The Star Tribune reports:

A national Muslim civil rights group is asking the head of Homeland Security to investigate the use of stereotypes after a man who appeared to be of Middle East descent was used in a recent security drill at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday renewed a request that Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano review “the use of outside trainers who offer hostile, stereotypical and grossly inaccurate information about Muslims and Islam.”

The organization has previously asked the Obama administration, the Department of Defense and Congress to provide oversight for apparent “widespread anti-Muslim bias in the training of law enforcement and security and military personnel nationwide.”

According to information released Monday by MSP airport police, the May 12 security test included a device in a shaving kit made to look like a bomb. It was a cylinder with wires connected to a wrist watch. The device was brought to a passenger security checkpoint, according to airport Police Sgt. Mark Ledbetter, one of the responding officers.

“Upon arriving [at the checkpoint],” Ledbetter wrote in his report, “TSA [Transportation Security Administration] screeners were out with a male who appeared to be Middle Eastern in descent or Indian/Pakistani.”

Yes, in the interest of social justice and pandering to Islamophobia-phobia, there must be a higher proportion of homeland security drill actors who look like Brooklyn Decker and fewer who look like Mohamed O. Muhamud and his ilk.

Flashback:

The “broad strata” of 9/11 jihadists.
Photoshop: David Lunde

Flashback: This is what CAIR wants…

The caption at Flickr (hat tip – reader KH):

From the photograher, Dean Shaddock:

This was captured as I collected my things from airport security (Detroit Metro Concourse A). I think of it as something like a Rorschach test. Is an elderly Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim security agent the celebration of blind justice? Or is it simply an admission of absurdity?

Must-read in the NYPost today:

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the “9/11 trial” in New York and proceedings against other detainees.

Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the “mole infestation” at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003.

The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.

Six years later comes a new problem with Muslim personnel who have virtually unfettered access to detainees and intelligence at Gitmo. Professional military security and intelligence officials at Gitmo did the preliminary probe, then prepared a classified summary and are now briefing top officials and members of Congress in Washington. An active FBI criminal probe is also under way.

The possible new spy ring involves several Arabic linguists, some also Egyptian and Syrian immigrants. They’re suspected of, among other things:

* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.

* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.

* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.

* Meeting with suspects on the terror watchlist while back in the United States.

Officials say some of the suspected “dirty” linguists — who met privately in a locked mosque at Gitmo — have had access to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other high-value al Qaeda detainees.

“Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian-contractor and military-linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo,” states a copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, prepared in May for the FBI, CIA and Congress’ intelligence committees.

CAIR, you won’t be surprised to learn, sued “Muslim Mafia” co-author David Gaubatz and demanded that documents obtained by his son (who worked undercover at CAIR) be returned. Late last week, a judge ordered the documents returned — but the FBI intervened and now wants the docs:

FBI agents swooped in last night on attorneys representing the co-author of the top-selling controversial book, Muslim Mafia, as they prepared to comply with a federal court order to return documents obtained from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in an independent undercover operation.

FBI agents, who served a warrant at a Washington, D.C., law office, want to see the thousands of pages of documents and audio and video recordings that P. David Gaubatz, and his son, Chris Gaubatz, gathered in a daring undercover penetration of CAIR where Chris Gaubatz posed as an unpaid intern. The material appears in Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America, which the elder Gaubatz co-authored with investigative journalist Paul Sperry.

“Obviously, we were prepared to honor the court order,” said Joseph Farah, chief executive officer of WND and its subsidiary, WND Books, who has been raising money for the defense. “Now we will have to confer with the attorneys to determine what happens next. Which takes precedence – a federal court order or an FBI warrant? … Personally, I would like to see these papers in the hands of trained FBI investigators. The revelations raised about CAIR in Muslim Mafia have clearly piqued the agency’s interest.”

…CAIR–whose litigious history includes suing American citizens for reporting suspicious activity on a commercial flight–claimed the material recovered in the investigation was obtained without consent or stolen by Chris Gaubatz. As an unpaid intern, Chris was frequently tasked with shredder duty. Realizing the sensitive nature of the information, he salvaged it instead.

Garbus said Americans have an interest in seeing the CAIR documents, because they are relevant to federal law enforcement officials’ concerns about the group’s ties to terrorist operatives that threaten the nation’s security.

“The more information you have, the better able you are to form a judgment about the organization,” he said.

This isn’t the first time the FBI has turned a close eye on CAIR. It cut off ties to the organization, which lauds itself as a Muslim civil-rights group, in January after CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, the largest terrorism-finance case in U.S. history.

Related: Frank Gaffney has much more on CAIR at BigGovernment.com. See the IRS and CAIR for the latest.

