MPAC’s political agenda with the Aurora, Colorado Tragedy

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In the wake of the tragic shootings in Aurora, CO, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) wasted no time in trying to capitalize on the tragedy for their own political agenda.  The organization issued an email newsletter entitled “Now is the Time to End America’s Culture of Violence,” which sickeningly used the image of an obviously distraught family from the Aurora shooting.

MPAC displayed its blatant anti-Americanism while trying to draw moral equivalency between the Colorado shooter and the actions of Islamist terrorists, such as Nidal Hasan.

The newsletter attempted to once again depict Muslims as the victims of American society when it proclaimed “While Holmes should be labeled, without a doubt, as a murderer, we should be smart enough to realize that he is a terrorist. His premeditated actions that night showed his intent was to instill terror and fear into the audience to make a statement. After last week, American Muslims began to wonder why the media did not label Holmes as such.”

MPAC’s callous treatment of the Aurora community at a bare minimum misses the fact that Holmes actions and motivations have not been released and supposition on his objectives is just that – supposition.  Second the contortionism they had to accomplish to make such accusations is simply astounding.  MPAC is an organization that continually denies any ideological link between Islamism (political Islam) and terrorists like Nidal Hasan and Anwar Al Awlaki. Despite the overwhelming evidence of that linkage, MPAC eschews every opportunity to label and therefore treat the cause of terrorism in Islamic communities.

Terrorism is clearly not only the domain of Islamists. However, Islamist terrorism is the greatest threat we face today and its clear identification is a means to treat and nullify its existence.  MPAC’s statement that “to keep the citizens of our nation safe we must ensure that all threats, no matter where they emanate, are assessed in a similar manner and that we do not focus our attention solely on one specific group of our citizens,” is an attempt to minimize the ideological root of Islamist terrorism by treating any act of violence as an act of terrorism. In doing so, MPAC anesthetizes American Muslims to their central role in countering the ideologies that fuel terrorists.

The actions of James Holmes were horrific.  We may eventually find some motivation that equates his rampage to an agenda that would raise his attack to the level of domestic terrorism or it may ultimately be related to deep seeded psychiatric illness.  For MPAC to make these comments only a week after the shooting with no evidence of Holmes’ motivation is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the issue of terrorism.

MPAC’s piece is punctuated with a quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in which they claim he called America, as a nation, the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” In fact, though many of us may disagree strongly with Dr. King, he was simply being critical of the US government, not the United States itself. MPAC modified even this quote to serve their purposes: to express disdain at the United States, even at a time of great tragedy.

For a Muslim organization whose members benefit from the safety and freedom offered by the United States to suggest that the United States is the most violent force in the world is an insult to not just our nation, but it is also an affront to those living under regimes who are currently slaughtering their citizens by the tens of thousands. American Muslims who love this great country and either actively or passively allow themselves to be represented by such vitriol against America should reconsider.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is meant to be spent remembering and serving the less fortunate, while being grateful for our blessings – not playing victim. Muslims are freer to practice our faith here than anywhere else in the world. The victims of the Aurora massacre and their families deserve our prayers and solidarity as fellow Americans. They do not deserve to be used as pawns in MPAC’s political agenda.

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser is the author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam (Simon & Schuster, 2012) and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona.

The trouble with “Jumah at the DNC”

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It is troubling that the Democratic National Convention has decided to promote and lend its name and national political platform to the organizers of the “Jummah at the DNC”. The leaders of this event – Jibril Hough and Imam Siraj Wahhaj as advertised are no moderates. They are radicals. These individuals embrace Islamist supremacy and have demonstrated support for radical ideologies.

A quick Google search by the DNC would have shown them that Hough and Wahhaj are leaders in the separatist American Islamist movement. While they may be able to get a few thousand Muslims to attend the event, they are NOT going to be mainstream Muslims.  Most will likely come from Hough and Wahhaj’s radical networks that have long been entrenched in the Charlotte area. Make no mistake they are part of the Islamist movement.

This is not about their right of assembly; this group under a different name pulled the same stunt at the US capitol in 2009 claiming 20k and getting 2-3k. THIS IS ABOUT the DNC calling this an “official function” listing these radicals as typical of the DNC community and more importantly about this organization speaking out AS representing supposedly typical American Muslims (or “Mainstream”).

If that is who the DNC is consorting with then all Americans, Democrats should be concerned. There are many patriotic Muslims who are part of both parties, and when radical ideologues like this do a demonstration of “solidarity” in the name of our faith and choose an imam like Siraj Wahhaj who I saw with my own eyes in 1995 seditiously say it his duty and our duty as Muslims to replace the US Constitution with the Quran- then we need to speak up!

Their jummah (group) prayer is supposedly against the Patriot Act, the NYPD, and Islamophobia and is actually NOT about our democracy but about empowering their Islamist and MB sympathetic groups into the very fabric of the political system so that Americans become anesthetized. We need American Muslims to speak up and marginalize these radicals. The DNC needs to understand and reject them because of their radical history and ideas.

They use our American Muslim identity to speak as “one community” as a political unit or as a “bloc vote” – a political Islamist party when in fact most us Muslims don’t want that political unity and seek reform against their ideology that seeks to hijack our community. They do not represent us.

For more on Jibril Hough please review AIFD’s piece “Connecting the Dots of Islamism-Jibril Hough, the Islamic Political Party of America (IPPA), and the Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM)” or listen to Dr. Zuhdi Jasser’s March 8, 2010 interview on the Keith Larson show on WBT Charlotte.  Jibril Hough phones in half way through.