While national security deputy John Brennan’s comments downplaying the seriousness of Gitmo jihadi recidivism earned most of the headlines this weekend, his exchange at the same event at an NYU Islamic students’ event with an infamous Muslim grievance-monger is crying out for greater exposure. It’s the subject of today’s syndicated column. Take your blood pressure medicine before reading and remember as I’ve written often on this blog:

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism.

Which makes John Brennan its wet nurse.

Related: Calls for Brennan’s head mount.

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The other stupid things John Brennan said
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

It’s bad enough that John Brennan, President Obama’s national security deputy, thinks Gitmo jihadi recidivism is “not that bad.” But in his talk last week with Islamic law students at New York University, Brennan made even more reckless comments about our counterterrorism programs while pandering to one of the worst Muslim grievance-mongers and sharia peddlers in America.

During the question-and-answer session, Brennan welcomed a question from Omar Shahin. He identified himself as the head of the “North American Imams Federation.” What he didn’t mention was his role as the chief ringleader of the infamous flying imams. You remember them: They were the six Muslim clerics whose suspicious behavior – provocatively shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before boarding the plane, fanning out in the cabin before take-off, refusing to sit in their assigned seats, requesting seat-belt extenders, which they placed on the floor – led to their removal by a U.S. Airways crew in 2006.

In coordination with the unindicted terror co-conspirators of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Shahin and his radical delegation attempted to shake down the airline with a discrimination lawsuit and bully the citizen “John Does” who flagged the imams’ security-undermining behavior. CAIR’s then-mouthpiece Ibrahim Hooper blasted “anti-Muslim hysteria” by those who saw something and said something about the imams’ in-flight shenanigans. Shahin ranted in a teleconference strategy session in 2007 that indeed, he and his cohorts were spoiling for the incident and planning to engineer “many, many cases” to sabotage airline security efforts.

As head of the Tucson Islamic Center in Arizona (home to past jihadi dry-run plotters), Shahin preached that his followers must put Islamic sharia law above Western laws. He told the Arizona Republic that he doubted Muslims were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, concluding: “All of these, they make it up.” Brennan didn’t appear to know who Shahin was. Somebody around him should have briefed him: Shahin’s involvement in Hamas-linked charities and radical Wahhabi “youth groups” has earned the Jordanian-born naturalized citizen increased FBI scrutiny over the years.

Instead, Brennan treated him as just another innocent Muslim with “reasonable” concerns about the government. “We came to this country to enjoy freedom,” Shahin began with faux, flag-waving emotion. “We feel that since September 11, we aren’t enjoying these values anymore…Also, we feel that there’s a big lack of trust between Muslims’ community and our government…My question: Is there anything being done by our government to rebuild this trust?”

Instead of countering the narrative, exposing Shahin’s true intentions, and vigorously defending America’s homeland security apparatus, Brennan dutifully genuflected to the gods of political correctness. President Obama, he told the militant 9/11 inside-jobber and jihad white-washer, is “determined to put America on a strong course.”

No, not a “strong course” that includes national security profiling of Islamic radicals pretending they care about our country’s best interests. By “strong course,” Brennan assured Shahin, he meant a course towards assuaging the civil rights groups who have objected to every security program at airports, borders, train stations, and visa offices for the past nine years.

Brennan told Shahin that the post-9/11 response of the Bush administration was a “reaction some people might say was over the top in some areas” (insert indignant grievance-monger nodding and mmm-hmm-ing here) and that “in an overabundance of caution [we] implemented a number of security measures and activities that upon reflection now we look back after the heat of the battle has died down a bit we say they were excessive, okay.”

It gets worse: Brennan then went on to decry the “ignorant feelings” of Americans outraged at the jihadi attacks on American soil. And then he told Shahin and the audience of Muslim students that he “was very concerned after the attack in Fort Hood as well as the December 25 attack that all of sudden there were people who went back into this fearful position that lashed out not thinking through what was reasonable and appropriate.”

The Fort Hood jihadist slaughtered 14 innocent soldiers and an unborn baby after an Army career openly threatening the lives of our soldiers and Brennan is wringing his hands about the rest of us “lashing out” over government incompetence. He believes our true sin is not in the systemic underreacting by the military, homeland security, intel, and White House officials in charge, but in the “overreacting” of the American public.

With clueless capitulationists like Brennan in charge of our safety, who needs enemies?

