RUTHFULLY YOURS

For some progressive writers, it’s more important to bash Fox News than to expose American Islamist groups’ rejection of liberal values. In recent weeks, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has aggressively promoted articles by Fox haters who are more concerned with smearing CAIR opponents as anti-Muslim bigots than addressing facts and evidence.

The U.S. Justice Department says CAIR is a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and labeled it an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial. Federal prosecutors said in a 2007 court filing that CAIR uses deception to “conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.” CAIR’s documented record should alienate every progressive.

Part of those efforts is taking advantage of writers with influence in the media. Don’t take my word for it. Look at what CAIR Vice Chair Sarwat Husain said at another terror-tied conference:

“Media in the United States is very gullible, ok? And they will see that if you have something, especially as a Muslim, if you have something to say, they will come running to you—and take advantage of that.”

In a presentation by CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, he told supporters how to manipulate reporters. One of the slides was titled “Characteristics of a Journalist” and said, “They will expect you to do their work. Let them.”

CAIR also said to exploit the fact that journalists do “little primary research,” are “under extreme deadline pressure” and “fea[r] charges of inaccuracy.” This is especially true of CAIR’s media allies that choose political ideology over all else.

On February 20, CAIR distributed a Media Matters hit piece by Michelle Leung describing me as “Fox’s Newest Anti-Muslim ‘National Security Analyst,’” even though I am neither anti-Muslim nor “new” on Fox. If she had checked her own website’s archives, she would have seen a hit piece from 2011 about an appearance. The premise of that article is that I am not a credible speaker on Libya because I opposed the Ground Zero Mosque.

My appearance was about the Clarion Project’s disclosure of a jihadist enclave in Texas run by Jamaat ul-Fuqra/Muslims of the Americas. Her article didn’t even mention the topic I was discussing because that might wake readers up as to why this was a story worth covering.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Vice Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, said the discovery is “appalling.” Despite Leung’s description of Clarion and me as “anti-Muslim,” around a dozen Muslim organizations in the U.S. and Canada endorsed a statement calling on the U.S. government to label Jamaat ul-Fuqra as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

As evidence of my “Islamophobic” agenda, Leung cites my segment about ul-Fuqra and Islamist patrols in London, a segment about Al-Qaeda recruiting among Somali refugees in the U.S. and one where I mentioned that Syrian jihadists belong to an anti-American alliance in the region. Every single one was about events that indisputably happened. If that’s anti-Muslim, then reporters and analysts who cover shootings must hate gun owners.

Then on March 6, CAIR promoted another ridiculous article by NewsHounds, where the author seemed determined to prove her wit by including as many fact-free insults as possible. This time, CAIR and its ally said I was “fomenting fear of Islam” by talking about the U.S. military’s decision to again hire chaplains endorsed by the Islamic Society of North America. You can watch the segment here.

We emphasized that I was not criticizing the use of Muslim chaplains, but rather the use of ISNA as the endorser. Like CAIR, the Justice Department labeled ISNA as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial and a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. ISNA’s Fiqh Council is dominated by Islamists with radical histories. The charitable status of ISNA’s Canadian affiliate was revoked because of its links to Pakistani terrorists and accounting discrepancies.

The Clarion Project also discovered that the U.S. Air Force paid ISNA almost $5,000 of taxpayer money for two advertisements in its magazine with the purpose of recruiting chaplains. NewsHounds described that as “whining.”

NewsHounds also criticized my previous segment about ul-Fuqra and its communes in America, which was largely based on a declassified FBI document from 2007 that we obtained. The author disingenuously selected a single quote from the file stating that ul-Fuqra’s Texas site “may” be involved in terrorism and criticized my “unfounded fear.” She made a conscious decision to mislead her readers by leaving out the other incriminating quotes.

The FBI document reports that ul-Fuqra members in the U.S. have taken part in at least 10 murders, one disappearance and seven bomb plots. It states:

“The documented propensity for violence by this organization supports the belief the leadership of the MOA extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. Government. Members of the MOA are encouraged to travel to Pakistan to receive religious and military/terrorist training from Sheikh Gilani.”

The criterion for being an “Islamophobe” is not to actually be an anti-Muslim bigot. It’s to be a critic of CAIR and Islamism. It wasn’t being used years before 9/11. They even claim that practicing Muslims like Zuhdi Jasser and the American Islamic Congress are part of the “Islamophobia” conspiracy. Despite that logical fallacy, Michelle Leung’s article at Media Matters even called Jasser “anti-Muslim.”

Former U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdur-Rahman Muhammad says he was at an Islamist meeting in the 1990s where they conceived of a strategy of using the term “Islamophobia” to neutralize opponents. In September, multiple Muslim activists decried the “Islamophobia” strategy.

“Any time you condemn them, any time you point out their machinations or their deceit, they are going to label you an Islamophobe and who wants to be that? It is just a technique to stigmatize their critics,” Muhammad says.

Media Matters and NewsHounds parrot the “Islamophobia” line because their primary goal is to attack FOX News Channel, even if it means declining to defend their own liberal-progressive values from Islamists.

This article was sponsored by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

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