A plane was stopped from taking off from Los Angeles International Airport, and two men on board were taken into custody, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

LAPD Lt. John Romero said the men, who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, were acting suspiciously.

A law enforcement source said at least one of the men ran into a restroom on the plane and appeared to hide while the New York-bound jet was taxiing on the runway, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

The flight crew confronted the two men and made the decision to stop the plane before it took off, the source said. The men were taken into custody by heavily armed law enforcement officials.

The plane has been taken to a remote area of the airport to be searched by a bomb squad, sources said.

As I mentioned last week, the flying imams’ lawsuit against airport/homeland security officials was cleared for take-off earlier this summer.

Fasten your seatbelts for another.

***

Update: Officials say there was no threat on the LAX flight.

Via Philip Klein at the American Spectator:

Sen. Arlen Specter backed out of speaking at a Tuesday conference on the global effort to silence speech critical of Islam, citing a scheduling conflict, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations has taken credit for his decision.

In February Specter introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate aimed at protecting American authors who have been sued under plaintiff-friendly libel laws overseas. He was scheduled to speak about the trend, known as “libel tourism,” at a Washington conference being sponsored by the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum, the Federalist Society Center for National Security Law, and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

CAIR branded it an “anti-Islam” conference and launched a petition drive last Friday protesting Specter’s appearance, and on Monday the pressure group took credit for getting him to cancel.

Tolerance of dissent is not a CAIR value.

Fortitude is not a Specter value.

They deserve each other.

A jury on Monday determined that the Holy Land Foundation and five men who worked with the Muslim charity were guilty of three dozen counts related to the illegal funneling of at least $12 million to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

The unanimous verdicts are a complete victory for the government, which streamlined its case and worked hard to carefully educate jurors on the complex, massive evidence presented in the trial.

The prosecution victory is also a major one for the lame duck administration of President George Bush, whose efforts at fighting terrorism financing in court have been troubled, even though the flow of funds seems to be effectively shut down.

It was the second trial where the government attempted to convict the men and the now defunct Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation itself. It took the jury eight days of deliberations to reach its decisions — less than half the time it took jurors to deadlock end up with an almost complete mistrial last year on the first go-around.

“My dad is not a criminal!” sobbed one courtroom observer after the verdicts were read. “He’s a human!”

Before he read the verdict, the judge had ordered all observers to remain civil and respect the proceedings.

By 3 p.m. Monday, jurors had been sent back to the jury room to determine if Holy Land assets should be forfeited to the government because of several convictions on money laundering charges related to the case.

***

Previous:

Holy Land Foundation trial: Mixed verdicts, confusion; Update: Mistrial declared

Homeland Security Implications of the Holy Land Foundation Trial

Connect the dots: CAIR and the jihad network

The terror-tipping NYTimes

The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK) announced today that it has filed an EEOC complaint on behalf of a Muslim woman who was allegedly denied employment at an Abercrombie Kids store in that state because of the applicant’s religiously-mandated headscarf, or hijab.

The woman told CAIR-OK that a district manager claimed he could not hire her because her Islamic headscarf “does not fit the Abercrombie image.”

What, wasn’t the OKC Hooters hiring? This plaintiff is fighting to preserve her modesty while going to work for a company that’s injected more soft porn into our cultural bloodstream than Cinemax?

Next up: the Bada Bing Strip Club gets sued for refusing to let their dancers shimmy inside a burqa.

Of course the plaintiff was going to work for Abercrombie Kids, which is a pretty creepy bit of branding synergy right there. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. But I can see the niche it fills–parents worried that modern society is too sheltering. Some dad’s out there going, “my kids are going to preserve their innocence too long…is there a store where I can get them a head start on that lucrative streetwalker career?”

I remember when Abercrombie and Fitch was basically like Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops for the Weatherby and Orvis set. I still have a faded T-Shirt of theirs, with the rhino logo, from the late 1980s. It’s a great loss.

On the other hand, as with Jamal Miftah, this is radical Islam asserting itself yet again in the heartland. This isn’t Manchester or Khartoum or Basra. Based on the A&F store locator, this is apparently either Penn Square Mall, or Quail Springs, or Woodland Hills malls in Oklahoma.

Which shouldn’t be surprising–after all, terrorism expert Steven Emerson first encountered radical Islam at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds on Christmas day, 1992.

So whom do I root against? The worst reactionary impulses of the seventh century, or the engines of postmodern degradation? A pox on both their houses.

UPDATE: It’s Tulsa, again. Thanks to reader MikeOK.

______________

{Post by See-Dubya. H/T to Cuffy at Perfunction–but a CONTENT WARNING on his post. He’s included some catalog samples of what “the Abercrombie image” is all about, which aren’t safe for work.}

Fatuma Hassan has just enough rice in her near-empty cupboards to make it through the month. The anger she felt when she lost her job in May has given way to a dull, nagging hunger.