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Video of the Brennan/flying imam lovest (exchange starts at 2:57)

More background links:

Debra Burlingame: On a Wing and a Prayer: Grievance Theater at Minneapolis Airport

AIR’s Grievance Theater, the Flying Imams and 9/11 – Patrick Poole, April 2007, FrontPageMag

Suing imams were “spoiling for an incident”

Related: Jonah Goldberg – Brennan, Politics and National Security

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.

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

If you’re not familiar with the Miftah matter, you ought to be. This is a matter of radical Islam attempting to shut up its critics and even inviting violence against them. Here’s a Vent by Erick Stakelbeck that lays out the case.

Basically, Miftah wrote an op-ed in the Tulsa World (you can read it here) about how Islam should condemn Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and his mosque kicked him out–and assaulted him, and branded him an apostate “traitor to Islam”, effectively inviting jihadi violence against him.

And that’s not a stretch, either. Here are two comments that appeared on a post about Miftah at Junkyard Blog, both from Islamabad IP addresses:

This message is for the leader of the mosque in Tulsa. criticizing Ayman al-Zawahiri is not easy to live with, kick jamal out of USA as soon as posible. Mr. Jamal This is our promise to you,that you will be kicked out of USA very soon as we have kicked you out from the mosque. Jamal you will not be spared at any stage. we will suport every man who is trying to kick you out from usa. Dear Amam of the mosque get him as quick as possible.

Posted by saeed ahmad on April 27, 2007 2:13 AM

To the leaders of the mosque give serious attention to this message. Ayman al-Zawahri and other al-Qaeda leaders are mujaheden and talking against them makes jamal the enemy of islam and killing this enemy is as Jahad as its is in Islam, get him we will pay you the price.

Posted by Abu Hanif on April 27, 2007 2:29 AM

Miftah is one of a tiny minority of actual moderate muslims who have the courage to stand up against radical Islam. For Mr. Miftah, Islam actually does mean peace. In fact, Jamal Miftah is a far better ambassador for his faith than the entire collection of professional whiners at CAIR.

I hope he and his family apply for asylum and stay in America–and consider joining us as citizens. I also wish him well with his lawsuit–see, I have this theory that the discovery process of civil lawsuits against groups like CAIR and Saudi-supported mosques will turn up all kinds of interesting information that bloggers and investigative journalists will enjoy sifting through.

It’s like lawfare in reverse.

There are court documents and a link to more background on the case at the Batesline link up top.

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{Post by See-Dubya.}

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.

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

According to USA Today, President Bush is scheduled to pay a visit tomorrow to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C. for its re-dedication. Re-dedication to what and from what, I have no idea.

I do know this: The Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., was the same mosque that Bush visited after 9/11 and declared: “Islam is peace.”

It is one of the mosques funded and supported by the Saudi kingdom. The chairman of the center’s board is Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan. It was embroiled in a big embezzlement scandal last year. And its former head, Muhammad Al-’Asi, reportedly told Iranian TV: “The 9/11 Events Were Planned by the American Administration.”

Um, doesn’t President Bush have anything better to do tomorrow? Preach to the open-borders choir? Twist some Senators’ arms? Anything?

The Trentonian weighs in on the litigation menace to homeland security.

The Becket Fund steps up.

Power Line on the New John Doe movement. More here.

Step up!

More: 9/11 Families for a Secure America steps up.

Check it out.

Rich reports:

The case of U.S. Airways flight 300 gets stranger by the minute. When six traveling Muslim clerics were asked to deplane last week, it looked like another civil rights controversy against post-9-11 airport security.

Now new information is emerging that suggests it was all a stunt designed to weaken security….

Yesterday I spoke with a passenger on that flight, who asked that she be only identified as “Pauline.” A copy of airport police report, which I also obtained, supports Pauline’s account – and includes shocking revelations of its own. In addition, U.S. Airways spokeswoman Andrea Rader also confirmed much of what Pauline revealed…..

The passenger, who asked that she only be identified as “Pauline,” said she is afraid to give her full name or hometown. She is spending the night at “another location” because she does not feel safe at home. She credits reports that one imam is apparently linked to Hamas. “It is scary because these men could be dangerous.”

Pauline said she never wanted media attention. She wrote an email to U.S. Airways and cc:ed her daughter, who unexpectedly emailed it to her friends. As the letter took on an internet life of its own, it made its way to the inbox of a retired CNN executive producer. Then, to her dismay, the feeding frenzy began.

