Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The front for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, CAIR, as well as a number of other Muslim groups, are none-too-happy that the FBI is actually doing its job and keeping an eye on what these groups are up to, and even (properly) suspending ties with CAIR itself: U.S. Muslim Coalition Considers Suspending Relations with FBI
A coalition of major national Islamic organizations today announced that it is considering suspending outreach relations with the FBI, citing recent incidents in which American mosques and Muslim groups have been targeted.
In a statement, the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), said:
Muslim communities throughout the United States have made significant advances in promoting and contributing to a fair, free and pluralistic society...
...Yet recent incidents targeting American Muslims lead us to consider suspending ongoing outreach efforts with the FBI.
In California, the FBI sent a convicted criminal to pose as an agents provocateurs in several of that state's mosques. An FBI agent allegedly told one of the mosque attendees that the agency would make his life a "living hell" if he did not become an informant.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) wrote in a recent statement, headlined "FBI Losing Partnership with American Muslim Community" - "Trust is the cornerstone of any partnership between law enforcement and communities. It can only be established and maintained through clear and open communication. Without this, trust is eroded and suspicions arise on all sides. This clearly does not serve anyone's interests...It is now up to the FBI and law enforcement agencies to re-engage with the Muslim American community, and re-build trust and respect."
See: FBI Losing Partnership with American Muslim Community
Early last fall, the FBI began a disengagement campaign in its relations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest and most respected Muslim civil rights organization. The FBI suspended contacts with CAIR pending the resolution of unspecified "issues."
In response, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella organization of many Muslim groups, suspended outreach to the FBI in February...
...We believe the FBI's unjustified actions are based on the May 2007 designation of some 300 groups and individuals, including several major American Muslim groups such as CAIR, the Islamic society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), as "unindicted co-conspirators" (UCC) in conjunction with the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, Texas.
Making this unjust designation public violates the Justice Department's own guidelines and wrongly implies that those listed are somehow involved in criminal activity.
Bias and faulty premises dominated post-9/11 law enforcement analysis of the Muslim community and the threat assessment to national security. The waning days of the previous administration witnessed a flourishing of anti-Muslim activity.
There is even inter-agency information being disseminated that claims civil rights advocacy is part of a Muslim conspiracy to implement Shari'a law in order to destroy the United States. Recent government actions seemed to be based on this bizarre premise.
These McCarthy-era tactics are detrimental to a free society.
The credibility of all Muslim organizations who maintain ties to the FBI that do not react decisively is undermined in the eyes of the community. Our fear is that counter-intelligence programs are quelling lawful dissent.
What is most frightening is that FBI abuses are no longer covert, and are slowly being integrated into the already expansive laws regulating law enforcement activity.
Internationally, in light of President Obama's initiative of dialogue with the Muslim world, such actions negatively impact U.S. interests.
If the FBI does not accord fair and equitable treatment to every American Muslim organization, including CAIR, ISNA and NAIT, then Muslim organizations, mosques and individuals will have no choice but to consider suspending all outreach activities with FBI offices, agents and other personnel. This possible suspension, of course, would in no way affect our unshakable duty to report crimes or threats of violence to our nation.
We call on the FBI to reassess its positions on profiling and the use of informants as agents provocateurs within the Muslim communities. We further request objective evaluation of the sources of information and analysis utilized to formulate decisions...
You can't fire me, I quit! This is quite typical of Islamist behavior world-wide. Start by provoking an incident, then when the victim starts fighting back, you claim that you are in fact the victim...and since the Koran allows for defensive war, every conflict becomes defensive. I'm actually glad to read this and see that the FBI is angering all the right people.
Roger Scruton - not in his recent Azure article, but in a better focused and imo a genuinely perspicacious piece in the current issue of City Journal - reflects upon the wider phenomenon that both permits and positively invites this type of initiative as exhibited by CAIR in this particular instance.
Scruton considers it under the rubric of a "culture of repudiation," which is a perfect or near-perfect formulation, given the civilizational context he is exploring.
Scruton writes:
Citizenship, as I have described it, does not fulfill that need: and that is why so many Muslims reject it, seeking instead that consoling “brotherhood” (ikhwan) that has so often been the goal of Islamic revivals.
because with Islam one is dealing with the tribal/clan culture and we make the mistake of projecting our idea of citizenship and what it entails onto 'the other'.
It's not clear what's going on here. Muslim organizations like CAIR will often play a extortion game with the Feds, pretending to be the 'moderates' who will help the Feds find the 'extremists' (ignoring the fact that the 'moderates' and the 'extremists' are working together).
When the Feds decide to stop playing this game, terrorist attacks increase.
It's a lesson CAIR probably learned from their Saudi sponsors. When Prince Bandar threatened to stop 'helping' Tony Blair catch terrorists, he was trying to keep the British government from indicting Saudi Arabia in a bribery scandal. This may be some sort of threat.
Or, CAIR could be acknowledging that the Feds were playing them all along, and that they were pretending to give into extortion while gathering useful information to use against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Robert Spencer has an interesting post on the rural jihadi militias that had been set up around the USA. Apparently, these groups are either disbanding or moving elsewhere. It's not clear if they are moving their operations because they've been investigated several times, or if they're planning something nasty.
But one hopeful sign - they do seem to be running low on petrodollar funding. The dismal economy is good for something.