Andrew C. McCarthy's Blog, page 70
January 24, 2011
Mukasey Must Reading
Two things you really ought to read.
First, in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, former attorney general Michael Mukasey reviewed two books that analyze U.S. national security in the context of the West's relationship with Islam -- Michael Scheuer's Osama bin Laden and Peter Bergen's The Longest War. The review is characteristic of Judge Mukasey, meaning it is thorough, brimming with insight, and a good read. All of it is worth pondering, but his thoughts about Islam are likely to get the most notice. There is an early hint in the Judge's demurral from the tunnel vision of Scheuer, the former CIA bin Laden unit chief, when it comes to al Qaeda's emir: "'Osama Bin Laden' seems so wound up with its subject that much else gets lost, including any analysis of what it is in Islam that might motivate Muslims apart from the example of bin Laden." But it is in considering the meanderings of Bergen, CNN's terrorism analyst, that Mukasey registers his strongest dissent from the mainstream media's rose-tinted Islam:
Finally, consider Mr. Bergen's assertion that "mainstream Islam" is rejecting al Qaeda and that the 9/11 attack was "un-Islamic," a judgment that fails twice over, including once on his own evidence. If by "mainstream Islam" Mr. Bergen means moderate Islam, there is no such thing. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is simply no body of doctrine within Islam that provides a principled basis for condemning the 9/11 attacks.
Elsewhere in his own book Mr. Bergen discloses that a fatwa authorizing attacks on civilians—the fatwa that is thought to have provided the theological basis for the 9/11 attacks—was issued by Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind cleric whom I sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and in a later plot to bomb New York landmarks. In one section of "The Longest War," Mr. Bergen touts Abdel Rahman's status as an authoritative theologian; in another, he dismisses the attack that Abdel Rahman authorized as "un-Islamic." It's hard to see how that works.
Mr. Bergen also cites condemnation of the 9/11 attacks by a cleric from Cairo's Al Azhar University, but that is the institution that gave us Abdel Rahman. Similarly, Mr. Bergen notes the rejection of such violence by cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, a darling of the bien-pensant left, but neglects to tell us that Qaradawi's oeuvre includes a fatwa authorizing women to engage in suicide bombing.
Reading all of it will reward your time (see also Scott Johnson's related post at Powerline -- and I thank Scott for his kind words at Willful Blindness). Also well worth your time is Jennifer Rubin's interview with Judge Mukasey for the current issue of the Weekly Standard. As Jen catalogues, the former AG takes a dim view of much of what is happening at the Justice Department under the current AG.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Re: Question for Football Fans
Shannen, everything happens pretty quickly as the ball is intercepted by Shields, but here is what I'd say. Shields is in front of Knox and touches the ball -- not necessarily intercepts it yet at that instant (as in possesses and controls the ball), but at least gets his hands on it -- before his fellow Packers defensive back, Collins, runs through the Bears' receiver, Knox. Just as in the case of a pass that gets tipped by a defensive lineman after the quarterback releases it (even if the tip is barely noticeable and doesn't affect the trajectory of the pass), there cannot be pass interference on a ball that is touched by another defensive player before the defensive player in question (here, Collins) hits the receiver. Once the ball is touched by a defensive player, it's considered to be a situation similar to a fumble before it's been recovered -- i.e., the refs permit all kinds of pushing, grabbing and holding that would not be allowed if someone had possession of the ball. (Note, the rule is different if the defensive player who first touches the ball is the same defensive player who has hit the receiver -- that would be pass-interference.)
Having watched the play a few times now, I think if Shields had clearly intercepted the ball a fraction or two of a second earlier, there could have been a case for calling clipping (i.e., blocking a player blindside) against Collins. But because it all happened so fast -- i.e., it couldn't have been clear to Collins that Shields had intercepted the ball and therefore that Knox was a potential tackler at that point -- I don't think the refs could have called that.
I'm glad you didn't ask where my Jets were in the first half last night. That is a question I could not have answered.
Andrew C. McCarthy
January 22, 2011
Back in Commission
President Obama is relenting on military-commission trials, and the New York Times is, shall we say, chagrined.
The administration’s retreat can be chalked up to the political climate proximately created by two developments. The first is Congress’s prohibition against the transfer of terrorist detainees from Gitmo to the United States, which makes giving them the bells-’n’-whistles civilian trials preferred by the president and his Justice Department impractical. On that count, the president -- in a downright Bush-like signing statement, of all things -- floated a very weak constitutional objection to the transfer ban. That huffing and puffing went nowhere, and deservedly so. Thus the administration must deal with reality.