Pauline revealed to the Pajamas Media that the six imams were doing things far more suspicious than praying – an Arabic-speaking passenger heard them repeatedly invoke “bin Laden,” and “terrorism,” a gate attendant told the captain that she did not want to fly with them, and that bomb-sniffing dogs were brought aboard. Other Muslim passengers were left undisturbed and later joined in a round of applause for the U.S. Airways crew. “It wasn’t that they were Muslim. It was all of the suspicious things they did,” Pauline said.

Read the whole thing. News you won’t find in the MSM…

Imam Omar Shahin: Milking it

The saga of the flying imams continues. It ain’t over ’til the grievance-mongers sing.

One of the Muslim clerics who was questioned and detained in Minnesota on a US Airways flight after passengers reported suspicious behavior is staging a protest here in Washington this morning (hat tip: LGF):

On Monday, November 27th, 8:15 AM, at the US Airways ticket counter located in the Reagan National Airport, Imam Omar Shahin, one of the six Imams removed from US Airways flight 300, will join Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center of Philadelphia, Rev Graylan Hagler of the United Church of Christ, Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACP-Washington National Office, and other interfaith members for a press statement, public prayer, and flight departure on US Airways.

The “pray-in” is in response to US Airways’ removal of Imam Omar Shahin and five other Imams traveling from a religious leader’s conference in Minnesota. Three of the Imams were observed praying prior to departure. Subsequent to boarding the plane, the six were removed from the flight, handcuffed, and detained in the airport for questioning for over five hours. Upon release, US Airways and other airlines refused to allow them to purchase tickets for other scheduled flights to Phoenix.

“The detention of these religious leaders, and the refusal of the airline to allow them travel, is a gross example of blatant Islamophobia and the violation of the civil rights of Muslim passengers”, said Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

“The last time I checked, public prayer was still protected by the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion and speech. It’s a shame that as an African-American and a Muslim I have the double whammy of having to worry about driving while Black and flying while Muslim. We charge the airline with not only discrimination, but with an action that is insulting and demeaning to these Muslim religious leaders, and to all people of faith.”

The MAS Freedom Foundation, and many in the interfaith and civil rights community, feel strongly that in addition to religious discrimination, the issue involving the six Imams is also a religious freedom issue. We have forwarded the case to several prominent civil and constitutional rights attorneys and legal scholars.

Watch the MSM coverage of this publicity stunt carefully.

Will they mention Shahin’s admitted ties to Osama bin Laden and denial of the 9/11 al Qaeda plot?

Or his connection to a Hamas-linked terror charity front?

Will they mention Mahdi Bray’s terror-sympathizing statements and stances?

Or the Muslim American Society’s radical embrace of sharia and faux pose as the “moderate” front for the Muslim Brotherhood? (My debate on Laura Ingraham’s radio show with one of the double-talking MAS spokesmen here.)

Or will they mindlessly play along with the grievance-mongers, lazily echoing the cries of “Islamophobia” and joining in self-flagellation?

The suspense is killing me.

Update: No surprises.

Imams, ministers and a rabbi staged a “pray-in” demonstration Monday at Reagan Washington National Airport and demanded an apology from US Airways for barring six Muslims from a Minneapolis to Phoenix flight last week.

The religious leaders called for an end to racial profiling, saying it was unacceptable in America.

“These things are troubling to us,” said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. “Driving while black, flying while Muslim, traveling with a Torah or getting with Jesus.”

Imam Omar Shahin, one of the six detained last Monday at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, said they hadn’t done anything suspicious.

The imams, who were returning from a religious conference, had prayed on their prayer rugs in the airport before the flight. After they boarded the flight, a passenger, who was alarmed by their activity, passed a note to a flight attendant. The men were taken off the airplane, handcuffed and questioned.

“It was the worst moment in my life,” Shahin said.

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Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis, Scott Johnson notes “the ‘makings of a bomb’ found in an Avis rental car at the airport. Don’t worry, be happy…”

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Previous:

Flying imams, leaping CAIR

As sure as the rooster crows, CAIR is screaming and the Muslim leaders of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage are calling for a boycott.

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch notes that “Omar Shahin, one of the imams removed from the plane, has links to Osama bin Laden and Hamas.” Power Line has more. Allah has background and Jim Hoft sums it up:

As long as Muslims are trying to explode their shoes on Trans-Atlantic flights, planning to use baby bottles as bombs from London to New York, and smashing jets into skyscrapers, we will see more instances like this one.

