Reza Aslan is an ongoing Jihad Watch case study in how the media elites are either ignorant of or complicit with the Islamic supremacist agenda. Aslan, despite his pretensions, has revealed himself to be a arrogant gutter-minded adolescent who appears clownishly incapable of staking out or defending a coherent intellectual position and instead retails tired and oft-retreaded Islamic supremacist talking points about Muslim victimhood.
Nonetheless, he is a vaunted media-saturated “moderate” Muslim whose Islamic supremacist ties and proclivities are becoming more ill-concealed by the day. And here we go again, with an ironically (given its title) fact-less propaganda piece by Aslan last week in the Washington Post: “On Muslims, King has reached his own fact-less conclusion,” by Reza Aslan in the Washington Post, March 11:
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will begin holding hearings Thursday on “the extent of the radicalization of American Muslims.” Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has characterized the hearings as “a witch hunt.” Are they?
How interesting that Aslan doesn’t bother to mention that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.
But that is no surprise when one remembers that Aslan is a Board member of the National Iranian American Council, a group that genuine Iranian pro-democracy forces regard as an apologetic vehicle for the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has tried to pass off Iran’s genocidally-minded President Ahmadinejad as a liberal reformer. He has called on the U.S. Government to negotiate with Ahmadinejad himself, as well as with Hamas — that is, with two of the most barbaric and murderous adherents of Sharia. He has even praised the jihad terror group Hizballah as “the most dynamic political and social organization in Lebanon,” as well as the Jew-hating, women-hating, kuffar-hating Muslim Brotherhood.
He has also spoken at events sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, a Brotherhood group, and at an event co-sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of Hamas-linked CAIR, and moderated by the notorious Edina Lekovic, the Muslim Public Affairs Council flack whom Steve Emerson caught lying on national television, denying 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.
In light of all this, it’s clear that CAIR and Aslan are on the same side, and it’s clear which side they’re on.
King also has said he believes the “self-radicalization” of American Muslims represents “a very small minority” of the overall community. What are the potential consequences of singling out one religious group?
Well, whatever they may be, I doubt they will be as costly in lives as the continued tendency of Islamic jihadists to single out non-Muslims for jihad attacks, both in the U.S. and around the world.
All one needs to know about what is behind the King hearings can be gleaned by Peter King’s own statements regarding Muslims in the US.
How does Rep. King feel about Islam in the United States?
“Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country. There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how we can infiltrate [them].
How does King know so much about radicalization in the US? From a single source more than decade ago.
“The only real testimony we have on it is from Sheikh Kabbani who was a Muslim leader during the Clinton Administration, he testified back in 1999 and 2000 before the State Department that he thought over 80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams. Certainly from what I’ve seen and dealings I’ve had, that number seems accurate.”
King’s single source, Sheikh Kabbani, is a Sufi Muslim who has advocated for peace and tolerance in Islam but who by his own admission is not an authority on Islam in America and who has admitted to simply stating his personal opinion – an opinion that has been contradicted by both the FBI and by every scholar who has studied the matter. Oh, and by the way, Sheikh Kabbani has also claimed that any Muslim who advises the US government is also “an extremist.” But King is not interested in facts. He just feels like it must be at least 80%.
“It was 80 percent back in 2000. Based on the radicalization since then, it has to be — I have no doubt, I have problem at all in saying it’s 85 percent. If it’s not 85, it’s still 80.”…
Aslan then defames the great anti-terror researcher Steven Emerson, and adds:
Of course, King could try to speak to American Muslims himself. But it seems he has already reached his own, fact-less conclusions….
Actually, it is Aslan’s conclusions that are “fact-less.” On December 6, in a post about Aslan, I supplied evidence to back up the estimate that King later repeated. Yet on March 11, he felt free to continue to pretend in the Washington Post that King had no evidence. If the Post were any kind of real journalistic outlet, they wouldn’t let him get away with this, but the WaPo cares not for truths that don’t fit its political agenda.
In any case, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s 1998 study was not based on his personal opinion, as Aslan claims. Kabbani actually visited 114 mosques in this country before giving testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999 that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.” Has Reza Aslan investigated 114 mosques in the U.S.? Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.
Not only that. Also, I challenged Aslan five months ago, on October 4, to provide any evidence that any of these studies had been debunked by anyone. He has not done so, and cannot do so. Obviously, he doesn’t care to do so, because to address this data would interfere with his deceptive agenda.