Author: Jake Tapper
Publication: www.salon.com
Date: September 26, 2001
Some of the groups claiming to speak
for American Muslims find it impossible to speak out against terrorist
groups.
Less than a week after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks, President Bush appeared at the Islamic Center in
Washington, standing with various leaders of Muslim groups like the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the American Muslim Council (AMC)
to make a public show of support for American Muslims, as ugly acts of
violence and intimidation were made against Muslims and Arab-Americans
"It's a great country because we
share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth," Bush said.
"And it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way
I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as
I do."
CAIR and the AMC have emerged as
possibly the two most outspoken U.S. Muslim organizations in the wake of
the tragedy, protesting "hate crimes" against Muslims and Arab-Americans,
explaining why increased security need not preclude civil liberties for
those from the Middle East and Near East, and trying to put a moderate
face on a religion Americans only seem to hear about when it rears up in
its most extreme incarnations.
USA Today, the Washington Post,
the New York Times, Fox News Channel and Salon -- as well as hundreds of
media outlets throughout America in search of expertise, information and
a moderate face for Islam -- have sought out CAIR and AMC executives in
recent weeks. When CNN's Bill Hemmer tackled the question "What do we really
know about Islam?" it was Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan, executive director of
CAIR, to whom he turned. And it was Aly Abu Zaakouk, executive director
of the AMC, who explained to the San Francisco Chronicle how the term "Infinite
Justice," the Pentagon's initial name for a U.S. military strategy overseas,
would be "offensive to some in the Muslim community."
But reporters are learning it's
not easy to find leaders who can authentically speak for Muslim Americans,
who represent a wide variety of ethnicities and languages, sects and political
views ranging from completely secular to Islamic fundamentalist. CAIR and
AMC in particular would not be chosen as representatives by many Muslims.
In fact, there are those in American Muslim communities as well as law
enforcement who consider CAIR and the AMC to be part of the problem, because
both have been seen as tacitly -- if not explicitly -- supportive of extremist
groups guilty of terrorism.
Ibrahim Hooper, communications director
of CAIR, refuses to outright condemn Osama bin Laden. "We condemn terrorism,
we condemn the attack on the buildings," Hooper said. But why not condemn
bin Laden by name, especially after President Bush has now stated that
he was clearly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks?
"If Osama bin Laden was behind it,
we condemn him by name," Hooper said. But why the "if" -- why qualify the
response? Hooper said he resented the question. And what about prior acts
of terror linked to bin Laden? Or that bin Laden has urged Muslims to kill
Americans?
Again, Hooper demurred, saying only
that he condemns acts of terror.
Both groups also refuse to outright
condemn Islamic terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In fact, leaders
from both groups have, in recent years, been quoted defending or exhorting
organizations that the U.S. State Department classifies as "foreign terrorist."
Steven Pomerantz, former FBI assistant director and chief of the FBI's
counterterrorism section, once charged that CAIR's activities "effectively
give aid to international terrorist groups." Other American Muslim leaders
have raised questions about their possible alliances with radical groups,
and many academics are disturbed by the groups' prominence.
But CAIR and AMC strongly disagree
with such criticisms, blaming an anti-Muslim bias -- or a pro-Israel one.
When asked Friday about accusations from other Muslims that his group may
be extremist, Aly Abu Zaakouk, the executive director of the AMC, said,
"You are trying to blemish our reputation. Get the heck out of here," and
hung up the phone. "This kind of thing has been going on for years," said
CAIR's Hooper. Asked about Muslim clerics who have complained that his
organization is extremist, Hooper said, "The pro-Israel lobby hooks up
these guys to be their Muslim front men."
An even more basic problem for many
Muslim academics and some clerics is the presumption that these organizations
represent their views. "There is general concern among Muslim intellectuals
about how not only CAIR but some of these other organizations are claiming
to speak in the name of the Muslim community, and how they're coming to
be recognized by the government as spokespeople for the Muslim community
in the U.S.," says Ali Asani, professor of Islamic studies at Harvard University.
"That troubles people."
Neither CAIR nor the AMC divulge
their membership numbers, though both seem to be, as AMC executive director
Aly Abu Zaakouk says, "working to be the voice of American Muslims in Washington,
D.C., in state capitals and local governments, from PTAs to Pennsylvania
Avenue."
