If that is true... OMG.
Islamic Advisor Given Carte Blanch at Pentagon [on Stephen Coughlin; incl. Muqtedar Khan, Asaf Romirowsky]
Insight Magazine
January 22—28, 2008
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4719
The Pentagon has been thrown into turmoil by an Egyptian native appointed as a senior adviser on dealings with the Muslim world.
Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has given his special assistant, Hesham Islam, a free hand in shaping the Pentagon’s dialogue with the Muslim world and the American Muslim community. The result has been what critics term the conversion of the Defense Department into a Muslim propaganda center.
“He’s my interlocutor,” said England. “He represents me to the international community. Hesham helps me understand people’s different perspectives and how they see things. I take his advice, and I listen to him all the time.”
Under Islam, a key counter-terrorism strategist, Stephen Coughlin, was fired, after he was deemed a “Christian zealot with a pen.” Islam has also invited Saudi-financed groups to lecture on Islam to Pentagon strategists.
“How is it that he [Islam] is allowed to call anyone a Christian zealot?” U.S. Central Command analyst Neal Harper said in an e-mail to friends. “This alone exposes his bias, his poor perception of Christians, and a complete lack of professionalism, at best. Should we instead be asking who is this guy and how did he get inside? Is he representative of those who are leading this Muslim outreach? Does Muslim outreach mean that we are not allowed to question or confront those we are trying to communicate with and the doctrine upon which they stand? When speaking the truth gets one fired, we all should be concerned and at the very least need to ask why.”
Officials said Coughlin, whose contract expires in March 2008, was the only Islamic scholar on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They said Coughlin was the only senior adviser to argue that the United States, determined not to anger Saudi Arabia, has failed to evaluate Islamic doctrine.