NY Times editorial: Lies, Contempt, Plagiarism
by Lorna Salzman
If the FBI investigates the Ku Klux Klan for violence against blacks and Jews, is this an indictment of all white Christians?
It would be if we followed the (il)logic expressed by the House Democrats at the hearings on radicalization of Muslims, who said Cong. King should investigate the Klan instead of demonizing the Muslim community.
On March 12th, the New York Times editors hit a new low in scurrilous rumor-mongering and mendacity. Worst of all, they dismissed peremptorily the testimony of two witnesses at Cong. Peter King's much needed hearings on Muslim radicalization.
One of these men lost a nephew to the radical Islamist group Al Shebab; the man was later killed in fighting in Somalia. The other's son shot a soldier in Little Rock and is now in jail. Both testified as to the dramatic changes in behavior of these two young men as they went from being model citizens and students to angry, radical violent terrorists working for a cause dedicated to destroying this country and innocent people.
The man who lost his nephew is a law-abiding Muslim from Somalia who lives in Minneapolis, the major recruitment area for radical Islam. The other man is a black businessman from Nashville, Tennessee. Their testimony was moving; it was also blunt and honest. The Somali man gave details of how his local mosque and Muslim leaders dismissed his fears and anxiety over the disappearance of his nephew, one of dozens of young Somali men who returned to Somalia to join Al Shabab. When he pressed them to help him, he was told to keep quiet, and that if he persisted, he would be sent to Guantanamo; that he was destroying Islam; and that he would suffer hellfire. The businessman controlled his anger and disappointment over the continued denials of some of King's committee that radicalization was real, accompanied by their repeated loud rants about how this hearing was soiling the reputation of the whole Muslim community. Neither of these have received any apology, much less sympathy, from their local mosque or Muslim organizations.
The accusations against King's hearing are baseless and inflammatory. Not one person, King included, ever suggested anything of the sort. The unsubstantiated charges of hate-mongering and bigotry hurled by some committee members were amplified by today's NY Times editorial. No sympathy of any kind was offered to the two witnesses by anyone. Here is what the NY Times editorial said of these witnesses:
"Mr. King had no large established Muslim American organizations testify. He preferred to feature two aggrieved witnesses offering anecdotal tales about radicalized relatives, as if that proved his case".
The word "anecdotal" was picked up verbatim from one of the hostile committee members. The use of the word "aggrieved" was unaccompanied by any acknowledgement of the veracity of their complaint, which the NY Times and some congressional members tried to destroy repeatedly by introducing irrelevant distractions about the Ku Klux Klan. And to write "as if that proved his case" is arguably the most reprehensible, because by writing this, the NY Times is a priori acting as judge and jury, and biased ones at that, suggesting that the witnesses' testimony was not credible. This was a stark example of a special kind of cruelty: denigrating those who have personally suffered from radical Islamic violence. It is deplorable.
The NYT then accused King of "pandering" and "sowing hatred and fear". In truth, there was pandering but it was by the loud overbearing rants of the black congressmen pandering to their Muslim constituents in their districts so as to be assured of retaining the Muslim vote. There was special hatred and vitriol in the voice of Texas representative Shirley Jackson=Lee who appeared to be unhinged emotionally. But no hatred was audible in the testimony of the two witnesses or in the dignified voice of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a physician, former Army officer and founder of the America Islam Forum for Democracy, as he talked calmly but firmly about political Islam and the wider intentions of the leading Muslim organizations in this country such as CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and ICNA (Islamic Council of North America), both of which serve indirectly if not directly the propaganda of the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
The NY Times editorial is nothing but a collection of lies and unabashed baiting of American citizens who have personally witnessed and suffered from the ongoing recruitment in Muslim communities by organizations tied to or sympathetic to Al Qaeda and its related offspring such as Al Shebab as well as the infamous homegrown American imam Awlaki who escaped to Yemen from where he broadcasts vile entreaties to young Muslim=American men to kill their own countrymen. And they follow his orders. Truly, the NY Times is practicing irresponsible yellow journalism worthy of the National Inquirer.
The accusation that the whole Muslim community is being targeted is an equally big lie but it turned out to be the only defense offered by the Democrats. Law enforcement figures have shown that 80% of uncovered terrorist plots were planned by radical Muslims in the NAME of Islam And some of them were near-disasters: the Times Square bomber; the Christmas Eve airplane bomber, the Portland,Oregon would-be bomber...and then there was the real tragedy: the killing of thirteen American soldiers at Ft. Hood by Dr. Nidal Hasan, who had left clear signs of his intent and radicalization for years yet out of Political Correctness was ignored. In response to the Democrats' absurd suggestion that the Ku Klux Klan is just as dangerous, one could accuse the FBI investigating the Klan that it is demonizing all whites or all white Christians.
The US Army is only, just now, nearing disciplinary charges against some at Ft. Hood for ignoring these signs but this sidesteps the complacency of the Armed Forces themselves, not to mention Pres. Obama, who has forbidden the use of words like "jihad", "islamism" and "radical Islam" in all official documents; as a result the official report on Ft. Hood makes no mention of the religious motives of Hasan or his earlier statements. Twenty-eight recent bomb plots created by Muslim Americans are sufficient proof of the real threat of Islamist extremism.
Why were no "established Muslim American organizations" invited to testify? Incredible question, but the NY Times knows or should know the answer: because aside from Jasser's group, there is NO Muslim American organization that would 1 )tell the truth; 2 )admit to radicalization. Indeed, all these groups do nothing but deny anything that casts discredit on Islam or on Muslims. What they are expert at is suppressing the truth. They train groups like the Muslims Students' Association (offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood) to harass, intimidate and silence any and all dissent and criticism on our campuses. Their followers issue death threats routinely to anyone who speaks out.
Their main order of business for Muslim groups is to use the Constitutional freedom of speech for their own purposes while depriving others of this same freedom. This is why radical Islam is described as "Islamofascism". In sum, the major Muslim American groups cannot be trusted to any degree except to lie and deny and cry about "victimization". For them, any bit of truth about sharia law is considered a manifestation of Islamophobia, and this is the tune they continue to play to cover up their complicity in radicalization and the subversion of our Constitutional freedoms.
Probably the most important point made by Dr. Jasser was that nonviolent jihad is at least as great a threat to this country as violent terrorist acts, and that nonviolent jihad is being promoted by the very groups he referred to....which the NY Times in all seriousness wanted to be included as witnesses to disprove the existence of radicalization. One has to laugh a bit. It is like calling the fox who just ate some chickens in the hen house to testify that there no chickens there at all.