#ad#The second significant turn of events to shape that reality was the outcome of al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Ghailani’s civilian trial. Though fully complicit in the 1998 embassy bombings, the terrorist was acquitted on 284 of 285 counts after a judge refused to allow the prosecution to call its most important witness. As previously noted, the compromise verdict probably had more to do with a loopy juror than with the court’s ruling. Nevertheless, both the bizarre jury deliberations and the ruling on the witness -- which was premised on the notion that a foreign terrorist, whose only connection to the United States is blowing up our embassies, somehow has full-throttle Fifth Amendment rights -- served to underscore the risks inherent in a civilian justice system that permits even guilty criminals to escape conviction if doubt is cast on the government’s case. That’s fine when defendants are American citizens accused of ordinary crimes -- they’re the ones for whom our justice system was quite intentionally designed that way. For enemy jihadists? Not so much.
The first of the military-commission trials will apparently involve Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the better known alias of the Saudi national whose true name is Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammad Abdu. He is a top al-Qaeda operative, responsible for the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
Nashiri is of immense interest to the Times, but not because he killed 17 American sailors, wounded 39 others, and nearly sank a naval destroyer. The Gray Lady is in a snit because Nashiri was waterboarded by CIA interrogators after being captured in November 2002. This fact results in the most spurious aspect of Charlie Savage’s dispatch:
Mr. Nashiri’s case . . . would attract global attention because he was previously held in secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons and is one of three detainees known to have been subjected to the drowning technique known as waterboarding. Lt. Cmdr. Stephen Reyes of the Navy, a military lawyer assigned to defend Mr. Nashiri, declined to comment on any movement in the case. But he noted that two of Mr. Nashiri’s alleged co-conspirators were indicted in federal civilian court in 2003, and he made clear that the defense would highlight Mr. Nashiri’s treatment in C.I.A. custody. “Nashiri is being prosecuted at the commissions because of the torture issue,” Mr. Reyes said. “Otherwise he would be indicted in New York along with his alleged co-conspirators.”
No he wouldn’t. Savage and Reyes are bloviating. What happened to Nashiri after his apprehension in 2002 is irrelevant to what he did leading up to the 2000 attack, unless the government tries to introduce his interrogation statements as evidence. The interrogation was done to collect intelligence, however, not to elicit a confession, and statements obtained through physical coercion have no place in any kind of trial, civilian or military. Thus, the government surely will not attempt to introduce them. Savage, in fact, implicitly concedes this when he observes that “much of the evidence against Mr. Nashiri consists of witness interviews and documents gathered by the F.B.I. in Yemen after the bombing.” The “torture” narrative and its corollary, that of the CIA’s allegedly sinister use of “black site” prisons, continue to inspire a frisson for the editorial boards that so carefully crafted them. Most Americans, though, care chiefly about whether Nashiri killed members of our armed forces. That is what the trial will be about.
#page#Reyes’s caterwauling about how Nashiri is being treated unfairly in comparison with other Cole bombers has surface appeal only because of what Savage takes pains not to tell you. According to defense counsel, Nashiri is getting a military trial rather than the civilian due process two other Cole bombers purportedly got -- because he was “tortured” and they weren’t. Savage seemingly corroborates this suggestion by stating that “Nashiri’s alleged co-conspirators were indicted in federal civilian court in 2003.” Notice, though, the reporter’s use of “indicted.” It’s calculated. Yes, Nashiri’s two al-Qaeda confederates -- Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Quso -- were indicted, but as Savage well knows, the United States never actually captured them, much less tried them in civilian court.
#ad#Badawi was captured by our fabulous ally, Yemen, the current comfy home base for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. You’ll be stunned to learn that the Yemenis promptly allowed him to flee -- twice, the second escape miraculously occurring after a Yemeni court went through the motions of imposing a death sentence on him. He remains at large. By contrast, Quso would probably tell you, if he could, that he’d love to have been given Nashiri-quality due process. Alas, he was killed in Waziristan last September by a U.S. predator drone -- an attack the Obama administration evidently decided was more consistent with the rule of law and our image in the Muslim world than one of those awful Bush-style military commissions.
