The Muslim Public Affairs Council yesterday held a much-hyped meeting (see coverage in the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Star News, and the Press-Enterprise) at which Maher Hathout unveiled a "mosque to mosque" campaign to provide Muslims with tools to fight terrorist activity. Sounds good, no? But Hathout throughout his talk kept disparaging Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project and me, calling the two of us "self-professed terrorist experts who make all us Muslim look like terrorists." (I, by the way, have never declared myself an expert on terrorism.)
When queried why MPAC does not anyway work in unison with the two of us to root out terrorists, that presumably being our common ultimate objective, an MPAC person answered that it cannot do so because Emerson and I make "lay persons believe that all Muslims are terrorists."
In saying this, of course, MPAC is lying through its collective teeth. Emerson and I routinely and repeatedly make the point that Muslims in general are not the issue, only those radicalized ones who support the militant Islamic program. But he and I can say this until we are blue in the face; the totalitarians at MPAC and the other Islamist organizations continue unabated to spread their Big Lie. (July 12, 2004)
Dec. 18, 2004 update: Note the charming poster MPAC put out for its annual conference, "The Faces that Are Always Talking about Terrorism." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Pat Robertson, Steven Emerson, and I are equivalent to Osama bin Laden, according to MPAC.
 MPAC poster. |
May 10, 2010 update: MPAC's Salam al-Marayati had this to say about me on KPCC's Larry Mantle show today:
I think we can also point to other speakers on campus that have been anti-Muslim and anti-Arab such as Daniel Pipes who was on the university and he artic--, his stand is basically that Muslim-Americans don't deserve civil rights at all, they should all be treated as suspects. So, we're hurt, we're hurt, that's what we hear from him and we can give you all the writings about that.
Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Response: Sorry to hurt your feelings, Salam, but you got me wrong again. Yes, I reluctantly call for special attention to Muslims – and the record of 15,250 terrorist assaults since 9/11 makes that case pretty convincingly. But you are wrong about me being anti-Muslim or anti-Arab; I am neither, and that is the sort of specious calumny that MPAC specializes in. You are also wrong ascribing to me that "Muslim-Americans don't deserve civil rights at all." To the contrary, I tirelessly repeat that Muslim have the same rights and responsibilities as other citizens, but not greater rights. Here is one example of this statement, from an article of mine devoted to this subject: "Offer full rights – but turn down demands for special privileges." As usual, I deserve an apology from Islamists that never seems to be forthcoming.