The six imams might as well get used to it.

Even as more and more passengers and airlines take reality-based preemptive and precautionary measures to prevent the next 9/11–and even as the headlines bring us daily evidence of al Qaeda’s continued airport/airplane terrorist plots–we have a Democratic Congress ready to criminalize airport investigations of any Muslims at any time for any security reasons.

With such staunch Democrat defenders of homeland security like these, beholden to CAIR and political correctness, who needs enemies?

The 42-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Dallas, alleges that the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development provided more than $12.4 million to individuals and organizations linked to Hamas from 1995 to 2001. The U.S. government froze the charity’s assets in December 2001.

The indictment names the foundation along with its president, Shukri Abu Baker; chairman, Ghassan Elashi; executive director, Haitham Maghawri; and four others. The charges include conspiracy, providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, tax evasion and money laundering.

Five of the seven defendants were arrested while two of them, Maghawri and Akram Mishal, are not in the United States and are considered to be fugitives, the attorney general said.

“To those who exploit good hearts to secretly fund violence and murder, this prosecution sends a clear message: There is no distinction between those who carry out terrorist attacks and those who knowingly finance terrorist attacks,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference to announce charges.

Athena at Terrorism Unveiled has more background on HLF here.
More at Jewish World Review.

So, how did this “charity” set up shop in the U.S.? Four of its workers waltzed through the front door, courtesy of the religious worker visa program. Last February, I wrote about how the program was being exploited by terrorists and other Middle Eastern scam artists:

Call it the Radical Muslim Cleric Importation Plan. Under the religious worker visa (“R visa”) program, an unknown number of Middle Easterners claiming to be imams or other mosque employees have been admitted to the United States with minimal scrutiny.

According to a complaint from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York unsealed last week, Muslim religious leader Muhammed Khalil, his son Asim, and three other individuals submitted false R visa applications on behalf of more than 200 Middle Eastern aliens. Although Khalil and his cronies were nabbed after an 18-month investigation, federal authorities are mum on the whereabouts of the Middle Eastern illegal aliens who purchased fake R visas from Khalil and his colleagues.

The R visa program, created by Congress in 1990, gives visas to thousands of foreigners to fill alleged domestic shortages among ministries, convents, and other religious professionals. In 1998, some 11,000 foreigners received such visas. According to a 1999 General Accounting Office report, federal investigators have discovered R visa fraud rings involving churches and other religious institutions based in Colombia, Fiji and Russia.

The mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, had an R visa. So did four Palestinian men who worked for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Islamic Association for Palestine — both Muslim charities that the State Department has linked to the terrorist organization Hamas.

The 1999 GAO report highlighted persistent lapses in oversight. “Neither INS nor (the) State (Department) knows the overall extent of fraud in the religious worker visa program,” the report concluded.

They still don’t know.

Update: Bill Hobbs notes HLF’s Iraqi connection.

Update II: Andrew McCarthy weighs in.

Magid, who was born and educated in the Sudan, is the Director of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS). ADAMS has numerous close affiliations with the main targets of “Operation Green Quest,” “the largest U.S. terror finance investigation anywhere in the world.” In March 2002, federal agents raided ADAMS’s facility in Herndon, Virginia, as part of an investigation into financial support for terrorism. Federal affidavits state that the “Grove Street addresses” (500 and 555 Grove St. in Herndon) housed more than 100 interlocking Muslim organizations, most headed by Jamal Barzinji, and these groups gave material aid to terrorists. Among those raided were several major ADAMS associates, including its chairman. Magid himself was present when federal agents raided the Herndon offices of ADAMS in March 2002.

Soon after the raid, Magid held a public meeting encouraging “community building” among the organizations investigated. Although 100 people showed up at the Sterling, Virginia, public library for the meeting, another 150 members of the overflow crowd met at ADAMS headquarters itself.

And with whom did Magid wish to build alliances? Among those invited was Kit Gage of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, Sami al-Arian’s political front group. Al-Arian is the University of South Florida professor indicted for being Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s North American leader and chief financier. Wahhabi talk-show host Mahdi Bray, political advisor for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), followed Gage. The Washington Times has described MPAC as “an anti-Semitic organization that has defended infamous terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.”