So why did the Bush administration bother to indict Badawi and Quso at all? Because the Clinton administration failed not only to retaliate against al-Qaeda for the Cole attack but even to file charges. Filing charges is of procedural importance: In the event a wanted terrorist is captured by another nation, having charges improves our government’s ability to persuade that nation that the terrorist should be extradited to the U.S. That is why Osama bin Laden, for example, was indicted in June 1998. But filing an indictment in civilian court against a fugitive terrorist does not mean there were ever actually legal proceedings involving that terrorist, nor does it obligate our government to try that terrorist in civilian court.
It is sheer sleight of hand to contend that prosecutorial fretting over the CIA’s interrogation tactics explains Nashiri’s consignment to a military tribunal. The other Cole bombers were not given a civilian trial. And if Badawi is suddenly captured tomorrow, he will not be brought to civilian court any more than bin Laden will be if he is captured. Badawi, like Nashiri, would be detained outside the United States and, if tried at all, tried by military commission.
A final precious angle of Savage’s report is the Times’s suddenly deep respect for military tradition. The Nashiri prosecution is problematic, the paper now says, “because military commissions for war crimes are generally understood to have jurisdiction only over acts that took place during hostilities.” Hostilities (i.e., the war) are generally understood to have commenced on 9/11 -- notwithstanding that, by that point, al-Qaeda had already been attacking and declaring war against the United States for years. Therefore, in Savage’s telling, military tradition would not permit a commission trial for the Cole attack, since it happened nearly a year before 9/11.
Nice try. Under military tradition stretching back to the Revolutionary War, military commissions were also “generally understood” to be within the discretion of the commander-in-chief to order unilaterally. That is, no statutory authorization from Congress or review by the civilian courts was necessary. Nevertheless, when the commander-in-chief who issued such an order in 2001 was named Bush, the Times screamed bloody murder.
On cue, the lawyer Left -- staffed by many attorneys who now work at the Obama Justice Department -- mobilized on behalf of America’s enemies. In a ruling that had little to do with the law and everything to do with the antiwar Left’s vision of international terrorism as a mere law-enforcement matter, a sharply divided Supreme Court held, in the 2006 Hamdan case, that presidentially ordered military commissions were invalid. The commander-in-chief now needed statutory authorization, subject to judicial review.
Congress answered swiftly, passing the Military Commissions Act (MCA). For the Left, then, this is a case of “be careful what you wish for.” The military tradition the Times now finds so alluring is no longer of much relevance. Military commissions now occur not by presidential directive but under the auspices of a statute, enacted by the branch of government constitutionally empowered to define the jurisdiction of the courts it authorizes.
Unlike commanders-in-chief, whose authority to order commissions was dependent on military tradition (in the form of the laws and customs of war), Congress is free to give the courts it has empowered whatever jurisdiction it chooses -- it is not hemmed in by such niceties as when the Times thinks hostilities commenced. In the MCA (Section 948d), Congress endowed military commissions with “jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001.” (Emphasis mine.)
If this were a law-school exam, it might be worth noodling over whether President Bush could have authorized military-commission trials for pre-9/11 attacks by an enemy that considered itself at war with the United States, regardless of our reticence to respond militarily. But it is neither here not there in Nashiri’s case. Congress has expressly provided that pre-9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda may be tried by military commission. That should be the end of the matter -- even for Justice Kennedy, who, though unpredictable, wrote a concurring opinion in Hamdan that is best described as an ode to congressional power.
The Obama administration is very unhappy to be saddled with commissions, but expect the president to get over that quickly when jihadists start getting convicted. He’ll gladly take the “tough on terror” credit as his 2012 campaign gears up -- credit the New York Times no doubt will somehow summon the strength to give him.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
Andrew C. McCarthy
January 21, 2011
Loughner Indictment
There was some head-scratching a couple of days ago over the Justice Department's indictment of Jared Lee Loughner in the Tucson shootings case because he was not charged with the murders of Chief Judge John Roll and Gabriel Zimmerman, a legislative aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Instead, the indictment charges only the attempted murders of Representative Giffords and her two other aides, Ron Barber and Pamela Simon. (My column a few days back explained that there is no federal jurisdiction to charge murder or attempted murder in connection with the victims who were not federal officers.)