Yet this soft-spoken 22-year-old became an unlikely hero within the Somali community when she and five of her Muslim co-workers were dismissed last month from the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton, Minn., for refusing to wear a new company uniform — a shirt and pants — they consider a violation of their Islamic beliefs.

“For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked,” Hassan said, noting the prophet Mohammed taught that men and women should not dress alike. “My culture, my religious beliefs, are more important than a uniform.”

There’s actually quite a litigious Somali subculture in Minnesota, as we’ve observed with the Minneapolis airport taxi-driver disputes. And then there was that TIZA thing last month. True to form, CAIR has picked this up, and will sue Mission foods on their behalf.

So Mission can either continue to ban unsafe, loose-fitting, but culturally sensitive clothing and be sued and slandered by CAIR, or they can give in and take a hit from a personal-injury lawyer when a burqa-clad employee gets tangled up in an industrial tortilla press. Tough decision.

The article goes on to discuss issues of immigration and assimilation, and the pressure Somalis feel to avoid the latter. Don’t become Americanized, they are told at home.

It looks like the indoctrination’s working, and with CAIR’s help they’re trying to Somalize Minnesota instead.

Meanwhile you’ll be relieved to know that California’s governmental code specifically memorializes workers’ rights to wear pants to work, regardless of their sex.

_______________

{Post by See-Dubya. Pants by J. Press.}

Former University of South Florida student Ahmed Mohamed has agreed to plead guilty to providing material support to terrorists, according to a signed 12-page plea agreement entered onto the docket in U.S. District Court.

Mohamed, an Egyptian citizen, was arrested, along with another student, Youssef Megahed, in North Carolina in August after deputies said they found explosive materials in their trunk.

Authorities charged Mohamed with trying to help terrorists in connection with a video they said he made and posted to the Web site YouTube. On the video, authorities said, he showed how to use a remote-controlled toy to detonate a bomb.

Under the terms of the plea deal, prosecutors have agreed to dismiss other charges, including counts in an indictment alleging he illegally transported explosives. The maximum penalty for the charge to which Mohamed will plead guilty is 15 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.

TBO.com has the PDF of the plea agreement. Excerpt:

All the background on the Goose Creek Two here.

The principal who allowed it has been reassigned. Via the Houston Chronicle blog:

Our neighborhood reporter, Thayer Evans, received this terse announcement from Friendswood ISD late Wednesday:

Robin Lowe, Friendswood Junior High Principal, has accepted another administrative position effective immediately.
The process for a new junior high principal has begun.

…Details have been trickling out. In a letter apologizing to parents and community members on Saturday, Superintendent Trish Hanks said the presentation was in “response to an incident that occurred between students at Friendswood Junior High School and the perception and fear that it caused to some involved.” She also said CAIR considered it a “hate crime.”

Take it with a grain of salt.

CAIR hopes to give their presentation at other public schools.

You’ve been forewarned.

More here.

Yoo-hoo, ACLU?

Now, the usual suspects seem engaged in the usual tactics to distract from the controversy over the Minneapolis tax-funded Muslim school exposed by Star-Tribune columnist extraordinaire Katherine Kersten. Just as the state has launched an investigation of the school, here comes CAIR:

The Minnesota chapter of a national Islamic civil liberties group has asked the FBI and local law enforcement officers to investigate reported threats against a Twin Cities charter school as possible hate crimes, while a Jewish organization deplored the threats.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) made the request Monday after the director of Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights told police that he and the school had received threatening and harassing phone messages and e-mails.

The group is concerned about the safety of the school’s students, many of whom are Muslim, said CAIR chapter coordinator Chris Schumacher. Tagging the threats as possible hate crimes also makes it clear that prejudice could have prompted them, and “we wanted to bring that to light in case that wasn’t already obvious to people,” he said.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas also condemned the alleged threats in a statement released Monday.

As of Monday, the charter school had not filed a complaint with the Minneapolis FBI office, but agents will reach out to the school and get more details about the messages, said Special Agent Paul McCabe.

If the alleged threats are real, they deserve to be investigated and prosecuted.

But investigators should bring a sizable grain of salt–and check their dhimmi tendencies at the door.

***

Scott Johnson at Power Line helpfully reminds law enforcement of CAIR’s cry wolf tactics, rooted in jihad strategy:

It holds itself out as a civil rights organization representing Muslims in the United States, but it is in fact a front group serving the interests of Hamas and its friends among the offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Thus CAIR found itself named an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation, another Hamas front group. Among its primary goals are the thwarting of law enforcement activities to protect the United States from Islamist terrorism and the stigmatization of its critics as bigots. This is CAIR’s playbook.

