Islam vs. Islamists

PBS furthered Islamists’ cause with ‘The Muslim Americans’

Screeings yesterday and today of ‘Islam vs. Islamists’ for Members of Congress and journalists alone will not undo the proganda victory PBS provided to CAIR and others who seek to silence moderate Muslims. After PBS asked Martyn Burke, the documentary’s creator, “Don’t you check into the politics of the people you work with?”, they replaced it with ‘The Muslim Americans.’ Alex Alexiev, the co-executive producer of ‘Islam vs. Islamists’, describes in detail what PBS somehow forgot to mention about many of those featured in ‘The Muslim Americans’. Here is a sampling:

Dr. Aminah McCloud … opined that America was becoming a “terrorist state like those nations we pretend to abhor.” McCloud, who serves as an “advisor” to the “Crossroads” series, committed an egregious breach of journalistic ethics and confidentiality agreements by showing a rough cut of our film to her fellow activists in the Nation of Islam, one of the subjects of our film “Islam vs. Islamists.” Despite such grievous misconduct, she is featured prominently in McNeil’s film, raising the question of whether her appointment as an arbiter of moderate Islam was entirely coincidental.

[CAIR] spokesman Ibrahim Hooper, with the narrator positively gushing over this “advocacy and civil rights” organization. Unmentioned are some uncomfortable details about CAIR’s history, such as the fact that it is the direct progeny with identical leadership (including Hooper) of the Islamic Association of Palestine, a now-defunct financier of Hamas terrorism, and that several of CAIR’s executives were sentenced to jail for terrorist activities while still in its employ.

[The] Muslim Students Association… MSA is not only extremist, but the forerunner of Islamic extremism in America, having come into being as the first radical Muslim organization in America with the help of a group of Muslim Brothers and Saudi money as far back as 1963. Virtually all well-known members of the radical Islamist networks in the United States, such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and a dozen others are direct spin-offs from the MSA, by its own admission…

[T]he Bridgeview Mosque in Chicago … was taken over by radical Wahhabi preachers and Hamas supporters in a dramatic conflict with moderate Muslims which was well-documented in a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune.

Imam Abdul Malik Ali, an African-American convert to Islam who is presented in the movie as the epitome of moderation and reason. In real life, Ali is a regular on the lecture circuit of Islamist radicals, where he is known for his vitriolic anti-Semitism and authoritative pronouncements such as “the Israelis knew about and were in control of 9/11” which “was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.”

Then there is the hope of American Islam, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, a convert running an Islamic seminary called Zaytouna in the Bay Area. Yusuf is described in fawning terms as the star of a new generation of American Muslims and a foremost modern interpreter of an “Islam rooted in the culture of America.” The film’s producers would have you believe he accomplishes this while still teaching a traditionalist form of the faith. How you can be rooted in American culture and, at the same time, believe that a rape victim must have four male witnesses to prove the crime, lest she be stoned to death for adultery, as the “traditionalist” shari’a norms require, remains unexplained.

Last but far from least is Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is given star billing and allowed to make authoritative editorial commentary throughout the documentary. This is the same gentleman who is on record with his belief that “American foreign policy is centered on dehumanizing Muslims.” More disturbingly, Safi is also one of the five WETA/PBS advisors to “Crossroads,” making him, like Dr. Aminah McCloud, both a referee and a player in the dubious games played by PBS with this series. This goes beyond a mere conflict of interest. It verges on outright corruption of the integrity of public broadcasting.

If that sampling doesn’t compel you to READ THE WHOLE THING, please check your pulse for signs of life.