I was interviewed by Politico's Josh Gerstein for his report a couple of days ago. As I told Josh, I don't think there is anything mysterious afoot -- unusual, yes, but not mysterious. Ordinarily, when a defendant is arrested on a "complaint" (i.e., not a grand jury indictment but a mere arrest warrant supported by an agent's complaint affidavit describing the probable cause for the charges in the warrant), the feds must indict that defendant within 30 days under the Speedy Trial Act. If that defendant has been denied bail, however, the time to indict shrinks to ten business days.
It is a very bad thing for the prosecution to put things in an indictment that turn out not to be true. Indictments are products of grand jury testimony, and if there is a mistake in the indictment it signals that someone gave incorrect testimony, which can cause problems for the prosecution at trial. Particularly in a case where the defendant does not confess and the government has to prove the charges based on witness testimony and physical evidence (and I don't know what admissions, if any, Loughner made to the police), ten business days is not a lot of time to conduct thorough interviews of the eye-witnesses and get the FBI's very busy (and incredibly good) lab to process all the ballistics evidence and write the exacting reports that are the basis for their experts' testimony.
As a result, what the Justice Department often does when defendants have been detained pending trial is file what I call a "stop the clock" indictment, alleging just one or a few serious crimes that are the easiest to prove. These offenses are pleaded in bare-bones fashion: a minimalist recitation of the offense elements required to be proved. This charging instrument stops the ticking of the speedy-trial clock, provides formal charges weighty enough to justify continued detention, and avoids the possibility of inadvertently saying something that may turn out to be wrong.
Later on, when there has been more time to process and digest the evidence, Justice will seek a superseding indictment -- adding additional charges and pleading them in a more expansive, narrative form that will highlight for the eventual trial jury how and why the defendant did what he did. That is, the bare bones indictment is filed early for procedural reasons; the superseder is the later "roadmap to conviction" on which the government will go to trial.
The press release issued by the U.S. attorney in Arizona to announce the charges makes this clear -- although it includes a feature I think is unusual. It describes the charges filed as "an initial three-count indictment" (emphasis added). That's rarely done: the government usually takes the position that it is ready to go to trial on any indictment it obtains. Here, instead, it is signaling from the outset that the this is just the first indictment and there is more to come. That’s entirely appropriate given the great public interest in the Tucson case and the obvious fact that people unfamiliar with due process rules are sure to be puzzled by the lack of murder charges.
There are two other complicating factors here that I didn't think to mention to Josh in our quick email exchange the other night: the parallel state investigation and the death penalty.
In most cases, the feds proceed without concern about what state and local law enforcement are up to. Here, that cannot happen. There will be a state prosecution as well. The U.S. and Arizona will need to call the same witnesses. In fact, Tucson police and other first responders were undoubtedly the first officials from any government on the scene, and they, too, will be necessary witnesses.
Consequently, it is very much in the public interest that the feds and the state work cooperatively -- including coordinating witness interviews. All interview notes by any agency will probably have to be disclosed to the defense prior to trial. If there is not coordination, there will inevitably be inconsistencies in the recorded statements -- not because witnesses are lying but because no two investigators writing interview reports will summarize a witness’s version of events the same way. It would be irresponsible to give defense lawyers such a gift, so the agencies will have to play nicely together, even though they will occasionally grumble about each other.
Capital punishment also complicates matters. As the U.S. attorney's press release explained, "This case also involves potential death-penalty charges, and Department rules require us to pursue a deliberate and thorough process." That is true. After an exhaustive investigation, the U.S. attorney will have to make a recommendation to Main Justice about whether capital murder charges are warranted. In that process, the defense will be invited to make a presentation on why the death penalty should not be sought. After the U.S. attorney makes his recommendation, Attorney General Holder will have to decide -- with input from his top advisers and, perhaps, with another presentation by defense counsel (assuming the U.S. attorney has recommended capital charges).
That takes a lot of time. What the U.S. attorney's press release doesn't say, though, is that there is no reason why the government could not file non-capital murder charges now and then supersede later with a death penalty notice. (If that were not so, the government would have a very hard time indicting any murder case in which the defendant is detained pretrial -- as most murder defendants are -- and the ten-day rule was in play.)
So why not do that? Probably because even more challenging than the crunched time frame is Jared Loughner's mental state. If he was mentally disturbed to such a great degree that there is a colorable claim of insanity, this would not just argue against the death penalty -- we do not execute people who truly are not responsible for their actions. It would also give Loughner a defense against murder. That is, mental incapacity would render the government unable to prove the high mens rea element required in any homicide case.
