October 29, 2002, 9:00 a.m.

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

Here we go again. A Muslim is arrested and suspected of involvement in the planning and/or execution of acts of murderous terror in the United States. Suddenly, a number of organizations that purport to represent Muslims in the United States warn that the episode might produce a racist and bigoted reaction against their co-religionists.

For example, within hours of the arrest of a black convert to Islam named John Allen Muhammad in connection with the recent spate of sniper attacks in the Washington area, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release. In it, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad professed satisfaction with the breakthrough, but went on to declare: "We are concerned that because a suspect in the case has the last name of 'Muhammad,' American Muslims will now face scapegoating and bias." Awad claimed that "Police reports indicate that the suspects acted alone, based on their own motivations. There is no indication that this case is related to Islam or Muslims."

Actually, press accounts from Tacoma, Washington report that Muhammad sympathized with al Qaeda and cheered the September 11 attacks that brought down four jetliners and killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

Awad then went on offense: "We therefore ask journalists and media commentators to avoid speculation based on stereotyping or prejudice. The American Muslim community should not be held accountable for the alleged criminal actions of what appear to be troubled and deranged individuals."

While "stereotyping or prejudice" is certainly to be avoided, CAIR's real hope appears to be that journalists, media commentators and, more importantly, government officials will not recognize certain worrisome problems that the Muhammad case might illuminate. These include the following:

Organizations associated with the virulently anti-American Saudi strain of Islam known as Wahhabism have been actively seeking to recruit convicts in the U.S. prison system, particularly by converting black and Hispanic prisoners. In a recent op-ed. in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Colson wrote that America's "alienated, disenfranchised people are prime targets for radical Islamists who preach a religion of violence, of overcoming oppression by jihad."

This is not a hypothetical problem. Jose Padilla, a felon who — after his conversion to Islam in and release from jail — is alleged to have been involved in a plot to attack the United States with a radiological weapon. Individuals like Muhammad, who have had repeated run-ins with the law, would surely have been targets for such recruitment efforts. How many have been — and was Muhammad among them?

Some Wahhabi-backed organizations have also been selecting the majority of Muslim imams for the U.S. military's chaplain corps. These chaplains are, of course, in a position to indoctrinate and otherwise influence converts about their faith — and what it dictates they do with skills learned while in the military (e.g., marksmanship). This ministering may influence behavior while in the service (for example, whether it is inconsistent with the Prophet's teachings to take up arms against fellow Muslims), as well as afterwards. Is anyone monitoring what the Wahhabi clerics are preaching in the U.S. military, and with what effect?

Then there is the Saudi effort to recruit U.S. servicemen and women during Operation Desert Storm. One well-placed source who served there at the time recalls that, "Saudi officers appeared to have been directed by their senior military or religious leadership to spot and assess potential converts to Islam among American military members." Recruitment attempts included generous giving of expensive gifts, as well as the long-standing Saudi practice of cash stipends for new converts to make the haj to Mecca.

Did Muhammad's conversion occur during his time in that theater? Were other Americans induced during that period to enroll in the Wahhabist agenda?

There is also the matter of the black Muslims. Muhammad reportedly provided security for the so-called "Million Man March" on Washington organized by Louis Farrakhan's militant Nation of Islam in 1996. After his arrest, some Wahhabi-affiliated organizations, like the American Muslim Council, succeeded in spinning the Associated Press into reporting: "Orthodox Muslims generally do not consider the Nation of Islam a mainstream religion. 'We don't represent their views, they don't represent our views,' said [Faiz] Rehman of the American Muslim Council."

While Wahhabists may look down their noses at black Muslims, they are happy to count them so as to inflate the claimed size of the U.S. Muslim population to maximize its political influence. The question is: Are African-American Muslims actually seen as useful, and are they being employed, for other purposes as well — perhaps including as cannon fodder for terrorist operations?

It is very much to be hoped that law-enforcement officials will be addressing these larger questions as they explore the suspected sniper's past. To do so, they will have to go places and ask questions that CAIR and other Wahhabist-connected groups will no doubt assail as racist or bigoted. For instance, they will have to get inside the mosques and Islamic centers where the murder suspect lived, and conduct a thorough investigation of the imam and others who mentored his conversion. In short, the investigators will have to stand up to CAIR and the other apologists for terrorist organizations and their operatives who claim to represent Muslims in the United States — even as they work to impede law enforcement efforts to protect all Americans.

On the other hand, American officials doing such work should be able to count on the help of those who really do represent mainstream Muslims. After all, those who are trying to resist Wahhabist efforts to hijack and radicalize their religion have as great an interest as the rest of us in figuring out how the Saudis and others are advancing their agenda. The place to start would be for such Muslims to denounce and work to end terrorism, in stark contrast to their co-religionists who quietly support jihad while impugning their critics as racists and bigots.

— Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy.

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002