On the surface, a very positive development: Muslim Group Wants to Fight Terrorism.

LOS ANGELES - A national Muslim group called Friday for a campaign within the Muslim community and mosques to root out terrorist supporters after federal officials said they were looking for a California man with links to al-Qaida.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council’s plan urged Muslims to “be on the lookout” for Adam Yahiye Gadahn, 25, although the FBI said he is not believed to be living in the country. …

Fliers containing the FBI’s photographs of seven wanted people will be handed out to mosques nationwide, officials said.

The plan was put forward because of the Justice Department’s warning that credible intelligence reports point to a possible terror attack this summer, said Maher Mathout, senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

The council also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft requesting a meeting with Muslim leaders.

Terrorism has tarnished the Muslim-American community, Mathout said, and there have been accusations on some conservative talk shows that the community has failed to condemn violence.

“We are in complete partnership with good people to protect America,” Mathout said as he explained the plan to hundreds of Friday worshippers at a Los Angeles mosque. “We have so much at stake … protecting our faith and our country,” he said. “God forbid something terrible happens in America, the number one losers will be the Muslims.”

The campaign says the Muslim community should give law enforcement information on terrorist suspects and emphasize that “terrorism is not a valid means of struggle in Islam.” It also asks that mosque leaders make sure to authorize all lectures or talks there.

There’s a very real possibility that this initiative may lead to valuable intelligence, so overall, it has to be seen as a good thing.

But.

Once again, the news media are not telling us important information about the people they identify as spokesmen for the Muslim community (and MPAC’s Senior Advisor is named “Hathout,” not “Mathout”). Before things got hot for them in the US, MPAC and Maher Hathout were singing a very different tune (from Steven Emerson’s American Jihad):

On October 28, 2000, MPAC was a cosponsor of a rally in Washington DC in support of the recent spate of violence known as the Al-Aqsa intifada between the Palestinians and the Israelis. (This was the rally at which the American Muslim Council’s Abdulrahman Alamoudi exhorted the crowd to voice their support for the Hamas and Hizballah terrorist organizations.) During these exhortations, MPAC’s Political Advisor, Mahdi Bray, stood directly behind Alamoudi and was seen jubilantly exclaiming his support for these two deadly terrorist organizations. Dr. Maher Hathout, MPAC’s Senior Advisor, also participated in this rally. Later, in an article in The American Muslim, rather than condemning the rally for its extremist and militant views, Hathout heralded the rally as a marker of a “new era”:

“The rally in Washington, D.C., was the embodiment of this new phase of activism in the United States … The speakers and the slogans were relevant and pertinent to the American seen [sic] … It was then not a normal rally … it transcended the barriers and limitations of a specific local struggle … It is a new era …”

Maher Hathout condemned the U.S. strike against Afghanistan in retaliation for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda destruction of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998:

“Our country is committing acts of terrorism according to the definition. What we did is illegal, immoral, inhuman, unacceptable, stupid, and un-American.”

I’m going to be the mean old cynic again and suggest that MPAC’s latest initiative should be viewed with cautious skepticism. Unless you believe that people who support Hamas and Hizballah would never lie.