To be clear, I am not making a judgment that Loughner was insane. From everything I've read, I suspect that -- although clearly disturbed and probably, as Dr. Charles Krauthammer suggests, a paranoid schizophrenic -- Loughner probably meets the low threshold required before a person can be held responsible for murder: essentially, the ability to know right from wrong. But that's just a guess from up here in the cheap seats. This defendant's state of mind may be a very close call, and the government will do its best, I'm confident, to get it right before deciding whether to charge murder, let alone capital murder.
Expect this to take several weeks to play out.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Ghailani Conviction Upheld
Ben Weiser of the New York Times has details, here. The judge pointed out that if there was injustice in the terrorist's conviction on only one of the 285 counts, the victims are the United States and the hundreds killed and maimed in the embassy bombings.
update: I should have made clear that this was not the appeal of Ghailani's conviction -- he hasn't even been sentenced yet. The defense lawyers had argued that the trial judge should throw out the lone conviction based on the 284 acquittals. It is that "post-trial motion" that was denied here, by District Judge Lewis Kaplan. The appeal will not take place until after sentence is imposed -- sentencing will be very soon, but the appeal will probably take many months to be resolved.
Andrew C. McCarthy
January 20, 2011
127 Arrested in Mafia Dragnet
It looks like various investigations, some overlapping, in four different federal districts were brought to a coordinated conclusion. It's the usual Cosa Nostra potpourri -- murder, drugs, labor racketeering, gambling, prostitution ... -- and some of it goes back decades. DOJ's press release is here. Not fuh nuttin', but I dink deez guys gotta big friggin' problem.
Andrew C. McCarthy
January 19, 2011
Thou Shalt Not Speak of Islam
The Washington Post spikes a regular contributor to its "On Faith" blog when he has the temerity to write a post that compares Islam and Christianity. Pajamas, however, publishes the offending piece.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Refusing to Raise the Debt Ceiling Would Not Cause a U.S. Default
In the Wall Street Journal, Sen. Pat Toomey lays to rest the sky-is-falling nonsense about how cutting up Uncle Sam's credit card would cause the U.S. to default on its debt obligations. As the Senator explains, revenue is about ten times the size of our debt service. The problem is that revenue -- even at an astronomical $2.5 trillion -- is only two-thirds the size of what Leviathan intends to spend because it is doing many more things than it should do, and because, even on those few things the federal government should do, it spends way too much money.
Sen. Toomey is proposing legislation that would ensure that what needn't happen -- a default -- won't happen. As John Hinderaker reports at Poweline, Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota also has thoughts along those lines. And see Cato's Michael Tanner's observations here on the Corner.
Andrew C. McCarthy
Wrong on Rauf
Imam Feisal Rauf, the cleric behind the provocative Ground Zero Mosque (GZM) project, as one critic put it, “is no moderate. He presents himself as a peacemaking Islamic Gandhi, but he is in fact an apologist for the terrorist outfit Hamas, which he refuses even to identify as a terrorist organization.”
#ad#You might be forgiven for thinking that came from Sarah Palin. If you’ve been reading NRO lately, you saw published here on Monday “Palin Libels Rauf,” an essay by Henry Payne. Payne accuses the former Alaska governor of “libel” --- his word --- because she described Imam Rauf as a Hamas apologist who refused to identify that terrorist organization as a terrorist organization. But the quoted words were written by the editors of National Review. On August 4, 2010, as controversy raged over the GZM, NRO published an editorial describing Rauf as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Based on a number of disturbing facts that have not to this day been refuted, the editorial (“Not at Ground Zero”) portrayed the imam as a faux moderate collaborating with Muslim Brotherhood front groups to build a huge mosque and Islamic center on what the editors described as “the gravesite of 3,000 Americans who died at the hands of Islamic radicals” --- a prospect the editors quite rightly called “unseemly.”
Now, I’m all for a good debate. That’s what NRO is here for. But a debate is a discussion in which adversaries actually address their points of disagreement. Payne doesn’t address any of the troubling matters that have been raised about Rauf, not only by NR’s editors and Sarah Palin, but by many, many others. Allowed to exploit NR’s megaphone, he treats our readers to a mendacious puff piece, leveling the weighty charge of libel while whitewashing the rich underlying basis for regarding Rauf as an apologist for Islamist terrorists in general, and for Hamas in particular.
