Free Republic

Bill de Blasio has appointed his transition committee and it includes Imam Khalid Latif. Latif is one of the cleaner faces of CAIR. He was a chaplain at Princeton and now NYU. Bloomberg appointed him to be a police chaplain and he’s won interfaith awards.He’s young enough and savvy enough to play the moderate role really well. You won’t catch him shouting “Death to America” or “We are all Osama” when the cameras are off. And his presence as a CAIR board member will be overlooked by most. In 2006, when deadly protests broke out in the Muslim world...

Khalid Latif, a chaplain for New York University, here complains that moderate and peaceful understandings of Islam are being unfairly discounted: "As much as Muslims need to acknowledge the existence of a minority voice that is radicalized, so too does a broader society need to acknowledge the existence of a majority voice that is not radicalized and more importantly condemns radical thought." That's just great, and I am happy to accommodate him in this. It is also worth noting, however, that a few years ago, when NYU students planned to display the Danish cartoons of Muhammad at a campus event,...

Imam Khalid Latif, a chaplain for New York University and the New York Police Department, recently appeared on CNN. He suggested that the New York public schools should close for at least two important Muslim holidays each year. I could not agree more. Latif suggests that American Muslims are trying to develop their own contemporary identity as the religion of peace and tolerance. In his view, closing schools for major Muslim holidays would help that process since an Americanized modern and moderate Islam would benefit all Americans. However, I would alter Latif's suggestion slightly. We should treat the various Muslim...