• Mohamed Elibiary is a Dallas-based Texas Muslim community leader and an Advisor to the Homeland Security Enterprise.
• While the recent report by Ackerman on FBI's “Islam training” is troubling, Elibiary provides some contextual insight
• How is the key FBI trainer, Gawthrop, viewed in FBI circles? Who is Coughlin and his relevance?
• Allaying Muslim community concerns & learning from the “Texas model”
• Elibiary's own personal experiences in dealing with the FBI

Insights about the Exposé

Earlier this week, a news story broke and achieved what rarely happens, broad-based scrutiny and indignation towards the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). In Wired Magazine, Spenser Ackerman' s article exposed FBI Counter-Terrorism training at Quantico as unprofessional and inaccurate. The training manuals were filled with information based on anti-Muslim bigotry or Islamophobia. As a liaison between the FBI and the Muslim community, I can attest that there is nothing new in Ackerman's reporting and could add volumes more to it of FBI wrongdoings; nonetheless, it has been disquieting and demoralizing for someone in my position to watch the ripple effects upon our community's psyche.

In response to this FBI anti-Muslim bigotry training story breaking, a dear friend wrote to me lamenting that “this report goes against almost everything we are working as a community to do to reach out to authorities. It's like we moderate orthodox Muslims are left out to dry, and all of our arguments that there is little to no racism and bigotry within the circles of security agencies in America against Muslims are all bogus!”

The sentiments of this influential national community leader were echoed by another community leader who summed up her community's concerns as “OMG, look at what they are doing to us?”; she continued by relating an example of how many millions were possibly spent in her hometown over the years promoting such ideas. I realize that our communities are scared and outraged but I would like to emphasize the following points as we read reports like Mr. Ackerman's:

Who is Gawthrop? - William Gawthrop, the analyst who authored most of the training in the article, is well-known and detested in many FBI circles. The reason we're seeing his work being made public is because there are agents inside the FBI trying to marginalize him and push him out. If one reads between the lines, even the article's author hints at FBI insiders assisting. These forces are trying to make Gawthrop's tactics public, as it's not easy to fire a federal employee because of all the rules involved.

The Coughlin Factor - I would encourage concerned citizens to study the case of Rtd. Major Stephen Coughlin, who gave his inaccurate understanding of Hanafi, Malaki and Shafi Fiqh as true foundations of terrorism to the Joint Military Chiefs of Staff themselves before having his contract retired and pushed out of the Pentagon.

• For full disclosure, I did not play any role at DOD concerning Coughlin, but did fly up to the Freedom and Justice Foundation office years ago with well-known scholars like Dr. Waleed Basyouni to deeply analyze the arguments in Coughlin's Master's thesis on this topic. I shared that research with some FBI and Homeland Security Intelligence Enterprise allies back then.
• What Coughlin and Gawthrop type analysts are essentially arguing to National Security officials is that violent extremism is a product of religious (theological, not identity) “radicalization” and not sociological, psychological or political. People like Robert Spencer on the outside try to perform the role of echo chamber in order to mainstream such analysis and provide it with a base inside the political system.
• I believe as Coughlin's career was ended, so will Gawthrop's and other less infamous full-time analysts inside the National Security enterprise, due to many factors about our country's resilient value system and scientific inquiry appetite that these individuals hardly understand.

What is the solution? - As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the solution on a national level is not top down but requires that we work city by city and state by state to reorient the system. Even with the portions of my bio I elected to share below, someone in my position very infrequently travels to the White House or engages with the National Security Council Staff on these issues. The real work that needs to be done is at the local city and state levels.  Federalism is a powerful concept, and American Muslim advocacy strategies have yet to be leveraged effectively.

The Tipping Point - When a community working with its local law enforcement partners gets relations at a regional FBI field office to the tipping point, then you'll see local FBI officials push back to HQ and the intelligence community on the ideas that Gawthrop and co. promote. You will also see the top FBI official in a city put out clear messaging to local police executives of what is the true relationship with the local Muslim community, contrary to what politicians like Peter King might message on a FOX opinion show. Accurate and beneficial counter-terrorism law enforcement training will replace bigoted, for-profit, alarmist nonsense that undermines local security by disenfranchising American Muslims allied in countering violent extremism.

Look for good FBI agents - Just like there are bridge burners like Gawthrop, I also know of FBI agents who, out of their own pockets, buy proper Islamic books for office libraries, read Bukhari and Muslim, and confer with community-based allies about training materials HQ instructors have taught them at Quantico.

The bottom line is that we live in a democracy, and, just as we have in this country civilian oversight of the military, we also have civilian oversight of Intelligence, Counter Terrorism and Homeland Security systems. The challenge for the Muslim community has always been simply: how do we “step up our game” and become civic leaders of society around these topics? Or as Mahdi Bray used to say in community fundraisers I attended growing up, raising our children to become “headlights” and not just “taillights”.

