Here now is where the story gets painful for us Bush Republicans. Not only were the al-Arians not avoided by the Bush White House - they were actively courted. Candidate Bush allowed himself to be photographed with the al-Arian family while campaigning in Florida. Candidate Bush denounced the immigration laws that detained - and ultimately deported - Mazen al-Najjar. In May 2001, Sami al-Arian was invited into the White House complex for a political briefing for Muslim-American leaders. The next month his son, Abdullah, who was then an intern in the office of Congressman David Bonior, joined a delegation of Muslim leaders at a meeting with John DiIulio, head of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. After the group entered the complex, a red flag belatedly popped up over the al-Arian name, and the Secret Service ordered him out of the complex. The entire delegation marched out with young al-Arian - and soon afterward, President Bush personally apologized to the young man and ordered the deputy director of the Secret Service to apologize as well.
(Young al-Arian published a strikingly disingenuous account of this experience in the online edition of Newsweek on - note the date - September 14, 2001. Newsweek - a magazine normally celebrated for its rigorous fact-checking - permitted young al-Arian to claim on its site that he had been "singled out" only because of his "name and physical features." Now in one sense that's true - had Abdullah al-Arian been named Abdullah al-Shmarian, nobody at the Secret Service would have troubled him. But al-Arian and Newsweek cooperated in leaving the reader with a very false impression that he had been the victim of some kind of bigoted anti-Muslim dragnet.)
The al-Arian case was not a solitary lapse. The Bush campaign in 2000 very determinedly reached out to Muslim voters. Indeed, Muslim-Americans may have tipped the election to George Bush. One survey suggests that the 50,000 Muslim voters of Florida, normally staunch Democrats, reacted to Al Gore's selection of Joe Lieberman as his running mate by voting 80% for Bush. That outreach campaign opened relationships between the Bush campaign and some very disturbing persons in the Muslim-American community. Many of those disturbing persons were invited to stand beside the president at post-9/11 events, like his meeting with Muslim community leaders at the Massachusetts Avenue mosque.
Over the past year, the White House has become much more selective about its invitations. More selective - but still far from selective enough.
There is one way that we Republicans are very lucky - we face political opponents too crippled by political correctness to make an issue of these kinds of security lapses. At least - so far. But who knows? The day may come when some Democrat decides he cares more about winning elections than he does about liberal pieties. Against the day, is it too much to ask a wartime White House - please, please choose your friends more prudently!
Correction
Memory failed me on point above: Sami al-Arian's visit to the White House occurred in June 2001, not May; his son's visit was later in the same month.
David Frum's Diary - National Review Online
FEB. 21, 2003: THE STRANGE CASE OF SAMI AL-ARIAN
President Bush has come under some criticism recently for his outreach to the U.S. Muslim community because administration officials have apparently met with some groups that have ties -- direct or indirect -- with extremist groups here and in the Middle East.
Still, and in spite of the criticism he continues to reach out.
The president's position is understandable and even commendable. He doesn't want to do anything to make it appear that he's leading an anti-Muslim crusade because this would drive millions of Muslims into the extremist camp with Osama bin Laden and his buddies.
The problem is that the ideology driving the terrorists is in fact religion-based. Wahhabism is more than just the state-sponsored religion of Saudi Arabia. It is a branch of Islam that is warlike, anti-Western and bent upon our destruction. These folks hate us as well as any Muslim that doesn't dance to their tune. They have been responsible, in fact, for the slaughter of literally millions of their fellow Muslims in their drive to remake one of the world's major religions in their own image.
If the Wahhabis restricted their activities to the Middle East, it would be bad enough, but they're also active here. Thanks to their Saudi sponsors, they have leveraged resources to recruit followers on our college campuses, to create a virtual base in our prisons, and establish cells wherever Muslims gather. They control well over half the mosques in this country and virtually every organization that purports to speak for Muslim interests.
Make no mistake about it ... these people are our enemies. To deny this would be foolish and to empower them in any way is a mistake of the first order because doing so legitimizes their claim to speak for all Muslims.