But unlike, say, the Catholic Church,
Islam in the U.S. doesn't have an organized hierarchy. That is, Asani says,
"something the American Muslim community has been struggling with." There
are moderate-seeming groups like the Islamic Institute and others that
will likely gain greater visibility as this crisis continues. But with
Muslims coming from so many different countries, with so many different
sects within those countries, often the loudest group -- or the ones who
lobby Congress -- are the ones the U.S. government turns to as representative
of the estimated 6 million to 8 million American Muslims.
When leaders of these groups speak
to the media, Asani says, "Very often whoever's speaking for them represents
a very homogenized global form of Islam that refuses to recognize diversity
of opinion.
"One of the things I have noticed
as a result of this crisis is that there are so many people -- this imam
and that imam -- and everybody is claiming they represent the Muslim community,"
he says.
Particularly problematic is the
attitude of CAIR and AMC toward Islamic terrorist groups. CAIR was critical
of the conviction of Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman, whom U.S. authorities deemed
the ringleader of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who was
convicted with nine followers in October 1995 of conspiring to blow up
the Lincoln Tunnel along with other New York City landmarks.
CAIR went so far as to include the
court conviction of Abdul-Rahman on a list of "hate crimes against Muslims."
And CAIR's founder, Nihad Awad, wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that
the World Trade Center trial, which ended in the conviction in 1994 of
four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, was "a travesty of justice." According
to Awad -- and despite the confessions of the terrorists from the 1993
attack -- "there is ample evidence indicating that both the Mossad and
the Egyptian Intelligence played a role in the explosion." (Awad -- who
met with President Bush last week -- has been more circumspect in his comments
after this World Trade Center bombing.)
Leaders of the AMC also have expressed
concern for the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists who, it should be remembered,
differ only from the Sept. 11 bombers in efficiency. "I believe that the
judge went out of his way to punish the defendants harshly and with vengeance,
and to a large extent, because they were Muslim," Abdurahman Alamoudi,
then the executive director of the AMC, wrote to his members on Aug. 20,
1994.
Last year, questions about Alamoudi
and the actual moderation of the AMC came to light when both Gov. George
W. Bush and Hillary Clinton returned $1,000 given to their respective campaigns
by Alamoudi, no longer the executive director but still a board member
of the organization, according to the AMC. Last year, however, Clinton
and Bush expressed concern not with Alamoudi's claim that the 1993 World
Trade Center bombers were the victims of anti-Muslim bias, but because
of his support for other terrorist organizations.
At a November 2000 rally against
Israel in Lafayette Park, across from the White House, Alamoudi said to
the crowd, "Hear that, Bill Clinton! We are all supporters of Hamas. I
wish they add that I am also a supporter of Hizballah. Anybody support
Hizballah here?" The crowd cheered.
According to the State Department,
Hamas engages in "large-scale suicide bombings -- against Israeli civilian
and military targets, suspected Palestinian collaborators, and Fatah rivals."
A pro-Hamas Web site proudly lists the organization's various acts of violence,
against both Israeli military and civilians. Hezbollah, the State Department
says, is "known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-U.S.
terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy
and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy
annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible
for the kidnapping and detention of U.S. and other Western hostages in
Lebanon. The group also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992."
But neither CAIR nor the AMC or
other Muslim American organizations -- much like several of the Arab nations
Bush is trying to bring into the anti-terrorism coalition -- appear to
consider Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Nor does it mean that
Israeli civilians -- especially those who live on settlements in disputed
territories -- are necessarily considered "innocent civilians" to these
groups, either.
But Azar Nafisi, a culture and politics
professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International
Studies, says the support of certain terrorist groups poses a fundamental
problem for any organization that hopes to speak for American Muslims.
Even if they condemn bin Laden, "Different Muslim organizations in the
United States support Hamas," she says. "Are some acts of terrorism valid
and some not?"
CAIR's Hooper repudiates the charge
wholeheartedly, arguing that no one can point to any example of the major
American Muslim organizations supporting Islamic extremism. He says that
they are faulted for "sins of omission, not sins of commission," and that
criticism comes their way from other Muslims for not speaking out against
terrorist organizations or human rights abuses in Muslim countries, not
for necessarily voicing support.