Muslim Community Concerns

Sitting one day in a government meeting at DHS-HQ last year, I recall in a briefing we were receiving from a national polling agency on the public's attitude towards various law enforcement agencies that American Muslims generally had a 60% confidence level in the FBI. The numbers broke down a little less for African-American Muslims than other segments of the community but that certainly is expected given the well documented historical experiences there. It has been a long time since I've witnessed a media report resonate across so many segments of Muslim communities as this Ackerman report, so we'll have to wait to see if it produces a long-lasting impact upon the Muslim community's confidence in the bureau.

Those of us who, while informed by the past, are constantly looking forward might then wonder, so what next? How does one size the scale of this problem of inaccurate counter terrorism training at the FBI and across the wider law enforcement community? How does this problem get fixed? How much impact on national security policy development do Islamophobia's promoters really have and which forces can one strengthen to counter and marginalize them?

The reality is that a dissertation can be written about each of these questions, but considering the points mentioned above can help distinguish reality from perception. As Muslims, we know, more than any other segment of society, that the public does not get an accurate understanding of Islam and Muslim issues simply through the media and that personal contact is the more accurate conveyor of reality. Similarly, what's good for the goose is good for the gander in this case, and so replacing FBI for Muslim in the preceding sentence is similarly accurate.

One must engage with the FBI across its various enterprise elements (ex. local Agent, support staff, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), supervisors, Special Agents in Charge (SAC), national security branch Asst. SACs Head Quarters Intelligence Analysts, HQ Section Chiefs, Office of Public Affairs (OPA), CT Division, Directorate of Intelligence, Asst. Directors, Exec. Asst. Directors, the Director, previous Directors, retired FBI personnel, FBI whistle blowers, Overseas FBI Legal Attaché Officers, other elements across the National Security Enterprise that engage with various parts of the FBI, etc.) to get an accurate temperature of the organization's policies, attitudes and “culture”.

Learning from the Texas Model

Several hundred Texas Muslim community leaders from each city across the Lone Star State were present at a conference our foundation organized on Homeland Security inside the Texas State Capitol on September 10, 2004. I told them it simply boils down to “Your Rights as Americans, Your Duties as American Muslims.” Yes, surveys show we're patriotic and the majority of us are supportive of law enforcement, but who amongst us wants to have our kids waiting for the FBI to figure out all the Muslim world's complexities all on its own?

In Texas (Dallas & Houston), our community charted a third way over the past decade, not with the National Security hawks who scrutinize every benign social development amongst Muslims globally and not with the big government types who would forsake civil liberties in pursuit of domestic security. We didn't have to throw national community groups or other law-abiding American Muslim leaders under the bus to solve these problems as sell-out Muslims do, but we also didn't elect to sit behind our keyboards and complain that we have no power to act because that's not our deen either.

In Dallas and Houston, where 90% of the Texas Muslim community lives, there are many strong relationships between local Muslim community leaders across dozens of masajid, Islamic schools and local community groups and multiple FBI Special Agents, Joint Terrorism Task Force Supervisors, and Special Agents in Charge & Asst. SACs

National Muslim groups, like CAIR and Muslim Advocates, have issued their press releases and called upon elements within the Department of Justice and FBI to conduct their investigations, so these groups are already taking care of the top-down solution method our community has been employing since the early 90s. We can, in our various cities, enhance these efforts by expanding the grassroots work happening at the city and state levels that the Texas Muslim community has begun to become recognized for at the national level as the “Third Way” model of building a Centrist Environment. For these are the problems that no President can truly solve on his own.

There are 56 FBI field offices, 16 of which in major American cities have 60-70% of the FBI's counter terrorism personnel, about 400 small town resident agency (RA) offices and a handful of agents in LegAt offices in US Embassies oversees. There are way more of us then there are of them, so let's love them with the self-confidence that our religion teaches us that God doesn't put a burden upon a people who can't carry it. I'm not saying to 'move on, nothing to see here' in Mr. Ackerman's work, but instead let's get to work because there's nothing “new” here to anyone already working extensively on these challenges.

My Personal Experience

On Thursday, September 8^th FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III personally handed me the Louis E. Peters Memorial Service Award for 2011 in front of an audience of over five hundred retired Directors (ie. Judge William Webster who was Director of not just the FBI but also the CIA), a couple of dozen national security and law enforcement VIPs and several hundred retired FBI officials.

The Peters Award is the highest honor awarded annually to a civilian by the FBI whose assistance was invaluable in a major investigation. This year signified the first time it was given to someone working in the Homegrown Violent Extremism sphere that the American Muslim community has been struggling with post 9/11.

It was a closed-door ceremony in a banquet hall without media, a bit like the scene in the movie Charlie Wilson's War where the CIA gives him their highest civilian award for all he did to help remove the Soviets from Afghanistan. Two of the cases, in which I played the unique role of having one hand stretched out to the FBI and the other hand stretched out to local Muslim community leadership across multiple cities, were shared.

