Enemies with Slick Surfaces
Abdurahman Alamoudi, whose American Muslim Council was once described by FBI director Robert Mueller as “the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States,” and who has now pled guilty to multiple terrorism-related crimes, is the subject of a new article by Daniel Pipes: A Slick Islamist Heads to Jail.
Alamoudi is hardly the only high-profile, seemingly non-violent leader of an Islamist organization to associate with terrorists. At the Council on American-Islamic Relations, five staffers and board members have been accused or convicted of terrorism-related charges and the same has happened with leaders of the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland, Holy Land Foundation, Benevolence International Foundation, and the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom.
The Alamoudi story points to the urgent need that the FBI, White House, Congress, State Department, Pentagon, and Homeland Security — as well as other institutions, public and private, throughout the West — not continue guilelessly to assume that smooth-talking Islamists are free of criminal, extremist, or terrorist ties. Or, as I put it in late 2001: “Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.”