Hooper's comments about Hamas and
Hezbollah are even more qualified than they were about bin Laden. "If someone
carries out terrorist acts, they should be labeled as a terrorist," he
says. "If they don't, they shouldn't." Pressed to address these two terrorist
groups by name, Hooper said, "If Hamas kills innocent civilians we condemn
them. But I'm not going to condemn legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation."
CAIR, Hooper continues, has never
even mentioned the word "Hamas" as an organization, so why should they
start now? But that, of course, doesn't include all the mentions of Hamas
that CAIR's leaders have made -- including CAIR founder Awad's 1994 declaration
that before the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority
he "used to support the PLO," but that now he was "in support of the Hamas
movement more than the PLO."
Hamas, meanwhile, has claimed credit
for the murders of countless Israeli civilians. Middle East scholars believe
that Islamic fundamentalists don't consider many victims of terrorist attacks
"innocent," which is how they can defend Hamas as not killing innocent
people. Hooper, however, refused to answer questions exploring that theory.
"What you're trying to get me to
say is the Palestinians don't deserve to live in peace and freedom," Hooper
says -- though neither the Palestinians nor Israel had been mentioned.
Questions about whether CAIR would condemn organizations by name unequivocally,
instead of qualifying the condemnations, were just "word games from the
pro-Israel lobby," Hooper said. Instead, Hooper said that the very questions
were the problem, and part of a Zionist conspiracy. "This is a game they
play," Hooper said, referring to the pro-Israel lobby. "They give me a
long list of people to condemn and if you don't give sufficient condemnation
you're a terrorist. We would condemn any person or any group that kills
innocent civilians. But it's not my duty that when the pro-Israel lobby
says 'Jump' I say 'How high?'"
Hooper says that his attitude about
whoever is behind the attacks is "go get 'em," but his job is to preserve
the rights of Muslims in this country and be vigilant in that task. He
criticizes the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that when
law enforcement refers to "associates" of the terrorists, they're stretching
the term. Law enforcement is using the term "associates" too loosely, he
says, in a way to target Muslims. "It's like the 'Six degrees of Kevin
Bacon' game," he says. "No Muslim is more than six degrees away from Osama
bin Laden."
Hooper then ended the interview,
and refused to discuss questions about a series of 1994 meetings that CAIR
coordinated for Bassam Alamoush, a Jordanian Islamic militant who told
a Chicago audience in December of that year that killing Jews was "a good
deed." Nor could he be asked about CAIR board member Siraj Wahaj. Wahaj,
the imam of the Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, decried on TV the Sept. 11 attacks
as "criminal" and "wrong." But Wahaj also had invited convicted terrorist
Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman to speak at his mosque, and even testified on
his behalf. Before then, in 1991, speaking to the Islamic Association of
North Texas, Wahaj called Operation Desert Storm "one of the most diabolical
plots ever in the annals of history," and that the war was "part of a larger
plan, to destroy the greatest challenge to the Western world, and that's
Islam." Just as the USSR fell, so too will the U.S., Wahaj said, "unless
America changes its course from the new world order and accepts the Islamic
agenda."
Long before the Sept. 11 horror,
one of the most bold critiques of Muslim American organizations came on
Jan. 7, 1999, in a speech to the U.S. State Department by Shaykh Muhammad
Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, another nonprofit
organization for American Muslims. Kabbani spoke critically about the ideology
of the major Muslim American organizations. Warning that too many Muslims
in America were supporting terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in a variety
of ways, and that too many mosques in the United States were becoming havens
for Islamic extremists, Kabbani said that some Muslim American organizations
were a big part of the problem.
"There are many Muslim organizations
that claim to speak on behalf of the Muslim community but that in reality
are not moderate, but extremist," Kabbani said. While Kabbani made no direct
references to any group in his speech, it is with AMC and CAIR that he
has publicly feuded.
Muslim extremism is dangerous, Kabbani
cautioned, and the media needs to learn the difference between Islam and
extremism. "What I am seeing, unfortunately, are those that are advising
the media, or advising the government are not the moderate Muslims," Kabbani
said. "Those whose opinion the government asks are the extremists themselves."