In both of these cases, like others, involved my being the trusted diplomat in two worlds who from my vantage point are married at the hip for the foreseeable future. Both the FBI and the American Muslim community are riding in the same boat, and should God forbid another disaster like 9/11 befall our country, neither party will be able to save its skin from the wrath of the American people by throwing the other party under the bus.

In the introduction explaining why I was receiving the award, Lester Davis as the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI stated that “For the past eight years he has been working closely with the FBI and the Muslim community to create a relationship built on trust and respect. Never once has Mr. Elibiary requested any compensation or recognition for his efforts. The work he has undertaken to spot, identify and address radicalization in the United States cannot be understated.”

The FBI continued on their website press release by further stating that “Mr. Elibiary, of Dallas, Texas, was selected as a result of his extraordinary contributions to specific cases in support of the FBI's counterterrorism mission. He has also been a consensus builder between the national Islamic community and the numerous agencies dedicated to the prevention of terrorism.”

One thing I stated in my speech to that audience is that while “the last decades have witnessed a transformation of our FBI into the global intelligence led crown jewel in our nation's security architecture, with such awesome power comes awesome responsibility also of the bureau as the guardian of our civil, democratic fabric.”

In private, I further relayed to the Director that our community is willing and able to help FBI-HQ address homegrown violent extremism challenges more effectively but that in the meantime, we will continue to work at the grassroots level to help build up relationships with field offices. The message was clear and constructive, so as long as we act like empowered citizens and continue then more positive changes are inevitable, God willing.

In every advocacy strategy employed there are foundational assumptions. Though not an activist pre-9/11, nor belonging to a national community organization, I convened a few dozen community leaders at a Dallas hotel about a year after 9/11 to lay out my own foundational assumptions on how “the system” was working and the beginning of a road map for us as Texas Muslims on how we'd address governmental challenges. Over the years, traveling coast-to-coast visiting with all kinds of Muslim community leaders I've learned to appreciate the wisdom behind federalism even more.

As the FBI's own press release highlights, I elected after 9/11 to perform a consensus building role, whether across government security agencies or the national Islamic community. Just like there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, there are good FBI and bad FBI. What the average American Muslim needs to understand is that, while our post 9/11 relationship might have been securitized with our fellow countrymen due to factors beyond our control, if we step up our game and learn how to identify the good FBI, ally with them and stay the course, then it's a simple “we win and they [anti-Muslim Bigots] lose”.

As a father, I asked myself years ago: do I want to pass on these challenges to my kid's generation or do I want them to get a better position in America's bright future? Each one of us has to answer that question for ourselves, get busy working in our cities to engage deeper with the FBI and win this marathon of reorienting America's National Security Enterprise, or we can sit on our hands, complain and hope by some miracle the politicians will fix it for us.

Mohamed Elibiary is a Dallas-based Texas Muslim community leader and an Advisor to the Homeland Security Enterprise. He has served for multiple years on the Training Advisory Board of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), and was appointed by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) in October 2010 after his earlier service on the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group helping craft the department and broader law enforcement community's framework to addressing Homegrown Violent Extremism (HVE). Mohamed has testified on Homeland Security matters before both the Texas State Legislature and the US Congress (“Working with Communities to Disrupt Terror Plots” – March 2010). He works as a private consultant at Lone Star Intelligence, LLC and speaks often on Homeland Security, Counter Terrorism and Community Partnership matters at law enforcement conferences. Mohamed has assisted multiple offices at the Dept. of Justice to advance Community Oriented Policing methodologies and the Building Communities of Trust (BCOT) Initiative. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) in a report to Congress highlighted how in the previous administration Mohamed assisted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) to crafter landmark civil liberties protecting guidelines for the Nationwide Suspicious Activities Reporting Initiative (NSI). These landmark federal guidelines for Fusion Centers were expanded upon by a broad-based coalition of faith-based civic groups and DPS and passed by the Texas State Legislature in 2011 as Law enacted through the Texas Fusion Center Policy Council (TFCPC).

The decision to legitimize the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki is wrong on all counts. Simply put, this is a license to murder, no doubt about it. Whatever happened to the rule of law? Whatever happened to the Constitution, which was meant to protect our citizens from the unchecked power of its own government? Even Bush did not stoop to this level.

What is more worrisome to me than the blatant disregard for the Constitution is the lack of any major outcry from the mainstream press regarding such a drastic and draconian measure. Apart from a few vocal left-wing voices, mainstream political commentators and most op-eds of the primary news agencies of this country responded to this call with a deafening silence. It is scary to see that the 'War on Terror' appears to have completely blinded America to the very ideals that it used to stand for.

The decision to assassinate al-Awlaki will only give more fuel to the more radical voices. Rather than silencing al-Awlaki, it will popularize him. This cowardly verdict has boosted Al-Awlaki's image and prestige beyond anything he himself could have possibly done. It has given him a symbolic 'badge of honor' by making him appear so dangerous to the American government that it wants to kill him. It has authenticated him amongst the militants in a way that no Muslim preacher possibly could.

