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State Dept. continues Islamist outreach










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State Department
Continues Islamist Outreach

New booklet, "Being
Muslim in America," taps the wrong messengers



IPT
News

May 17, 2009

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1035/state-department-continues-islamist-outreach



With the United States battling Islamist extremists, making
America's case to Muslims around the world has never been more of a
priority for policymakers. Unfortunately, the State Department continues
to take a counterproductive approach: serving as a veritable infomercial
promoting Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA) while giving the back of the hand to the
very anti-jihadist Muslims that Washington should be cultivating. The
latest example is a State Department
booklet
issued in March titled "Being Muslim in America."

It is part of an
outreach

effort that began under President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice and is moving forward under President Obama and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton.

The goal behind publication of the 64-page
booklet is laudable: to arm consular officers and diplomats with
information they can take to Muslims around the world to rebut slanders
about U.S. "persecution" of Muslims. The booklet deluges readers with
color pictures, statistical tables and individual profiles in an effort to
show the world that American Muslims are a success story, noting that they
have become entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers, doctors,
soldiers, firefighters, politicians, fashion designers, and pianists.

And as we'll show in more detail below, many slanders
against the United States come from the same groups that are portrayed
favorably in the State Department booklet. The front cover has a picture
of two Muslim girls playing basketball at a school near Detroit: One is
wearing traditional dress, the other more modern dress. It's no ordinary
basketball game, because there's a deeper sociopolitical message that
Foggy Bottom wants to send to the world: The girls "compete fiercely on
the basketball court in a sport that blends individual skills and team
effort. They -- along with the other men, women and children in the
publication -- demonstrate every day what it is like to be Muslim in
America." The booklet is replete with dozens of pictures of Muslims
playing basketball, praying; talking about "diversity" at a mosque;
attending interfaith gatherings "to celebrate diversity and tolerance,"
and "brainstorm[ing] ways to solve problems in their community." There is
even a color-coded state-by-state map showing "Mosque Distribution in the
United States."

The purpose of publishing "Being Muslim in
America" is "to disabuse people of wildly false myths of the United States
-- that 'Muslims are repressed, marginalized, fill in the blanks,' "
according to Michael Friedman, division chief of print publications with
the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs, which
is overseeing distribution of the publication. Although State doesn't have
a specific target number of copies that it is looking to sell or give
away, Friedman said a similar 2002 State Department report titled "Muslim
Life in America" had 400,000 print copies distributed worldwide and was
translated into 28 languages. "It is conceivable that this one could reach
that level," he told IPT News.

In addition, both "Muslim Life in
America" and "Being Muslim in America" are featured on State Department
web sites,
here and here.


Asked whether similar booklets had been produced for other faiths,
Friedman said no. With limited funding available, decision was made to
produce a publication on American Muslims because "the struggle against
Islamic terrorism is a struggle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world,"
he said.

Faulty Examples Showcased

Unfortunately,
the substance of the booklet is so flawed that it could undermine the
struggle against this form of radicalism. It perpetuates the mythology
that American Muslims are united in the belief that law enforcement and
the public are willing to flout innocent Muslims' civil rights
post-September 11, describing American Muslim reactions to the attacks as
follows:

"A new, truly American Islam is emerging, shaped by
American freedoms, but also by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001
attacks -- planned and executed by non-Americans -- [which] raised
suspicions among other Americans whose immediate responses, racial
profiling among them, triggered in return a measure of Muslim-American
alienation."

Then:

"Sadly, suspicions of this kind are not
uncommon -- in the United States or in other nations – during wartime or
when outside attack is feared. But 2008 is not 2002, when fears and
suspicions were at their height. Context is also important: Every
significant immigrant group has in the United States faced, and overcame,
a degree of discrimination and resentment."

This is an extremely
tendentious, even intellectually dishonest, description of September 11
and its aftermath. From reading it, one would have no idea that there have
been numerous convictions and guilty pleas on terrorism-related charges
since September 11 that involved Muslims living in the United States,
including terrorist plots to
attack
the military base
at Ft. Dix, N.J., to create a terrorist
training camp
in Bly, Oregon and to attack
U.S. military and Jewish targets in California.
Also omitted from the booklet is the fact that organizations like CAIR and the
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) were listed by the government as
unindicted co-conspirators in the federal government's prosecution of the Holy
Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) -- in which the Justice
Department
won convictions of five former HLF officials for providing money to the
terrorist organization Hamas. But from reading this passage in "Being
Muslim in America," one would get the impression that public concern about
Islamist terror has no basis in reality and is merely the result of
backward Americans' "discrimination and resentment."

One picture
on page 15 of the booklet shows people marching under a CAIR banner and
has a caption reading: "Muslims march to support volunteerism." The
identical picture appeared at the top of
CAIR's website when IPT News accessed it
May 15.

In reality, CAIR was created as a front for Hamas and it
has defended radical Islamists since 1994. See the IPT dossier on CAIR
here.


CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad
typifies this see-no-evil attitude toward jihadist terror. He has
repeatedly defended the HLF. At a May 2003 forum at the Johns Hopkins
School of Advanced International Studies, an audience member commented
that the Justice Department has released reams of information showing that
the HLF and another charity whose assets were frozen "have direct
connections and in fact their leadership was the leadership of al Qaeda
and Hamas." Awad replied: "I am sure if we…put under the microscope, every
major civic or political organization in this country, including the Red
Cross, you will see that some dollars went here and there in some country,
but you don't shut down the entire operation of the Red Cross."


CAIR officials
dismissed the verdict of 12 jurors in HLF's Hamas-financing trial as
"based more on fear-mongering than on the facts" and predicted it would be
overturned on appeal.

Awad has steadfastly defended Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) supporter Sami Al-Arian, despite evidence that Al-Arian served on
the PIJ governing board. Al-Arian is fighting a
criminal
contempt
charge, triggered by his refusal to testify before a federal
grand jury investigating terror financing in Virginia despite a grant of
immunity. He claims his 2006 plea agreement to conspiring to provide goods
and services to the PIJ absolved him of any future testimony, be it
voluntary or compelled by subpoena. The
plea
agreement
itself contains no such language. U.S. District Judge James
S. Moody blasted Al-Arian as a "
master
manipulator
" at his sentencing in the PIJ support case, saying
Al-Arian lied to the public about his PIJ support.

Yet, during an
August 2008 forum on the contempt case, Awad argued it was motivated by
bigotry against Muslims:
"And I believe he's being punished for this,
belonging to a minority – Palestinian, Arab, Muslim in America is not like
the best thing to be in America today. So he's being the victim of this
malicious misunderstanding in this midst of increased Islamophobia in
America."

Click here to continue reading this article.



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