State Department Continues Islamist Outreach: New booklet, "Being Muslim in America," taps the wrong messengers :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism

State Department Continues Islamist Outreach: New booklet, "Being Muslim in America," taps the wrong messengers :: The Investigative Project on Terrorism: "With the United States battling Islamist extremists, making America's case to Muslims around the world has never been more of a priority for policymakers. Unfortunately, the State Department continues to take a counterproductive approach: serving as a veritable infomerclal promoting Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) while giving the back of the hand to the very anti-jihadist Muslims that Washington should be cultivating. The latest example is a State Department booklet issued in March titled 'Being Muslim in America.'

It is part of an outreach effort that began under President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and is moving forward under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton."

The goal behind publication of the 64-page booklet is laudable: to arm consular officers and diplomats with information they can take to Muslims around the world to rebut slanders about U.S. "persecution" of Muslims. The booklet deluges readers with color pictures, statistical tables and individual profiles in an effort to show the world that American Muslims are a success story, noting that they have become entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers,
doctors, soldiers, firefighters, politicians, fashion designers, and pianists.

And as we'll show in more detail below, many slanders against the United States come from the same groups that are portrayed favorably in the State Department booklet.



Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix, Arizona doctor who heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, likened the booklet's depiction of Muslim life in the United States to Cold War-era propaganda falsely portraying Communist dictatorships as "worker's paradises" in which everyone was working toward a common goal and factionalism didn't exist. American Muslims are divided between Islamists seeking to establish a caliphate and non-Islamists who want to live under the American Constitution on equal terms with non-Muslims, Jasser said. And similar divisions exist in the Middle East between non-Islamists and Islamists.



No less disturbing is the fact that time and again, "Being Muslim in America" confers undeserved legitimacy on radical Islamist groups and individuals, while whitewashing radical groups. For example, Muslims pictured under a CAIR banner are described as marching "to support volunteerism." On the same page, Salam Al-Marayati of MPAC is cited as an authority on "the American Muslim identity." NYPD Muslim Chaplain Khalid Latif, who helped quash a debate on a college campus over the controversial Danish Muhammad cartoons, is also the subject of a glowing profile. Ingrid Mattson's election as ISNA president in 2006 is included as part of a "Timeline of Key Events" in American Muslim history.

This is more than just a waste of resources, it is dangerous. If we are to combat the issues of terrorism we need to take a truthful, clear and unambiguous approach to it.
Apparently that is not something that the Administration is willing to do.
What this does is sends the wrong message that will have to be corrected again and again and again until they either get it right or we are overrun with terrorists and those who hate America.