The problem is that moderate Muslims control few organizations and have virtually no voice. Most of them, in fact, know better than to challenge the Wahhabis.
Non-Muslim experts know too that challenging the Wahhabis' extremist view of the world can be dangerous. Anyone who even remotely threatens the Wahhabis can expect to be denounced by supposedly mainline Muslim organizations and their friends as anti-Muslim and a religious bigot to boot.
These groups are, in the main, acting as de facto defenders of the sponsors of extremist terrorism. Those who would defend this country are not lumping all Muslims together. It is the Wahhabis and their fellow travelers that see the Muslim population as a homogeneous sea in which they swim, hide and operate.
I have run into these zealots twice in the last six months or so. On both occasions their targets were recognized experts on Islam and terrorism who they denounced as "racists," "bigots" and men "who know absolutely nothing about Islam or the Middle East."
In both instances they sought veto power over who should or should not be allowed to discuss the extremist Muslim connection to world terrorism and in both instances they were rebuffed. Having failed to keep the objects of their enmity from speaking, they then proceeded to denounce publicly in the press and on the Internet the sponsors of the events at which they spoke as, you guessed it, "bigots and racists."
So who were these ignoramuses whom the Islamists see as mere bigots running around the country slandering an entire religion?
You've probably heard of both of them. One is Terry Emerson, a prize-winning journalist, who produced a major television report on the influence of Muslim extremists in this country. His "Jihad in America" aired on PBS, that hothouse of religious extremism and bigotry, and won him recognition as a leading journalistic expert on terrorism. He writes and lectures extensively on the subject and is called upon for analysis by the networks and the government, among others.
The other is Dan Pipes. Formerly of the Chicago and Harvard faculties, Pipes is currently director of the Middle East Forum. He has published at least 10 books including Militant Islam Reaches America, which has been widely praised for its analysis of just this problem.
I think I know why the Wahhabis hate these guys and will do anything they can to silence them. It's not because Emerson and Pipes are kooks, bigots or racists. And it's certainly not because they don't know what they're talking about.
Rather, it's because they know exactly what they're talking about. Neither man has ever said that all Muslims are the same and neither has ever tried to blame either mainstream Islam or its millions of followers for the war in which we are engaged.
The only people who have argued that no distinctions can or should be drawn among Muslims are the Wahhabis and their apologists and that should tell us all we need to know about both.
Muslim extremists seeking to foster one Islamic world
David A. Keene | February 19th, 2003
About 150 people will appreciate the exquisiteness of Z. Hallow's story about a rift between Grover Norquist and … lobbyists David Keene and Frank Gaffney. See if you can guess which side Mr. Hallow supports. LINK
"Veteran conservative activist Grover Norquist, credited with helping swing Muslim voters to support President Bush in the 2000 elections, has been accused of suppressing criticism of radical Islamic influence at the White House."
"Influential national defense specialist Frank Gaffney and American Conservative Union President David A. Keene yesterday separately accused Mr. Norquist of employing 'Stalinist tactics' against those who disagree with Mr. Norquist's role in brokering access to the Bush White House."
"Mr. Norquist had accused Mr. Gaffney and some of his allies in the conservative movement of 'racism' and religious bigotry."
"Mr. Norquist yesterday barred Mr. Gaffney from attending the regular Wednesday morning meetings of conservative Capitol Hill aides and interest-group representatives held in Mr. Norquist's L Street offices. The White House regularly sends a representative to the meetings, at which Mr. Rove has occasionally been the featured speaker."
"In disputes with organizers of two recent conservative conferences, Mr. Norquist warned his critics to back off because Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove were on his side. Norquist critics said that at various times he has told them that the president and Mr. Rove were angry with Mr. Gaffney and Middle East scholars Daniel Pipes and Steve Emory for, in Mr. Norquist's view, painting all American Muslims with the broad brush of radical Islamic terrorism."
ABC News link
WASHINGTON, February 7th, 2003
