Muslims Wanted 9/11 Input, But Did They Want The Truth?
By Richard Davis (08/12/04)
American Muslim advocacy groups are complaining they were not granted sufficient input into the final report of the federal 9/11 Commission. "Why would they fail to consult a key group who could help them understand what’s going on in the Muslim world?" asked Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Here are a few reasons: 1) Some of these groups’ relationship to terrorism is ambiguous at best; 2) Their primary objective is to whitewash the Islamic component out of the War on Terror; 3) Their explanation for 9/11 is contrived and self-serving; and 4) Their main goal is to obtain a public forum in which to vent their anti-Semitism and dislike for America.
1) Though they bill themselves as "civil rights" associations, some these groups are little more than front organizations for Islamic extremism, and officials from several, including CAIR, have been arrested or indicted on terrorism-related charges since 9/11. When these groups are not acting as public apologists for terrorism, they‘re busy using 9/11 and its aftermath for self-aggrandizement, extending both their political reach and their influence over other American Muslims. Sen. Jon Kyl noted at a subcommittee meeting last September that Saudi-backed groups like CAIR are part of a "well advanced," 40-year effort by the more fundamentalist elements to gain control of Islam in America, "from mosques, universities and community centers to our prisons and even within our military."
During Kyl’s judiciary subcommittee hearing Sen. Richard Durban remarked that CAIR is "unusual in its extreme rhetoric and its associations with groups that are suspect." Both the executive director and the chairman of CAIR refused to appear before the panel, which was investigating domestic links to terrorism. Apparently that wasn’t part of "the Muslim world" CAIR so desperate wants to share with us.
2) CAIR’s demand for input in the 9/11 report is simply a fifth-column maneuver to obfuscate the true nature of Islamic extremism, its doctrinal foundation and its broad-based support among clerics and believers here and abroad. Even Hooper himself is on record as favoring an Islamic theocracy for America "sometime in the future," a totalitarian fantasy that no true civil libertarian would ever entertain.
Last week both Hooper and CAIR’s legal director Arsalan T. Iftikhar attacked the use of "Islamist" in the 9/11 report, claiming it will "stigmatize" anyone with ties to Islam. The so-called terrorists are actually just "deviant criminals" who only "purport to be acting under Islamic tenets," Iftikhar wrote. That argument is pure sophistry, and Iftikhar can state it publicly without fear of retribution only because he knows no Muslim believes it or him. He went on: "As Americans, we must mobilize to help prevent acts of ‘terror’ against our country based on criminal acts, not on demographic associations." (Placing quotes around the word terror reveals the equivocation Muslims experience with this issue. Their opposition to "terrorism" always comes with qualifiers.)
And so despite what the terrorists say themselves, what their web sites say, what the Qur’an says, what the terrorists’ supporters believe, what the whole world believes including every single person at CAIR, the Islamic connection is just the malicious fabrication of racist Islamophobes intent on smearing Islam and Muslims.
But if just common criminality motivates these Muslims and not Islamic hate and theology, why do we need to consult an Islamic group to understand them? Doesn’t that just validate the demographic association? Does CAIR have any other justification for its demands for a place at the table other than its demographic association with terrorists?
(Perhaps CAIR doesn’t believe Muslims were behind 9/11 at all. A London-based sheikh used the occasion of the release of the 9/11 report last week to urge Muslims worldwide to stop blaming the attacks on the Israeli Mossad and right-wing Americans. In truth, CAIR and most Muslims do believe Israel and America are the efficient causes of 9/11, if not the actual ones.)
3) Imagine this scenario: A renegade group of fanatical Christians launches a terror campaign against all nonChristians, especially Muslims, with the stated objective of restoring the One Church, imposing strict fundamentalist laws over all of the world, killing or subjugating anyone who disagrees, and freeing the Holy Land from sacrilegious unbelievers. Let’s say they hijack some planes and crash them into downtown Cairo. Would we Americans then be justified in saying, "Well we disagree with their tactics but you have to understand you Muslims brought this all on yourselves? Now let’s talk about some changes in your governments’ policies."
That has been precisely the stance of Muslims and Western liberals since 9/11. They deny the Islamic motivations behind the killers but accept the political ones (which is just the reverse of what the terrorists themselves do). In effect Muslims say, "We don’t support terrorists, but we do support all the things they support, and we blame you for provoking their violence." In "the Muslim world," that’s known as being a moderate.
There are two main problems with this position, besides its general absurdity: 1) Roving bands of deviant religious fanatics are not legitimate political agents in any sane world community and never can be, regardless of how much you may approve of their targeting methods, and 2) Muslim terrorists are actually using the political rationale, which is at best a secondary motivation for them, as a tool to recruit new killers and collaborators (much as CAIR is using it to recruit its new members).
The best that can be said for groups like CAIR is that they are useful idiots. By according political legitimacy to the terrorists and by inciting all other Muslims to view themselves as victims and victims-to-be of nonMuslims, they are simply doing the terrorists’ public bidding. It’s been a profitable partnership for both.
4) Hooper wants the 9/11 Commission to tackle the "root causes" of terrorism (so long as no one reviews Islamic history or looks in the Qur’an). And the root cause, so it turns out, is the Root of All Causes--the Jews. If we’d only help Muslims slaughter the Jews all would be peace and love, and Muslims would gladly stop all of this killing. Look at how well they got along with the Germans a while back. They were Westerners. Not a single suicide zeppelin over Berlin. Destroying Israel would solve all of the Muslim world’s sorry troubles, including that 600-years-of-decline problem.
Al-Jazeerah, fresh from its triumphant appearance at the Democratic Convention, certainly understands. In an opinion editorial ("The 9/11 Report Bias of the Inept") writer John Anast castigated the 9/11 commissioners for ignoring Israel and "the Zionists in the Pentagon, Vice President’s office, Department of States, a variety of Washington based organizations and Zionist controlled media outlets." Hell, they’re everywhere. These "lunatics" bring Islam into the discussion because "Islam stands literally and symbolically in the way of their conquest."
What is the "most advanced terrorist and espionage infrastructure" in the United States? The one "controlled directly and indirectly by Israel," Al-Jazeerah informs us. Its "cadres of Zionists ascribing to an alien ideology and placing their allegiance with a foreign power are the terrorists we seek." How did the Jews know about 9/11 in advance? You can guess that one on your own. According to Anast, "Our defense structure did not let us down on 11 September, it was corrupted, it was infiltrated, it was obfuscated, not by al Qaeda, but by Israel and its agents in America."
If only the 9/11 Commission had had this input at the beginning, they could have saved everybody a lot of time. But, then, America actually did have this exact kind of deranged input from Muslims at the beginning, early on the morning of September 11. Their input hasn’t improved much since then.
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