And in a January 1997 letter to
a Muslim Web site, Seif Ashmawy, an Egyptian Muslim and peace activist
who published the "Voice of Peace" newsletter about Muslim affairs, slammed
both CAIR and the AMC for defending Islamic extremism. "It is a known fact
that both the AMC and CAIR have defended, apologized for, and rationalized
the actions of extremists groups," Ashmawy, who died in a 1998 car accident,
wrote. "The real challenge for moderates like myself is to prevent my Muslim
brethren from [being] deceived by extremist groups that pretend to represent
their interests." The groups' defenders argue that groups like CAIR and
the AMC are naturally and rightly critical of the Israeli policy in the
West Bank and Gaza. And they make no apologies for vigorously defending
the civil rights and civil liberties of Arab-Americans and Muslims, which
sometimes leads them to butt heads with U.S. law enforcement. CAIR's Hooper
says Kabbani represents just a small group of Muslims. Law enforcement
officials who make charges such as Pomerantz's are "anti-Muslim bigots."
But the views of the more radical
American Muslims will continue to face increased scrutiny, and in some
cases, condemnation from the American public. Until early last week, for
instance, the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, Fla., posted on its Web site
an openly anti-Semitic essay that referred to Jews as being "known for
their treachery and corruption" and quoted from a Muslim text that read,
"O Muslim! There is Jew behind me, kill him!"
Dan McBride, spokesman for the Boca
Raton mosque, said the essay, titled, "Why can't the Jews and Muslims live
together in peace?" generated three e-mail complaints, so they took it
down.
"As fellow Americans, we're all
a little sensitive right now and we don't want to increase any tensions,"
McBride said. "So we're trying to be a little politically correct right
now."
Which is not to say McBride disagrees
with anything in the essay. In fact, he defends it word for word, including
passages that Art Teitelbaum, the southern area director of the Anti Defamation
League, calls "filled with poisonous anti-Semitic bigotry." McBride defends
the assertion, for instance, that Jews are "usurpers and aggressors, who
have oppressed and persecuted others, and who are known for their treachery
and corruption throughout the world, historically and in the present age."
And that Jews have "carried out chemical and radiational [sic] experiments
on their prisoners, and taken organs from them for transplant into Jewish
patients." McBride says "that's all documented," though he could not provide
any documentation.
"This is the kind of ranting and
ravings that you get out of -- I would like to say fanatics, but it's not
just fanatics, it's people who are ignorant," says Johns Hopkins' Nafisi,
who was raised Muslim in Iran. "It's one interpretation of Islam, an interpretation
that has been encouraged by many Muslim leaders around the world. But it's
not the Islam I was raised on."
Ultimately, as the American public
requires more knowledge of Islam, the challenge will be in finding leaders
who can explain the faith, while being free of their own ties to the religion's
fundamentalist sects. But for any American Muslim leader, in trying to
appeal to a wide variety of people, there may easily be examples of, or
acceptance of, Islamic extremism in their past.
During the national day of prayer
and remembrance Sept. 14 at the National Cathedral, attended by Bush and
other U.S. dignitaries, Muzammil Siddiqi, imam for the Islamic Society
of North America, read from the Quran, saying that "Those that lay the
plots of evil, for them is a terrible penalty; and the plotting of such
will be not abide."
But, as columnist Charles Krauthammer
wondered in the Washington Post, one has to ask "who are the layers of
plots of evil" to whom Siddiqi refers? "Those who perpetrated the World
Trade Center attack? Or America, as thousands of Muslims in the street
claim? The imam might have made that clear. He did not." It was not the
first time Siddiqi was disturbingly noncommittal. In 1989, after the fatwa
death sentence issued against author Salman Rushdie for his book "The Satanic
Verses," Siddiqi's view on whether Rushdie should be killed was difficult
to assess. "Asked whether he personally thinks capital punishment would
be appropriate in Rushdie's case," wrote the Los Angeles Times, "Siddiqi
was non-committal, saying that would have to be determined in the due process
of Islamic law."
(Jake Tapper is Salon's Washington
correspondent and the author of "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the
Presidency.")