According to Mr. Payne, Governor Palin “has spread libel herself about the Ground Zero Mosque imam, Feisal Rauf,” by claiming that “Rauf refuses to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of our ally, Israel.”
Libel, of course, is a legally actionable defamation, entitling the wronged party to sue for money damages against the alleged slanderer. That’s serious business. In fact, to conclude that a public figure like Rauf has been libeled is to maintain that the purported slanderer made her baseless accusation either knowing it was untrue or in reckless disregard of its falsity.
Why does Payne claim Palin is guilty of libel? Because recently --- as recently, in fact, as a radio appearance in Detroit last week --- Rauf has taken to asserting that “Hamas is a terrorist organization. They have committed terrorist acts.” So one might ask Mr. Payne, “You mean to tell me Rauf didn’t refuse to call Hamas a terrorist organization? Are you saying that Palin knew Rauf had called Hamas a terrorist organization yet publicly claimed that he refused to do so?”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Payne’s answers. They’re sure not in his essay, which is just as cavalier about flinging libel accusations as he baselessly accuses Palin of being when it comes to Rauf. Not to mince words, the essay is an embarrassment. Its speciousness is betrayed in the first few lines. There, he acknowledges that Palin’s remarks were made “on her Facebook page last year” --- that is, many months before Rauf repackaged himself as the scourge (sort of) of Hamas.
Was Payne just singling out the controversial former governor and potential presidential candidate in order to draw attention to himself? Was she alone in taking Rauf to task over Hamas? Judge for yourself. Here is what NR’s editors said last year about why they considered Rauf “in fact an apologist for the terrorist outfit Hamas, which he refuses even to identify as a terrorist organization”:
Nor is Rauf exactly full-throated in his rejection of terrorism, offering only this: “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.” While he cannot quite bring himself to blame the terrorists for being terrorists, he finds it easy to blame the United States for being a victim of terrorism: “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
In my NRO columns, Corner posts, and public statements during the summer of 2010 --- including an August 28 column called “Why They Can’t Condemn Hamas” --- I several times recounted that Rauf could not bring himself to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that he had contended the United States was more guilty of wanton murder than al-Qaeda.
Moreover, in a widely cited Corner post on August 9, 2010, NR associate editor Robert VerBruggen reported that “NRO has obtained yet another interview in which Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the leading figure behind the Cordoba House (the ‘Ground Zero mosque’), explains away terrorism. ‘They feel the need to conflagrate,’ he says of Muslims who feel they’ve been ‘humiliated’ and ‘ignored.’” VerBruggen concluded that as the GZM “project’s supporters press on in the face of overwhelming public outcry, and as Rauf’s beliefs come increasingly into the light, arguments that the community center and mosque are meant as anything but a finger in the eye of America become less believable.” Not leaving it at that, NR later published a lengthy study, “The Two Faces of Feisal Rauf,” by Ibn Warraq, who analyzed Rauf’s “reluctance to call Hamas a terrorist organization,” as well as Rauf’s work with Hamas sympathizers, from the perspective of a renowned scholar of Islam who had read actually Rauf’s scholarship.
We at NR were far from alone. Here, from his weekly column on August 17, 2010, is the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens on Imam Rauf: “[A] man who claims to condemn all forms of terrorism yet refuses to call Hamas a terrorist group is not a moderate by American standards, which happen to be the relevant ones when you’re trying to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.”
#page#At the Weekly Standard in July 2010, Stephen Schwartz reported that “Rauf’s refusal to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization” had become an issue in the New York gubernatorial election. A few weeks later, on September 1, TWS’s Michael Goldfarb noted not only that Rauf was “unwilling to condemn [Hamas] as a terrorist organization,” but that Rauf’s Park51 organization had turned down Goldfarb’s pointed invitation to reconsider its reticence in the wake of a Hamas attack in which four Israeli civilians, including a pregnant woman, were murdered.
#ad#I could go on for the rest of the day. Suffice it to say that Feisal Rauf did not file a libel suit against Sarah Palin or any of the numerous other commentators and publications that discussed his refusal to call Hamas a terrorist organization. Truth, after all, is a complete defense to a defamation claim. The evidence that Rauf recoiled from denouncing Hamas is irrefutable.
