In a letter to Osama bin Laden, published in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Watan, Kuwaiti MP Dr. Walid Al-Tabatabai, from the Islamic bloc in the Kuwaiti parliament, praised the jihad fighters' activities and advised him on avoiding mistakes in the jihad that Al-Qaeda is waging.
Al-Tabatabai's letter, which came in response to the speech by bin Laden that was broadcast on September 11, 2007, appealed to bin Laden to distinguish between fighting the American invader and attacking the Muslims, and to refrain from random operations which harmed innocents because such operations damaged the image of jihad and sabotaged the spreading of Islam. Al-Tabatabai also called on bin Laden to consult with Muslim clerics in order to reassess Al-Qaeda's activities and avoid mistakes in the future.
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http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD176007
FBI's Latest Outreach Outrage
by Steven Emerson
November 7, 2007
Much has been written about the U.S. government's current bout of schizophrenia in its outreach to the American Muslim community, specifically related to the Department of Justice. While federal prosecutors in Dallas have labeled several Islamist organizations as unindicted co-conspirators – describing them as front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood - in the terrorist financing trial against the Holy Land for Relief and Development (HLF), the FBI is meeting with the very same groups to hold outreach events and the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is setting up booths at their conferences.
As wrongheaded and shortsighted as these policies are, they do not hold a candle to a recent outreach event held by the FBI's Detroit field office at the end of last month. As reported in the Detroit Free Press (see: Detroit's FBI chief: Violence extremism cuts across religions), two top FBI officials from that office "spoke to about 50 Muslims inside the Islamic Organization of North America, or Tanzeem-e-Islami." The Free Press described the organization as merely "a Sunni mosque with a primarily Pakistani congregation" and tells us that the meeting was nothing more than "part of an effort by the FBI to reach out to Muslims and other communities."
While outreach to the Muslim community remains an important endeavor, officials at the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have become far less discerning in determining who the gatekeepers and spokesmen for the American Muslim community should be.
Take this recent meeting with Tanzeem-e-Islami, a group founded in Pakistan in 1975 and headed by a man named Dr. Israr Ahmad. The FBI might be unaware, but Ahmad is often credited with initiating the vicious rumor, spread throughout the Muslim world, that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. On the heels of the attacks, he sent faxes to various U.S. mosques and Islamic centers, stating:
The secret Israeli service Musad [sic] orchestrated these terrorist attacks ... [which] are a vital link in the chain of events that the Jews are undertaking to fulfill their dream of world domination.
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The Islamic Saudi Academy — a private school owned and operated by the government of Saudi Arabia in the Washington, D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia — is more than just a religious school. While its math, science, and English curricula all conform to American standards, its religion curriculum is the same as the one imposed on all schools in Saudi Arabia. For years, that curriculum has been the target of legitimate criticism for its use of textbooks that promote jihad and justify violence against Christians and Jews.
The U.S. government can’t do much about schools over there. The State Department has urged the Saudis many times to remove the justifications for violence found in its religious textbooks, yet this diplomacy has not yielded substantive results. Last year, Freedom House and the Institute for Gulf Studies released a study based on an analysis of textbooks used during that school year, which found that the books still contained numerous passages propagating hatred toward the Jews and teaching jihad against unbelievers as a fundamental Muslim virtue.
But what about the ISA — the school the Saudis operate over here? In a study released last month, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom — a watchdog group created by Congress eight years ago — recommended that if the Saudis could not at least clean up the textbooks in use at the ISA, the State Department should close the school pursuant to its powers under the Foreign Missions Act.
Nobody expected Foggy Bottom to take swift and certain action. Nevertheless, it was disappointing to see early signs that the State Department intends to ignore the commission’s findings. The official pushback came in the form of a leak to the Washington Post, published in Monday’s edition:
But State officials and others with knowledge of the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing inquiry, said U.S. officials believe the commission was premature in asking that the school, supported by the Saudi government, be closed. They said the State Department was proceeding cautiously, speaking with Saudi officials about issues of religious tolerance and school curriculum, to avoid creating a crisis.
Short version: The State Department wants to give the Saudis more time. In 2006, the Saudis promised that they would revise their textbooks and change their religious curriculum, but they said it would take a couple of years. A State Department spokesman tells National Review Online that while the department is officially “still looking at the [commission’s] report,” the Saudis have said they won’t be ready until 2008. That’s just how the State Department sees it.
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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjQ5Yzc3MzI4ODAxYjRmNTY5NWM4MWIxODU1NDlmNTA=