DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: THE F.B.I. & C.I.A. ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS

Courting controversy: Islamic Society picks suspect speaker

ON APRIL 20, the Islamic Society of Greater Manchester will hold a fund-raiser featuring Imam Siraj Wahhaj, founder of a famous mosque in Brooklyn. Imam Wahhaj has said some controversial things and acquired some radical friends. He knows and has praised Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheik convicted of conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993.
Wahhaj says he is not anti-American.

"I am an American citizen. I love this country, and just because I love this country doesn't mean I can't criticize some aspects of its government," he said in a WBUR interview in 2003.

He has criticized the government by calling the FBI and the CIA the "real terrorists" and saying the FBI was involved in the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He also has refused to acknowledge that Muslims were behind the 9/11 attacks.

He said of 9/11, "That was wrong, absolutely wrong. I condemn it. . . Extremists like that, our religion teaches against it."

But when asked if the perpetrators were radical Muslim terrorists, he said, "I'm not so sure about that."

Wahhaj is known to preach Muslim co-existence with others. But he is suspiciously cagey about terrorists who kill in Islam's name. The Islamic Society runs a risk bringing him here to speak.

If the group does not want to be tainted by association with a 9/11 skeptic who believes in government conspiracy theories and refuses to accept that Islamic terrorists committed the worst atrocity in U.S. history, its leaders must insist that Wahhaj denounce violence committed in the name of Islam and repudiate the conspiracy theories that fuel radical paranoia and anti-American sentiment among some members of his faith. Otherwise, the society can be seen as endorsing views that help to spread anti-American sentiments among impressionable Muslims.


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1) Courting controversy: Islamic Society picks suspect speaker