When I lived in Seattle, he was well-known as “Baghdad Jim McDermott” and the name has stuck over the years.

With good reason. Back in 2002, Stephen Hayes reported on how Baghdad Democrats David Bonior, Jim McDermott, and Mike Thompson took a trip to Iraq in the run up to the invasion and followed up with a report on how Saddam’s cash paid for the junkets.

Now, the AP has a new report on the payments:

Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion.

An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam’s regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary.

In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil.

The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California. There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam.

“There was no indication the three lawmakers knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam?”

Uh-huh.

***

Debbie Schlussel has the lowdown on the al-Hanooti case:

For at least six years, I’ve been asking why the Justice Department–specifically the Islamo-pandering parade of U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern District of Michigan–were breaking pita with officials of LIFE for Relief and Development, including Muthanna Al-Hanooti.

Today, Al-Hanooti, a former chief of CAIR-Michigan was indicted for acting as a spy for Saddam Hussein in America. (And–shocker–he has a second wife and family in Iraq.) To me and anyone who followed the story and read a newspaper, that isn’t news. In fact, the indictment is far too little, far too late. The indictment says that a trip taken by three Congressmen–liberal Democrats Jim McDermott, David Bonior, and Jim Thompson–to Iraq in 2002, was funded by Saddam Hussein, using a third party to arrange the financing, and Al-Hanooti to put the trip together. Again, not news, since I wrote about it repeatedly on this site and also in The New York Post as far back as 2003.

Steve Emerson weighs in on the ABC News staged Muslim bigotry stunt that I spotlighted yesterday:

The ABC story was linked to a Primetime broadcast in which an actor posed as a bakery shop worker who berated a Muslim customer wearing a hijab with intense bigotry. The stunt was a test to see how other customers would react. A majority did nothing. But it is worth noting that of those who did react, 13 spoke in defense of the young woman, with some even walking out of the store in disgust, while six praised the bigoted baker.

The issue is not the sociological experiment, but the network’s sanitizing and parroting of a radical Islamist organization’s misleading statements. In the past year, the U.S. Justice Department tabbed CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case; described it as “affiliated with Hamas’ in a related filing; and, in December asserted “CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.”

Only ABC can explain why it ignored these facts in buying into propaganda from a Hamas front group.

As for network’s line about the Muslim organizations signing a letter against terrorism and sending it to President Bush, some of these groups, CAIR especially, have a long history of issuing abstract “anti-terrorism” statements that are laughable on their face, making no efforts to condemn any terrorist groups by name, let alone withdrawing their past and frequent apologia for designated terrorist groups such as Hizballah and Hamas.

Send your feedback to ABC News Primetime here. Be sure to give them your suggestions for alternative MSM sting ideas.

In April 2006, I reported on an attempt by NBC News’s Dateline to stage an Islamophobia sting on NASCAR fans.

In November 2007, I called attention to an attempt by ABC News’s Primetime Live to stage a homophobia sting in Birmingham, Alabama.

Now, Primetime Live is replicating the Islamophobia stunt thing in Texas (hat tip – LGF):

The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. “Islamophobia” has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common.

But what if you witnessed “Islamophobia” in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else’s prejudices? What would you do?

ABC’s production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf, or hijab. The other acted as a sales clerk who refused to serve her and spouted common anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs.

The polarity of reactions was shocking, from support to seething disapproval. Never did we expect customers to be so passionate or candid.

Like I’ve said before:

Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.

Time for another round of news sting ideas for the MSM.

Here’s a refresher for you of reader sting ideas from the last time the dinosaur broadcast outlets pulled this crap:

I wonder if they would consider sending a professor wearing an “I Love W” button and an American flag pin into the faculty lounge at Harvard or some other liberal ivory tower with a hidden camera. I would love to see that experiment. I can’t imagine anyone at NBC doing that one. Maybe John Stossel at ABC, though?

…Perhaps when I get back from deployment, you can follow me around Seattle and see how I get treated wearing my Navy uniform…

…Why don’t you set up some white guy with hidden cameras, put a George Bush T-Shirt on him and have him walk down a street in Pakistan. Or, better yet, have him walk down a street in Detroit. I’ll just bet you could get a lot of bigoted reactions…

…* Wear a pro-life t-shirt to a Women’s Studies class.
* Wear a Halliburton company polo shirt to the Kos Kidz annual blogmeet.
* PUBLISH CARTOONS WITH MOHAMMED IN THEM…

Charles Johnson notes that CAIR’s fingerprints are all over the ABC sting. Hey, ABC News stage managers: How about sending someone undercover at a CAIR office for a month and seeing what bigotry and fraud you turn up?

Oh, and here’s a helpful reminder from IBD: