6 imams

6 imams, American jihad, CAIR, Political wind

PBS put political muzzle on moderate Muslim: producer says

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After he spoke out against CAIR and the 6 flying imams naming ‘John Doe’ passengers as defendants in a lawsuit because they reported suspicious behaviors, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser has been pulled from a PBS series. The producer says PBS pulled the segment entitled Islam vs. Islamists for political reasons. Syndicated talk-radio host Mark Levin interviewed Dr. Jasser and asked him what happened:

The producers had seen my work and followed our travails with the moderates here, with what we’re doing against the fundamentalists locally. They came and spent the week with me and looked at all of our activities, the interfaith community, and spent time interviewing some of the imams locally [Arizona] and others… It is sort of a microcosm of what happened. People say, “Where are the moderates, why aren’t they speaking up?”

The movie looks at some of the response and how I’ve been demonized. I’ve been labeled as a false Muslim. I’ve been told that even though I’m proud to raise my kids Muslim and I pray and I fast that really I’m imposing a secular separation of religion and politics in our faith and for me to try to get the imams to stop talking politics in their sermons is to impose something false into our faith…

All I’ve tried to do is open the debate. The important thing this documentary did was to begin the debate and to say that certainly the fundamentalists are able to express what they want in our free speech but they shouldn’t suppress what I have to say. They should allow us to bring this debate into the Muslim community.

For this to get pulled really shows that our government and the mainstream media feel they’re basically tools of the Islamists. They’re going to respond to them and not push the issue and you wonder where the voice of the moderates is. The voice is in the wilderness because nobody [in the media] wants to hear it and nobody is going to give time (Click here for more background and to listen to the entire interview).

The segment’s producer says it was pulled on political grounds:

The producer of a tax-financed documentary on Islamic extremism claims his film has been dropped for political reasons from a television series that airs next week on more than 300 PBS stations nationwide. Key portions of the documentary focus on Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of Phoenix and his American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a non-profit organization of Muslim Americans who advocate patriotism, constitutional democracy and a separation of church and state.

Martyn Burke says that the Public Broadcasting Service and project managers at station WETA in Washington, D.C., excluded his documentary, Islam vs. Islamists, from the series America at a Crossroads after he refused to fire two co-producers affiliated with a conservative think tank. “I was ordered to fire my two partners (who brought me into this project) on political grounds,” Burke said in a complaint letter to PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supplied funds for the films.

Burke wrote that his documentary depicts the plight of moderate Muslims who are silenced by Islamic extremists, adding, “Now it appears to be PBS and CPB who are silencing them.” A Jan. 30 news release by the corporation listed Islam vs. Islamists as one of eight films to be presented in the opening series.

Related commentary:

Silencing Muslim moderates

What Do Muslims Want?

6 imams, Aviation Security, CAIR

Suing imams were “spoiling for an incident”

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Flying Imam says to American travelers: “Security at the airport isn’t OUR problem, it’s THEIR problem.” Hear Omar Shahin in his own words:

[Editor — February 17, 2010: Welcome, fellow Michelle Malkin fans. You’d think President Obama’s top adviser on terrorism and homeland security, the purportedly brilliant John Brennan with his 25 years working in intelligence and counter-terrorism, would have recognized the lead Flying Imam’s face. Not only did Omar Shahin have peripheral connections with one of the 9/11 hijacker pilots, but his mug was also all over the national news for several weeks just three years ago. How quickly some of us forget even the most notorious from the recent past. The audio links noted below were from a friend yet they no longer work as the host he used discontinued service. We’ll have a post related to Michelle’s up this morning on our front page.]

During a teleconference, made the week following the November 20, 2006, US Airway Flight 300 and obviously for public consumption, flying imam Omar Shahin also indicates, in his own words, they were spoiling for an incident:

It will be not one case, it will be many cases. One, in the name of the federation, one in the name of the imams themselves personally, one, in the name of the Islamic Centers we belong to. So it will be many, many, many cases, because that’s what we cannot tolerate in this country any more, to single us out of the passengers every once in a while…we cannot tolerate this anymore. We, like others, go through the security, like everybody else, nobody has the right after that to single us out… Second, if they don’t trust the security, this is their problem, not our problem. [click on that link to hear the audio]

“It [security] is not OUR problem. It’s THEIR problem.” What Americans who watched those planes hit the buildings feel “it’s not our problem?” Five years later, people debate whether it’s effective, but they co-operate at airport security. We’re all in this together. The US against THEM is us against the terrorists. Maybe Shahin doesn’t feel that way because, well, he doesn’t feel antipathy for them. He doesn’t consider them the bad guys. That statement to me is really quite revealing. Hence, many, many, many lawsuits… the fact that it could hurt security: “that’s THEIR problem.”

Omar Shahin later said during the teleconference:

Since minute one of this incident, I then contacted Ibrahim Hooper and brother Nihad Awad and we arranged everything…. we are already in coordination with everything… and we update each other every once in a while, every two hours, three hours. Everything’s being coordinated with CAIR. Even today I asked MAS [Muslim American Society] chapter Arizona, please, whatever you want to do, just let brother Ibrahim Hooper and Nihad Awad know about it before you do. That’s what we are doing and we are going to do that in the future. Inshallah. [click on that link to hear the audio]

They were spoiling for an incident, from “minute one,” minute one beginning with the first shouted “Allahu Akbar” before boarding that plane.

The New York Post today agrees that the imams and CAIR were “spoiling for an incident”:

Last November, US Airways removed six Muslim clerics from a flight preparing to depart Minneapolis after several passengers – including other Muslims and Arabic speakers – noted them behaving suspiciously. Their activities included moving between seats, praying ostentatiously and repeatedly bringing up Osama bin Laden’s name in Arabic.

They were, in other words, spoiling for an incident. They got it.

Responding to passenger concerns, the captain kept the plane on the ground and alerted the FBI. The imams were removed and questioned for several hours.
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CAIR promotes itself as a “civil rights” group – when in fact it has expressed support for such terrorist groups as Hamas and has seen several of its former officials and staffers convicted of terror-related charges. (It has also received millions in funding from Saudi sources.)

Previously, CAIR focused its intimidation strategy on media and political figures who dared to criticize the organization or any actions undertaken in the name of Islam.

With this suit, it is pretty clear CAIR is setting its sights higher – and lower.

It will score a major victory if it can intimidate everyday Americans into remaining silent if they believe they see the beginnings of a terror attack.