There are many on what can broadly be called the counter-jihad Right who think that if they trim their message, start talking about “radical Islam” and “moderate Muslims,” or even the peaceful religion that has been Hijacked by a Tiny Minority of Extremists, they will dodge the fire from Hamas-linked CAIR and be able to work against jihad without interference from the politically correct Left and the Islamic supremacists. Hamas-linked CAIR encourages this kind of thinking, most egregiously in its “Islamophobia” report, in which it declared that there was criticism of Islam and jihad that was not “Islamophobic,” but provided no examples.
They couldn’t offer any examples because there aren’t any: in reality, anyone and everyone who does anything effective to resist jihad and Islamic supremacism is charged with racism, bigotry, and “Islamophobia,” no matter how much they dissemble about the roots of the problem within Islam and how much they hide behind non-representative “moderates” with their own private non-traditional Islam, such as Zuhdi Jasser and Irshad Manji.
And so now it is Reza Kahlili’s turn. They’ve already gotten me and others purged from government and law enforcement training materials, without any investigation into whether or not what we were saying was true. And now they’re swooping in on the replacements, and once they’re gone, if anyone replaces them who says anything close to the truth, they’ll start whining about him as well. Right now our politically correct political establishment is handing the Islamic supremacists everything they want, so now is their time to strike, and to drive all of the truth about Islam and jihad out of the training of those in the front line of the resistance — and they know it.
I must therefore respectfully disagree with my friend Michael Ledeen, who has trumpeted this as a victory over CAIR, since Kahlili is going to speak as scheduled. (The appalling David Frum has done so as well.) The Pentagon, in its statement saying that Kahlili would not be dropped, assured Hamas-linked CAIR that Kahlili would not be speaking about Islam. They didn’t say, “A Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front group is not going to dictate our choice of speakers,” which is what they should have said when CAIR first started complaining about me and others. Instead, they accept Hamas-linked CAIR’s false premise, that there is something wrong with bringing in Reza Kahlili to speak about Islam, and implicitly accept also the idea that Hamas-linked CAIR has a legitimate voice in these matters. And that is, in a word, shameful.
“CAIR pushes DoD to drop ex-CIA operative lecturer, claims anti-Islam,” by Caroline May at The Daily Caller, July 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):
The Council on American Islamic Relations is urging the Pentagon to drop a former CIA operative inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a lecturer at the Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy.
The group claims that the views of the former operative, who has been teaching, writing and lecturing about the dangers Iran poses to the West under the pseudonym Reza Kahlili, is anti-Islam and promoting his own agenda as a former Muslim.
“This is yet another unfortunate example of our nation’s military and counterterrorism personnel being trained by individuals who weaken America’s security by promoting their own religious and political agendas,” wrote CAIR national Executive Director Nihad Awad in a letter sent to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Monday.
According to Kahlili, who reports for The Daily Caller on a freelance basis, his lectures at the JCITA are about the intelligence operation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, not Islam. He noted, however, that CAIR”s distaste for him probably stems from the intersections between the two.
“CAIR is likely upset with my articles and news pieces on the fact that the guards intelligence also runs operations out of Islamic centers and Mosques,” Kahlili explained to TheDC in an email. “If they truly care about the Islamic community in America and the sanctity of the Mosque, they should welcome such information and help authorities to weed out such operators from ordinary Muslims so that another 09/11 does not take place.”…
CAIR is the largest Muslim advocacy group in America and was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding trial….
Update: The Pentagon provided TheDC with a statement of support for Kahlili, Wednesday.
“We can confirm that Mr. Reza Kahlili, who has specialized counterintelligence expertise, occasionally lectures at the Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA),” Pentagon spokesman James Gregory wrote in an email to TheDC. “He’s one of many guest lecturers called upon by JCITA for specific subject matter knowledge. His experiences provide valuable insight to trainees, and he keeps his personal religious beliefs out of the classroom. He does not lecture on or about Islam or any religious treatise, and his personal beliefs are his own.”…