If America actually succeeds in this vile endeavor, al-Awlaki will become the symbolic visionary and poster-boy for all future Western militant movements. By assassinating him, his words and message will become immortal. Such a dastardly decision makes our own voice of trying to refute his rhetoric even more difficult, as it appears that we are then 'siding with the other'.

If I could reach out to al-Awlaki, I would remind him of the years that he spent in America, and of the good that he saw in the American Muslim community and in the cities and neighborhoods that he lived in. He himself realized this while he lived here, and his interview with the National Geographic in the aftermath of 9/11 clearly shows this attitude. How I wish we could get that al-Awlaki back!

We all know that our foreign policy is in shambles (and while we're at it, we might as well point out the status of our health care as well!). Something needs to be done about it, but al-Awlaki's way is not the way forward. One might question whether, for example, Egyptian Muslims should also follow al-Awlaki's vision and apply his rhetoric to Egypt, in view of its recent stances? And what if we begin to compile a list of grievances that other Muslim nations have done to the Ummah, should we then follow suit in those lands as well? In fact, it can be twisted around to state that Muslim governments who harm other Muslims deserve harsher treatment than non-Muslims, because they are 'closer to home' and have betrayed their own faith. So should we start waging physical jihad against all of them as well?

Al-Awlaki's rhetoric is simply preaching to the choir. If, for some reason, al-Awlaki were to reverse his stances tomorrow, all those who are championing his name today and claiming to be his die-hard followers would unceremoniously ditch him and look for another voice. These youngsters have already made up their minds (or, to be more precise, they have allowed their emotions to make judgments for them and have not availed themselves to wisdom, experience or the lessons of history). Al-Awlaki is not the source of the problem, nor is he the brains of any movement – he is simply a mouthpiece preaching what his angry audience wants to hear.

Al-Awlaki needs to be dealt with academically, not militarily. And while I also disagree with some of Mohammed Elibiary's harsh characterizations of al-Awlaki in his article below (for example, characterizing him as 'disingenuous' – this is simply not correct, as only Allāh knows intentions), he hits the nail on the head when he points out the illegality and danger of assassinating him.

There is much good that Muslims can do in America, and if America has some major issues that need to be fixed, we need to be a part of the solution rather than exacerbating the problem. For myself as a Muslim American, waging 'war' on the country that I call home is not only unethical and treacherous, it is also completely foolish. What good would possibly come out of it? Such actions would only harm me as a person, and us as an Ummah, in the short and long term. The Shariah does not ask us to behave in a foolish manner, but rather in the wisest of manners.

Much more can be said, but I will leave that to other articles.

I pray that Allāh guides me, al-Awlaki, and all Muslims to that which He loves.

Yasir Qadhi

Article:

Recently policy makers in Washington, D.C. let it be publicly known that our government is trying to assassinate an American-born cleric now supporting the other team in the War on Terror. Anwar Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico, studied in Colorado, preached in San Diego and Virginia before going overseas. He was briefly detained in Yemen and then resumed his preaching online with a new political theme, stressing that “America is at war with Islam.” The United States, according to Al-Awlaki, is at war with Islam due to its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan must should be fought on its homeland by any militant means necessary. The news of Al-Awlaki's pending assassination circled the globe and included long discussions in the media about whether or not such a murder is “constitutional,” if it even constitutes “murder” and on Al-Jazeera it was dissected as a possible window into the Obama administration's decision making process.

All of this was preceded by news in late January that our government had not only made the decision to assassinate Anwar Al-Awlaki but that it had already attempted once and failed. News reports since then have also revealed that the decision to assassinate an American citizen was came from the White House's National Security Council after a simple consensus-building discussion process initiated by the NSC.

Intelligence analysts watching this unfold from outside the administration can detect a unique, systemic decision-making pattern regarding covert operations. While our enemies have built up a good deal of operational experience, culminating in the assassination of several CIA agents last year, we now run the risk of helping them capitalize even more effectively on their propaganda and recruitment efforts with the revelation of this assassination policy.

A simple committee of unelected individuals from one branch of government, no matter their subject matter expertise, should not have the power to assassinate an American citizen. The Founding Fathers set up a system of checks and balances, because they recognized that when a king has such powers it is only a matter of time before such power will be turned on political dissenters at home to suppress freedoms. We are a nation that upholds the rule of law in our federal court system and have a Military Commissions system as a backup for terror cases; so why weaken America's hand by using this extra-judicial assassination policy on American citizens?

Anwar Al-Awlaki is a disingenuous cheerleader in the global jihad who's preying on largely naive or troubled Western-educated youth attempting to form their identities in a global world. Al-Awlaki built his reputation by retelling the stories of the ancient companions of Prophet Muhammad and their roles in reforming the tyrannical state of affairs in pre-Islamic Arabia. His public rhetoric, including his sermon inside the U.S. Capitol, was largely benign and non-political until his detention in Yemen a few years ago.

Al-Awlaki is a one trick pony whose messaging capability was beginning to be cornered by various American and Western Muslim community efforts until this administration overreacted after the Christmas Day bomber tried to blow up a plane over Detroit and inflamed Anwar's stature many fold. Alawaki's message is largely one of righteous self-sacrifice to defend one's religion, so the proper way of countering it is not to assassinate the messenger so that he achieves “martyr” status. That would only turn him into a ghost who is much more difficult to counter. Instead the more effective method would have been to have mainstream clerics from Anwar's same Salafi version of Islam expose his disingenuousness and unsound Islamic logic to the youth in the population currently sitting on the sidelines watching geo-political struggles unfold around the globe and wondering what their role in it ought to be.

In field experience where research meets reality, I've witnessed first-hand what happens when a Western Muslim youth is properly engaged to separate Islamic jurisprudence from geo-politics; the youth picks Islam over the political activism Al-Awlaki pitches every time. Today Al-Awlaki is not celebrated by the core of Al Qaeda members, nor even trusted to be in direct communications with them. Second, due to his ambitious usurping of jihadi credentials he has earned disdain in numerous jihad-oriented Islamist circles including from Yemen's top Islamist figure, Sheikh Abdul-Majeed Al-Zaindani, himself counter-productively placed on the Designated Terror List. Al-Zaindani ironically found it easier to condemn Al-Awlaki on Al Jazeera a couple of months ago than to condemn Usama Bin Laden.

Previous experience shows us where this assassination policy leads. In 1966 the Nasser Regime in Egypt decided to execute Syed Qutb, a noted Islamist ideologue who by that point had spent a decade and a half critiquing government policies in regards to church-state issues, Middle Eastern geo-politics and internal sociological schisms about civilizational affiliation amongst the Egyptian elite and middle class. The public perceived injustice, witnessing a military execution without any recognized due process inflicted upon a man for simply speaking and writing his mind. It led to the violent radicalization of tens of thousands in a generation that later gave us the leadership of Al Qaeda and the takfiri (excommunication) movements across the Middle East usurping Qutb's legacy to this day.

We must ask ourselves whether our public chest thumping in calling for Anwar's head 'dead or alive' is worth the ramifications of having to chase his ghost as a martyr for the next half century, having Al Qaeda's propaganda department embrace Anwar in death to capitalize on his martyrdom, and encourage more Muslim youth to join Al Qaeda's disingenuous jihad to hit the “tyrannical Americans.”

President Obama should rescind this assassination order and clarify publicly our national position. We should support, if requested by the Yemeni government, the “capture” of Anwar Al-Awlaki and his prosecution under Yemeni law since there is no extradition treaty between our two nations.

We should also shift some of our counter-terrorism resources to efforts built up over the past few years to counter the online radicalization efforts of Al-Awlaki and others by civic groups and to remove government hurdles hampering their work. We're Americans and we know that the solution to bad speech is not to shut it down but to counter it with more speech. Al-Awlaki knows this and has cornered the U.S. government so that if it assassinates him, he achieves immortality and proves that American foreign policy is disingenuous and does not see “Muslims” as deserving the political rights it says it professes. Our country deserves a strategic reassessment of this assassination policy, not a group think mentality satisfied with the short-term “tactical” achievement of killing one man.

This article by M. Elibiary first appeared here

Generally speaking, whenever the issue came up in my conversations with national Muslim leaders over the past few months, I have been relaying my personal preference for McCain over Obama, and that is primarily due to what I believe the policy progress will be under each administration. Normally I avoid the media like the plague (especially for the past few years) because I consider myself to be a policy analyst, not a political activist.

Anyway back to the request for the interview: On further investigation, I discovered that a national Muslim group had recommended my name to the FOX producers. As you'll see in my first “aired” interview with FOX News (along with an Obama supporter, Shayan), I was quite nervous as I tried to frame my message for four simultaneous audiences. All in all, alhamduallah I enjoyed the experience (the limo ride to the studio and back was nice too!:) ). DC is obviously extremely political, as the questions framed by Brian (the FOX host who interviewed me) make very evident. So I wasn't all that shocked when the following questions were asked of me and the Obama Muslim supporter (transcript from Media Matters):

From the June 25 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

KILMEADE: Mohamed, do you find it insulting at all when Barack Obama goes out of his way to say, “Hey, I am not a Muslim. I'm a Christian, and let's stop these spread” as if being a Muslim is bad.

ELIBIARY: Well, of course, I've had issues just like every other Muslim with the way he's framed that. I think that this is actually part of a bigger problem or challenge that Obama has, which is his image. He tries to craft it really, really tightly, while when we compare him to McCain — you might remember a controversy a few months back where Mitt Romney was asked if he would appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet, and his response was, “There aren't enough Muslims to warrant such a position,” but McCain's response when he was asked was, “Look, I'm going to appoint the best American that's qualified for the position.” I'm like, what else can I really ask for?

KILMEADE: That's who — Shayan, you've heard some of these things. I mean, when you hear Barack Obama come out and say, “These are rumors about me being Muslim. I'm not,” and make that effort, does that turn off for you?

SHAYAN FAROOQI: Not necessarily, because he, in fact, is not Muslim. But I feel that, as a candidate, he's laid the groundwork down for all of us with our individual faiths to take whatever positive we can and contribute to the plurality of the American landscape.

Media Matters sent out an email about it last week (link here). Media Matters compiled some of the subtle and sometimes overt digs at Obama being a Manchurian Muslim candidate in this 4 minute video, and that's the way DC goes. If you can't view the 4-minute video below, I'd highly recommend clicking the link above and watching it.

Part of the American Muslim community's challenge post 9/11 is to seem “as much American as possible” in this highly politically charged environment, and across the entire spectrum. That has been a bit hard emotionally at times due to the polemic discourse dominant today, but America does need Muslim-American leadership if it is to get anywhere in addressing its Counter-Terrorism challenges and US-Muslim World foreign policy issues.

Here is a nice article about the concept of Messaging that clearly explains the formula of M=EC3. M (Message) = E (Emotion) x C (Credibility) x C (Contrast) x C (Connection). The easiest thing for Muslims to do is respond in kind to the polemic discourse launched against us, but I believe we can do better then just caricaturing the environment simply as “Anti-Islamic/Muslim”.

As I've been sharing with my father, an Obama supporter and donor for over a year now, Stephen Covey suggests in his works that we must first “seek to understand in order to be understood”. For example a few weeks ago I was a delegate at the Texas GOP Convention, where I picked up this lovely refrigerator magnet. After asking the vendor how the magnet came about, you should have seen his face when I explained that “Allāh Akbar” simply means “God is the Greatest”. So therefore swapping God for Obama, his magnet is actually stating that “Obama is the Greatest” – not exactly the message he intended to deliver.

I guess my point is that just like we (as Muslims) tell Americans that they don't understand Islam all the time, because their only source is the sensationalized media, we should also recognize that we may be falling victim to the same mistake in perception. That does not necessarily mean all Muslims should vote for McCain over Obama (I'm not a big fan of Bloc-Voting anyways); rather we should at least reassess our conclusions and temper our own polemic counter-discourse. Many promoters of “Islamic Radicalism” talk are simple folk who are just scared, who don't have a competent President to lead them, and who are victims needing our solid assistance to guide them.

Remember the “E” in M=EC3…

This past weekend I flew back early into Dallas from a 160+ years in-the-making Baptist Convention, intended to heal Race Relations amongst White and Black Baptists, just so that I could attend a Conference of what we Muslims call America’s leading Islamophobes.

With folks like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, Roger Hedgecock of Talk Radio and fill-in for Rush Limbaugh, Joe Kaufman of CAIR Watch and Americans Against Hate, Dr. Harvey Kushner of I know everything about Terrorism, Dr. Wafa Sultan of Muslims are uncivilized due to Islam, Dr. Bruce Tefft of I’m a mis-educator of Law Enforcement, Dr. Paul Williams of Muslims will reach critical mass by 2015 and take over America, to the lovely Frank Wuco who’s gotten into the mind of the jihadists but shhh don’t let them know; I could hardly pass up the opportunity for some entertainment.

Oh and how could I forget the Indian Hindu nuclear engineer Moorthy Muthuswamy and the Egyptian Coptic MD Monier Dawood thrown in for their brilliance and eloquence respectively. The former outlining his brilliant strategy to combat “political Islam” by outlawing the existence of Mosques first in America, then India and eventually Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The latter was helped off the stage for showing up late, rambling about Egyptian pop singers in the early 70s, discriminating against Christians by celebrating the ’73 war with Israel, by crossing the Suez Canal as done by a fictional Egyptian named “Mohamed” as opposed to a “Boutrous” or “Gerges” (George) and offending his strongly Zionist hosts by even mentioning any wars against Israel without first condemning them. :)

I took the opportunity to go to the restroom and buy a drink, when a former nuclear explosive expert, Lee Boyland, started describing how to transform a grapefruit nuclear bomb into a golf ball sized one. I did so purely out a self-interest so as not to have this knowledge, in case of a future e-water boarding incident by any future E-Gustapo these folks ever set up.

On a bright note I did see a few celebrities while getting my patience tested listening through a lot of nonsense like the notable John O-Neill (Swift Boat Vets Against Kerry) and Daren Norwood (country music singer from West Texas who should be hooked-up with Kareem Salama of the Muslim Country Musicians Network). :-)

Now I can’t do this event justice in just one post, so here’s what I think I’ll do: First I’ll write up a little quick run-through of my initial observations. Then perhaps in a future Part 2 post, I will outline the network of organizations and personalities that keep this movement fed, attempting to categorize these folks according to their various agendas. Just like several other Muslim activists I’ve read much of this movement’s writings and listened to their interviews in order to better understand what exactly their problem is. Because it obviously isn’t terrorism. I think many Muslims over-hype their influence so I’ll post a brief summary of the dossiers we pulled together years ago, so that it’ll be obvious to everyone how frail this movement really is.

Event Information

Primary Symposium Organizer: America’s Truth Forum – Jeff Epstein – President

Secondary Organizer: Basics Project – Frank Salvato – Executive Director

Event: 3rd Educational Symposium “Exposing the Threat of Islamist Terrorism”

Date and Location: February 1st and 2nd in Dallas-Fort Worth Region

Initial Observation:

Now while it’s easy to dismiss these guys as a bunch of Viagra taking, grumpy old men, angry that previously lower socio-economic peoples are acting uppity and having too many babies, I really think we’re doing ourselves a disservice by caricaturing them as they sometimes do to us. Yes, those are factors afflicting their movement and yes without the ability to prioritize their objectives they would be certainly spinning their wheels. But there’s more to them than meets the eye.

For many of those Baptists in the room like the wonderful Oklahoma Pastor and former NFL player for the Bears and Vikings Mr. Paul Blair, they’ve so misinterpreted Christian teachings that it’s nothing more than a corrupted form of national tribalism. While they keep on trying to become more dogmatic and fundamentalist in their understanding of biblical scripture, they can’t see that they’re killing their “dawah” and ghettoizing their own folks on an ever shrinking island. The same goes for many of the Jewish Zionists in that hall (out of a couple of hundred total). While Judaism might have been a divine religion with much good for the world, its marriage with a dogmatic version of the secular nationalist philosophy called Zionism has killed faith and left them with nothing divine at all. God I hope we as Muslims never forget that we are a community of believers and always remain on guard against the corruption of our faith by tribalistic philosophies.

With folks like Dr. Bruce Tefft delivering talks called “Islam: The Foundation of Islamic Terrorism” you can be assured that it took a tremendous amount of patience sitting through the nonsense espoused from the stage about everything from the “Moon God of Arabia” to “George Wahhabi Bush”. The attendees certainly belong to a sub-culture of ‘grumpy old men’ who’d cheer loudest when a speaker would say that “we’re loosing the Global War on Terrorism because we won’t name our true enemy ISLAM”. Though I never tried to hide my identity, even announcing my registration to the organizer over a month prior to the event, I was still assigned my personal body guard from the B’nai Elim (kind of like the NOI’s Fruit of Islam folks to the best I could gather). We (myself and a couple of the para-military guys from Israel and Russia doing security) ended up joking around towards the end, but it was so much a reminder for me of the way Israel does “security” that it added to my prayers for patience.

On a good note, a couple of things happened that I thought we wouldn’t see for a few more years:

First, Caroline Glick and Frank Gaffney came out saying, like Daniel Pipes last year, that making Islam the enemy in the GWOT is self-defeating. I never thought those two, who are obviously smarter and more pragmatic then some of the other speakers, would risk alienation from the Fringe Right by making statements to calm down the mob.

The second was from Robert Spencer. Though I went to this Symposium intending not to engage anyone in debate, Robert coming over to my table after circling around a bit, made my non-debate plan obsolete. In response to my assertion that I saw him as part of the problem and didn’t care for his approach which made Islam the problem, Robert responded with several rapid-fire responses about everything from the bogey-man (Muslim Brotherhood) to “Islamic Supremacist” (apparently Sheikh Qaradawi) obviously meant to test my intelligence. At one point, in choosing to define myself as a reformer, Robert leaned into me, and suggested,“reform something then”! Later on in our discussions I told him that with a beard like his, he should just go ahead and convert to Islam. :)

I have to say that Robert did strike me as easier to debate with than I ever thought possible based on what I knew of him. He knows enough to cut through the B/S and debate practicalities when engaging with informed individuals (religious, philosophical and socio-political). But I assume he doesn’t speak like this in public because its bad for business and because Muslims aren’t really looking to engage him either. I, like many, might start looking at him differently if he’d drop the Islam and Prophet-bashing, and stick to facts and information. Some aggressively intolerant folks who happen to be Muslim aren't spokespeople for Islam, though they claim to be defending Islam when engaged in their political battles for obvious political reasons.

A thought I had been toying around in the past two years seemed to have gotten reinforced during this Symposium. Most Conservatives are incapable of delineating what is Islamic from what is political in a “terrorist’s propaganda”. Some think of themselves as being “highly informed” because they “listen to what the terrorists say”. This scary phenomena of the blind leading the blind goes apparently all the way up the food chain, when we see some of our policy makers truly incapable of breaking down the Iranian President’s public rhetoric.

In closing, I guess I can’t sum it up any better than Frank Salvato of the Basics Project and a co-organizer of this Terrorism Symposium, who suggested that “In the Land of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King”. In some private conversations with movement oriented Muslim activists here and oversees last year, I asked the question of whether it isn’t our responsibility as Muslims to reach out and clear up the Right’s misunderstanding of “political Islam” as its called. In 2006 I wrote an op-ed about one of those efforts engaging national policy makers, where I suggested American public diplomacy should engage “political Islam” movements on the questions associated with Civic and Religious Liberty. But post-Iraq, our government is incapable of any new initiatives. In that op-ed I wrote:

In the Quran Muslims are taught that they are “the best of communities” when performing three simple tasks, “believing in God”, “supporting good” and “opposing evil.” Today no one makes the argument that Muslims as a whole are providing much of a moral compass for humanity, and there’s the crux of why I believe God’s blessing doesn’t lie with those Muslim majority societies today. I tried to put this theory to work with Ambassador Hanford advising that because the overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t really think about how to create an “Islamic government” that America should as part of its conversations with Muslim majority societies oversees help sponsor those academic initiatives that would help drive political Islamists towards a more reconciled vision of civic tolerance. His answer was very direct for a diplomat stating that it was up to Muslims to spearhead these kinds of initiatives.

So there lies the crux of the problem in US – Political Islam Relations, a gun shy America can’t offer leadership and a resistance oriented political Islamic movement can’t offer mush more than targeted discontent. So the average American and the average Islamist continue in stalemate, as though potential allies each awaiting the Messiah to negotiate their partnership’s diplomatic breakthrough.

Domestically we as American Muslims have succeeded in coalition building across society to isolate and steadily increase the siege of the intolerance coming post 9/11 from the right and folks at the Symposium were with only one exception in agreement that we’re (Muslims) winning and they’re (future Muslim converts) loosing. Oversees political Islam movements are generally in a state of glee over America’s foolhardiness in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; thinking it better to leave the Americans licking their wounds and psychologically demoralized to humble their arrogance. Is it possible or even our responsibility as American Muslims to engage the American Right on the subject of Political Islam? Or is it not our problem so why bother since “political Islam” has nothing to do with our community here due to our fidelity to the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause as the basis for our Religious Liberty?

Note: By “Political Islam” I'm referring not to the Islamic values (Shariah) that should guide every Muslim's political judgments, but the organized Muslim led political mobilization to restructure the socio-political order as outlined in a nation's constitution. In America our constitution guarantees everyone's right to practice their religion 100% as they see fit, so long as they don't try to use the government to “establish” an official state religion. Since organized and voluntary Muslim immigration to Texas started happening in 1854, no Muslim group or individual has ever voiced publicly a desire to change that structure yet Islamophobes play on the fears of declining Conservative Anglo Protestant populations that Muslims secretly conspire to subjugate them and charge them a jizya tax once empowered. And God knows nothing scares a conservative more than a tax increase, just check out the Presidential Elections rhetoric.

See Also:

• Islamophobia Pt. 1- It Exists
• BUBBA responds to possible “Honor Killing” in Dallas

I’ve been going back and forth the past two months trying to decide how to approach my first blog posting on MuslimMatters.org, but in the end a voicemail (Lovely Voicemail left at F&J about Islam and Honor Killings) I heard yesterday made that decision for me. While at the first Muslim Cemetery in the Dallas area attending the burial ceremony for the two slain teenage daughters of an obviously psychologically troubled member of the community, I received an email on my Blackberry notifying me of a new voicemail on the F&J line. When I got into my car, I dialed in and listened to the voicemail delivered from an “Average White Guy” that I think qualifies to be called a “Bubba” from here on in.

Now in my line of work, I’ve received everything over the years up to death threats and never really take this kind of stuff seriously because from my perspective there are talkers and there are doers. If someone’s going to do something retarded, they don’t really talk about it – simple as that. Plus most of the grassroots anger with Muslim community activism is culturally or politically driven from the bottom up anyhow. What I really found interesting in this voicemail was the guy’s professionalism in calling us as Muslims out for not speaking publicly to condemn “honor killing” and calling for the “reform of Islam” as he put it. In closing he nicely asked us to leave his country if we didn’t agree with him.

Ooh poor “Average White Guy” and ooh poor “Texas”. Where’s the reactionary action-oriented bigotry that we grew up watching in old black and white films like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or something? Even when he wants to be ugly and nasty, “Bubba” is docile. Bubba’s lost his “independent” streak and is just simply overwhelmed. He can’t seem to handle all the “threats to his way of life” being fed to him day in and day out. As Rush Limbaugh said last Friday in a debate with his callers, he learned a long-time ago that you can’t separate people from their emotions with logical argument. You can only replace a feeling with another feeling. What that means for Muslims is to recognize that many Evangelical leaders have replaced the deep fear that 9/11 unleashed amongst millions of their followers with vitriolic hate for Islam. We aren’t going to change these folk’s Islamophobia with arguments, but must figure how to replace their Islamophobia with a different “feeling”. Watching the current Presidential campaigns tells me that “patriotism” is the trump card, but then the question arises are American Muslims capable of sounding “nationalistic”???