And in a January 1997 letter to a Muslim Web site, Seif Ashmawy, an Egyptian Muslim and peace activist who published the "Voice of Peace" newsletter about Muslim affairs, slammed both CAIR and the AMC for defending Islamic extremism. "It is a known fact that both the AMC and CAIR have defended, apologized for, and rationalized the actions of extremists groups," Ashmawy, who died in a 1998 car accident, wrote. "The real challenge for moderates like myself is to prevent my Muslim brethren from [being] deceived by extremist groups that pretend to represent their interests." The groups' defenders argue that groups like CAIR and the AMC are naturally and rightly critical of the Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza. And they make no apologies for vigorously defending the civil rights and civil liberties of Arab-Americans and Muslims, which sometimes leads them to butt heads with U.S. law enforcement. CAIR's Hooper says Kabbani represents just a small group of Muslims. Law enforcement officials who make charges such as Pomerantz's are "anti-Muslim bigots."
But the views of the more radical American Muslims will continue to face increased scrutiny, and in some cases, condemnation from the American public. Until early last week, for instance, the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, Fla., posted on its Web site an openly anti-Semitic essay that referred to Jews as being "known for their treachery and corruption" and quoted from a Muslim text that read, "O Muslim! There is Jew behind me, kill him!"
Dan McBride, spokesman for the Boca Raton mosque, said the essay, titled, "Why can't the Jews and Muslims live together in peace?" generated three e-mail complaints, so they took it down.
"As fellow Americans, we're all a little sensitive right now and we don't want to increase any tensions," McBride said. "So we're trying to be a little politically correct right now."
Which is not to say McBride disagrees with anything in the essay. In fact, he defends it word for word, including passages that Art Teitelbaum, the southern area director of the Anti Defamation League, calls "filled with poisonous anti-Semitic bigotry." McBride defends the assertion, for instance, that Jews are "usurpers and aggressors, who have oppressed and persecuted others, and who are known for their treachery and corruption throughout the world, historically and in the present age." And that Jews have "carried out chemical and radiational [sic] experiments on their prisoners, and taken organs from them for transplant into Jewish patients." McBride says "that's all documented," though he could not provide any documentation.
"This is the kind of ranting and ravings that you get out of -- I would like to say fanatics, but it's not just fanatics, it's people who are ignorant," says Johns Hopkins' Nafisi, who was raised Muslim in Iran. "It's one interpretation of Islam, an interpretation that has been encouraged by many Muslim leaders around the world. But it's not the Islam I was raised on."
Ultimately, as the American public requires more knowledge of Islam, the challenge will be in finding leaders who can explain the faith, while being free of their own ties to the religion's fundamentalist sects. But for any American Muslim leader, in trying to appeal to a wide variety of people, there may easily be examples of, or acceptance of, Islamic extremism in their past.
During the national day of prayer and remembrance Sept. 14 at the National Cathedral, attended by Bush and other U.S. dignitaries, Muzammil Siddiqi, imam for the Islamic Society of North America, read from the Quran, saying that "Those that lay the plots of evil, for them is a terrible penalty; and the plotting of such will be not abide."
But, as columnist Charles Krauthammer wondered in the Washington Post, one has to ask "who are the layers of plots of evil" to whom Siddiqi refers? "Those who perpetrated the World Trade Center attack? Or America, as thousands of Muslims in the street claim? The imam might have made that clear. He did not." It was not the first time Siddiqi was disturbingly noncommittal. In 1989, after the fatwa death sentence issued against author Salman Rushdie for his book "The Satanic Verses," Siddiqi's view on whether Rushdie should be killed was difficult to assess. "Asked whether he personally thinks capital punishment would be appropriate in Rushdie's case," wrote the Los Angeles Times, "Siddiqi was non-committal, saying that would have to be determined in the due process of Islamic law."
This story has been corrected.
About the writer
Jake Tapper is Salon's Washington correspondent and the author of "Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency."
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