In a well-publicized radio interview by Aaron Klein in June 2010, which Payne conveniently elects not to discuss, Rauf was repeatedly pushed on whether he agreed with the State Department’s designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. It’s a straightforward question. Still, Rauf would not answer it: “I’m not a politician. I try to avoid the issues. The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.#...#I’m a bridge builder. I define my work as a bridge builder. I do not want to be placed, nor do I accept to be placed in a position of being put in a position where I am the target of one side or another.”
Of course, one needn’t be a politician to concede the obvious: Hamas targets innocents for slaughter in order to further its agenda (destroying Israel) and is therefore a terrorist organization. Rauf, however, couldn’t bring himself to say this. So Klein tried again, pointing out that Hamas targets civilians and asking whether that wasn’t enough to make it a terrorist organization. Rauf replied with characteristic caginess: “The targeting of civilians is wrong. It is a sin in our religion. Whoever does it, targeting civilians is wrong.” Yeah, a lot of things are wrong, but is Hamas a terrorist organization? Rauf wouldn’t say --- insisting that “I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary.”
Well, tender as that may be, sides have been chosen on the matter of Hamas’s terrorism. Most people understand that they don’t get to be above it all on that one. Not Rauf, though. His fury was reserved not for Hamas terrorists but for Klein: “You are killing the messenger,” whined the imam. Klein, though, pointed out yet again that he was simply trying to get an answer out of the messenger, “and yet you refuse to tell me Hamas is a terror organization,” an assertion Rauf did not dispute --- for how could he?
It is not enough to say Rauf declined to admit that Hamas is a terrorist organization, just as Palin, NR, and a host of others have claimed. His position was entirely predictable for anyone who has taken the time to study his career.
For example, in another episode Payne omits, Rauf published in Malaysia a book provocatively titled, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. “Dawa” is Islamic missionary work which, as informed by Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi --- admired by Rauf as the world’s most influential Muslim cleric --- is jihad by stealth: the infiltration of sharia principles (Islamic law) in Western law, culture, and institutions. It is the means by which Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe,” exclaims Qaradawi --- who has issued fatwas approving Hamas’s preferred tactic, suicide bombing, as well as the killing of U.S. soldiers and support personnel in Iraq.
When Rauf decided to distribute his book in the United States, he knew the offensive title would be a problem, so he changed it to What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America (as Warraq observes, it’s now called What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West). Further ignored by Payne are Rauf’s partners in the American distribution of the book. They are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Both have deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Palestinian branch is#...#Hamas.
Fundamental to the mission of both these Rauf partners is the promotion of Hamas in the United States. Indeed, in the Justice Department’s successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) for underwriting Hamas to the tune of millions of dollars, ISNA was proved to have housed HLF in its offices and to have used its bank account to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hamas leaders overseas. Interconnected to ISNA and the Brotherhood through its board members, IIIT is not only a longtime Hamas apologist but a key supporter of Sami al-Arian, the convicted terrorist who helped run the American branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another formally designated terrorist organization.
#page#Payne discusses none of this. And what he does discuss is almost as egregious as what he leaves out. He asserts that Rauf is just “[l]ike most American Muslims who have fled the horrors of Mideastern religious intolerance for America’s shores” In point of fact, Rauf was born in Kuwait, the son of Muhammad Abdul Rauf, an Islamist contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. The elder Rauf had fled Egypt in 1948 --- at the very time many Brotherhood operatives were fleeing a brutal crackdown by the Nasser regime (after the Brotherhood had tried to assassinate Nasser). Far from fleeing intolerance, young Feisal Rauf was educated in the U.K. and the U.S. His father, in the interim, established a huge Islamic cultural center cum mosque on Manhattan’s upper East Side which, Salah Choudhury writes, sports a housing complex restricted since 1984 to Muslim residents only.
#ad#Payne also misleadingly faults Palin for saying it would be “intolerable” to permit Rauf’s GZM dream to be built on “such hallowed ground” as the site of the felled Twin Towers. Rauf, Payne writes, “has had a mosque on this ‘hallowed ground’” for 27 years. But as Payne well knows, the lower Manhattan mosque Rauf has long operated is not the “hallowed ground” Palin was talking about. It is several blocks north of the World Trade Center complex. By contrast, the former Burlington Coat Factory proposed for the GZM was actually struck by the wreckage of a hijacked plane on 9/11 and lies within the perimeter where remains of those killed are still being recovered.
