows intimately, since he is part of it. He presents himself as a conservative Republican who can speak for “moderate Muslims.” In fact, as Paul Sperry ^[12], Frank Gaffney ^[13] (more background here ^[14]), and others have pointed out, at the end of the day Suhail Khan is a smooth-talking apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood (about which, see Andrew McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad ^[15]), a radical Islamist group  whose credo is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Suhail Khan made his way into the U.S. government during the Bush administration. He has defended “Ground Zero mosque” Imam Feisal Rauf as a “moderate.” (I beg to differ here ^[16].) Writing in the New York Post, Paul Sperry enumerates ^[17] a few other facts about Suhail Khan:

• In June 2001, Khan personally accepted an award from the now-notorious Abdurahman Alamoudi, then head of the American Muslim Council.

• “We have with us a dear brother,” Alamoudi said as he prepared to honor Khan with a plaque at the group’s annual conference. “I’m really proud to be with Suhail Khan. Some of you saw him today in the White House, but inshallah [Allah willing], you will see him in better places in the White House, inshallah.”

Khan thanked his patron, saying “Abdurahman Alamoudi has been very supportive of me. . . . I hope, inshallah, we can keep working together.”

Just days earlier, Sen. Arlen Specter of the Judiciary Committee had cited a New York Post report documenting how Alamoudi had supported terrorists and “declared an interest in destroying America.”…  [In October 2004,  the “very supportive” Alamoudi was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison ^[18] “on charges related to his activities in the United States and abroad with nations and organizations that have ties to terrorism.”]

• In September 2001, four days before the 9/11 attacks, Khan spoke at the Islamic Society of North America’s convention. Introducing him was Jamal Barzinji, whose offices and home were raided by federal agents after 9/11. “Barzinji is not only closely associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], but also with Hamas,” according to the search-warrant affidavit. At the event, Khan shared his experiences from “inside” the White House, and praised his late father, Mahboob Khan, for helping found ISNA — which the government now says is a front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood and has raised money for jihad. The founding documents of the Brotherhood’s operation in America (recently seized by the FBI) reveal that it is in this country to “destroy” the Constitution and replace it with Islamic law.

An alarming prospect: a widespread movement bent on destroying the Constitution and replacing it with Islamic law. Is that overstated?  On the contrary, that’s what the Muslim Brotherhood is all about. Here, for example, is a key passage from the 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum ^[19]” on the Brotherhood’s “strategic goals” for North America. It was written by Mohamed Akram, then a central Muslim Brotherhood leader in the U.S.:

[T]heir work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. (my emphasis)

How does Suhail Khan fit into to all of this? When asked by Western media about his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam, he denies it all. Nothing to see here, move along. But here are a few videos ^[20] of Khan speaking for himself. If you’re in hurry, just ponder this snippet from his talk to the Islamic Society of North America in 1999:

The earliest defenders of Islam would defend their more numerous and better equipped oppressors, because the early Muslims loved death, dying for the sake of almighty Allah, more than the oppressors of Muslims loved life. This must be the case where we– when we are fighting life’s other battles. … [W]hat are our oppressors going to do with people like us? We’re prepared to give our lives for the cause of Islam.

What happens to “people like” Suhail Khan? They get appointments to influential jobs in the White House, then the Hill.  In addition to sitting on the board of the ACU, Khan is currently  a spokesman for  the Congressional Muslim Staff Association, where he works with a legislative assistant and Muslim convert named Jihad Saleh Williams (as Paul Sperry notes, “of all the Arabic names he could have picked, he chose Jihad”).

The American Conservative Union, founded in 1964 with the blessing of folks like William F. Buckley Jr., declares itself ^[21] on the side of individual rights and “strictly limiting the power of government.” The Muslim Brotherhood and other activist Islamic groups work overtime to subordinate the individual to the will of Allah and recognize no distinction between state and religious authority. They represent as thoroughgoing a totalitarian force as the world has ever seen. Suhail Khan is a prominent spokesman for that anti-democratic species of tyranny. Why does he sit on the board of the ACU? (And as Michelle Malkin and others have pointed out, Suhail Khan is not the only problematic character ^[22] on the ACU’s board of directors.) To my mind, the fact that the ACU’s board of directors includes apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood is the sort of thing that ought to worry our fellow conservatives. He is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing — or maybe the nose of the camel under the lately abbreviated tent.