In Human Events this morning I discuss the good news about Muslims foiling jihad terror plots:
There has been a spate of stories recently trumpeting the role of Muslims in foiling Islamic jihad terror plots. Al-Qaeda turncoat and former Guantanamo inmate Jabr al-Faifi, as well as the Saudi government, helped expose the Yemeni bomb plot against synagogues in Chicago. A Muslim alerted authorities to Farooque Ahmed’s plot to bomb the Washington D.C. metro system. The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) claims that nearly a third (11 out of 37) of the Islamic jihad plots against the U.S. since 9/11 have been foiled by Muslims. This all appears to be good, reassuring news, and it may be looking a gift horse in the mouth to say otherwise, but it must be said that this is not enough: the Muslim community in the U.S. must do much more.
There is a counterproductive aspect to this kind of publicity for the Muslim community in America: that these stories would be considered newsworthy at all is due to their unusual, man-bites-dog aspect. If 37 out of 37 jihad plots had been foiled by Muslims, even that wouldn’t be truly newsworthy: That’s the way things ought to be. If the teachings of Islam and the sentiments of the Muslim community in the U.S. really were the way they are ordinarily represented by the mainstream media and assumed to be by the U.S. Government, then there ought to be a concerted, organized, ongoing effort among Muslims in the U.S. not only to foil jihad terror plots, but also to eradicate the Islamic teachings that inspire and encourage such plots.
Instead, it is sometimes hard to tell what side Muslims in America are on. Take MPAC, the organization that is trumpeting the claim that nearly a third of the jihad plots against America since 9/11 have been foiled by Muslims. Edina Lekovic is MPAC’s director of policy and programming. Several years ago the indefatigable terrorism investigator Steve Emerson caught Lekovic lying on national television, denying that she was editor of a Muslim student publication that praised Osama bin Laden as a great mujahid. Emerson produced copies of the rag showing Lekovic’s name on the masthead as editor on the very same page on which the praise for Osama appeared….