Payne absurdly adds that “Rauf is passionate about our liberties, our Founding Fathers, and heroes of freedom like Ronald Reagan.” Actually, Rauf’s life’s work is a Sharia Index project that aims to pressure countries into compliance with Muslim law. Sharia, it may interest you to know, rejects core American liberties --- to take just a few examples, the right of free people to make law for themselves irrespective of any religious code; freedom of conscience (apostasy from Islam is a capital offense); equal protection of the law (sharia favors men over women and Muslims over non-Muslims); privacy (sharia makes homosexuality a capital offense, and severely punishes other social behavior regarded as none of the state’s business in the West); and freedom of speech (sharia forbids any criticism of Islam and its prophet).
Rauf is nothing if not clever. Realizing bad PR from his refusal to acknowledge Hamas’s terrorism was compromising his sharia mission, he is now conceding it. But observe how easily Payne is taken in by the imam. Payne writes that Rauf’s website states: “Hamas is both a political movement and a terrorist organization. When Hamas commits atrocious acts of terror, those actions should be condemned. Imam Feisal has forcefully and consistently condemned all forms of terrorism, including those committed by Hamas, as un-Islamic.”
As we have seen, Imam Feisal has not consistently condemned terrorism or Hamas --- he has often rationalized terrorism as the fault of its victims and he has squirmed to avoid attaching the label “terror” to Hamas. But apart from that, note that when Rauf says Hamas is “both a political movement and a terrorist organization,” he is careful to say (at long last) that only its “acts of terror” should be condemned. Here’s the thing: Insofar as Hamas is a “political movement” (and let’s indulge for argument’s sake the claim that its aims and its methods are severable), the brazenly stated goals of this “movement” are the destruction of Israel and the furtherance of the global Muslim Brotherhood campaign to Islamicize societies. Rauf --- the “moderate” --- has no problem with this “political” campaign; he just wishes (or at least now says he wishes) that Hamas would stop blowing people up to achieve it.
No need to worry, though. Payne assures us of Rauf’s claim to be “a supporter of Israel.” Again he is taken in by the seductive words he wants to hear, but the rest of us need not be as resolutely uncurious. As I’ve previously recounted on the Corner, in the same appearance at which he claimed the United States has more innocent blood on its hands than al-Qaeda, Rauf announced that he favors a “one-state solution” for this Israel that he so supports. It so happens that this is the same solution favored by the Muslim Brotherhood, and is not materially different from Hamas’s endgame. In the one-state solution, Muslims achieve the elimination of Israel’s character as a Jewish state by democratic means. That is, fortified by Israel’s already swelling Arab population and the “right of return” for millions of Palestinians that Muslims demand as the price of a peace settlement, Muslims would vote to end Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Israel becomes “Palestine” and the Israeli Jews living there become like any other Jewish minority living in a Muslim country. As the Jews fleeing Iraq will tell you, good luck with that.
To anyone not as foolishly determined as Payne to cast Rauf as a “tea partier,” this also adds necessary context to Rauf’s sudden infatuation with democracy. In his father’s native Egypt, real popular elections would likely vault the Muslim Brotherhood into power --- just as it has served to empower Hamas in the Palestinian territories, to make Hezbollah (and its backers in Iran and Syria) the power center of Lebanon, and to put Shiite Islamists in charge in Iraq.
In 1977, before he had useful idiots around to carry his water, Feisal Rauf wrote a letter to the New York Times urging Muslims to give the new peace treaty between Israel and Egypt a chance. “Learn from the example of the Prophet Mohammed, your greatest historical personality,” he counseled, adding: “After a state of war with the Meccan unbelievers that lasted for many years, he acceded, in the Treaty of Hudaybiyah, to demands that his closest companions considered utterly humiliating. Yet peace turned out to be a most effective weapon against the unbelievers.”
It was effective, alas, because by camouflaging himself as a man of peace, Muhammad was able to portray his detractors as extremists and enemies of peace. That bought him the time he needed to rearm and prepare his followers for battle. When they were ready, they broke the treaty and returned to conquer the unbelievers, the start of decisive campaigns in which Islam was spread by intimidation and the sword.
Imam Rauf is not hard to figure out. You just have to listen to what he says rather than pretend that he didn’t say it. National Review is the last place where Henry Payne should have gotten away with pretending he didn’t say it --- and with accusing someone who refuses to pretend of libel.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
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