Now a year and a half into Abdurahman Alamoudi's 23-year prison sentence for violating anti-terrorism sanctions, it might seem hard to remember why both the Clinton and Bush administrations used to embrace him, for years, as a leader of Islam in America. It might seem troubling that an FBI spokesman, as recently as 2002, had dubbed Alamoudi's organization, the then-Washington-based American Muslim Council, "the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States." It might seem perplexing that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement praising Alamoudi's group as "the premier, mainstream Muslim group in Washington," had dismissed warnings about the organization and its long-serving director as "Muslim-bashing."

But the reasons Alamoudi enjoyed this status are not so difficult to understand. He purported to represent millions of American Muslims, who deserve a political voice in Washington. And, throughout his public life, he spoke out against terrorist attacks in the United States. In a typical speech to thousands of American Muslims at the annual convention of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in Chicago in 1996, for instance, he told the audience, "Once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. ... There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it."

To a large extent, his reputation as an influential moderate Muslim became self-perpetuating, his stature enhanced each time he met with a mainstream politician or clergyman. The pages of his organization's newsletter and sympathetic publications reported that he had held meetings with President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake in the mid-'90s. The State Department reportedly sent Alamoudi on diplomatic junkets to Muslim countries in the late '90s. Bush administration officials had picked up where their predecessors in the White House left off, granting Alamoudi and his associates photo opportunities with the president and an open-door policy with senior administration officials...