Spencer Ackerman would have invited Josef Goebbels to oversee FBI training during World War II.
“FBI Purges Hundreds of Terrorism Documents in Islamophobia Probe,” by Spencer Ackerman at Wired, February 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):
An internal FBI investigation into its counterterrorism training has purged hundreds of bureau documents of instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.
Good. Only the greasiest of Islamophobes would ever, ever have gotten the idea that any Muslims at all, anywhere, had any interest in violence or terrorism.
The bureau disclosed initial findings from its months-long review during a meeting at FBI headquarters on Wednesday with several Arab and Muslim advocacy groups, attended by Director Robert Mueller. So far, the inquiry has uncovered and purged over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 “” some of which were similar to briefings published by Danger Room last year describing “mainstream” Muslims as “violent.” And more disclosures may be forthcoming, as the FBI continues its inquiry and responds to Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents themselves.
FBI spokesman Christopher Allen confirms to Danger Room that the bureau found some of the documents to be objectionable because they were inaccurate or over-broad, others because they were offensive. Allen explains that the documents represent “less than 1 percent” of over 160,000 documents reviewed by the inquiry, which was prompted by a Danger Room investigation in September.
The FBI purged documents according to four criteria: “factual errors”; “poor taste”; employment of “stereotypes” about Arabs or Muslims; or presenting information that “lacked precision.”
As judged by whom, from what perspective and with what knowledge? There are no factual inaccuracies in my books, but the Islamic supremacist smear machine energetically insists that they are — who is the judge, and on which side of the fence is he or she on?
Danger Room uncovered several such documents in the fall, including some instructing FBI counterterrorism agents that “mainstream” Muslims sympathized with terrorists; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult” leader; and that the more “devout” a Muslim was, the more likely he would be to commit a violent act. Some documents even purported to graph the correlation. The FBI initially said the instruction occurred “one time only.” But when Danger Room uncovered additional anti-Islam materials “” in briefings that compared Islam to the Death Star; in books on the shelves of the FBI training library at Quantico; and in pages hosted on internal FBI websites “” the bureau began an extensive internal review….
Are mainstream American Muslims “likely to be terrorist sympathizers”? Certainly all the mainstream Muslim organizations condemn al-Qaeda and 9/11; however, some of the foremost of those organizations, such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Students Association, and the Council of American-Islamic Relations, and others, have links of various kinds to the jihad terrorist group Hamas and its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated to imposing Islamic law around the world. A mainstream Muslim spokesman in the U.S., the Ground Zero Mosque Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, refused to condemn Hamas until it became too politically damaging for him not to do so; another, CAIR”s Nihad Awad, openly declared his support for Hamas in 1994. Another mainstream Muslim spokesman in this country, Reza Aslan, has praised another jihad terrorist group, Hizballah, and called on the U.S. to negotiate with Hamas. Other mainstream Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. such as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Rashad Hussain, and media gadfly Hussein Ibish, have praised and defended the confessed leader of another jihad terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Sami al-Arian.
Do these men and organizations represent a tiny minority of extremists that actually does not express the opinions of the broad mainstream of Muslims in this country? Maybe, but if so, they simply do not have any counterparts of comparable size or influence who have not expressed sympathy for some form of Islamic terror.
Was Muhammad a “cult leader”? Certainly one definition of a cult is that members are not free to opt out if they choose to do so — and it was Muhammad who enunciated Islam’s notorious death penalty for apostasy by saying, –Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.” (Bukhari 9.84.57). Also, there are several celebrated incidents in which Muhammad lashed out violently against his opponents, ordering the murder of several people for the crime of making fun of him — including the poet Abu “˜Afak, who was over one hundred years old, and the poetess “˜Asma bint Marwan. Abu “˜Afak was killed in his sleep, in response to Muhammad’s question, “Who will avenge me on this scoundrel?” Similarly, Muhammad on another occasion cried out, “Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?” One of his followers, “˜Umayr ibn “˜Adi, went to her house that night, where he found her sleeping next to her children. The youngest, a nursing babe, was in her arms. But that didn’t stop “˜Umayr from murdering her and the baby as well. Muhammad commended him: “You have done a great service to Allah and His Messenger, “˜Umayr!” (Ibn Ishaq, 674-676).
Is it true that “the more “˜devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “˜violent,– and is it also true that “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah”? While certainly not all devout Muslims are terrorists, virtually all Islamic terrorists are devout Muslims. In recent years, not only Osama bin Laden but also devout Muslims such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would-be Times Square bomber Feisal Shahzad, Arkansas jihad murderer Abdulhakim Muhammad, and other jihad terror plotters such as Khalid Aldawsari, Baitullah Mehsud, and Roshonara Choudhry, among many others, reference Islamic teachings to justify violence against unbelievers. Detroit underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab declared in court that Muslims should only be judged by the Qur’an.