Obama taps Muslim for top job at Federal DHS

From Southern California Public Radio:

The Obama administration has tapped Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Arif Alikhan for a top job at the federal Department of Homeland Security.

KPCC’s Frank Stoltze says Alikhan immediately becomes one of the administration’s highest-profile Muslims.

Frank Stoltze: Arif Alikhan downplays his Sunni Muslim roots. That’s not always been easy. Not growing up in the San Gabriel Valley with a name like Alikhan.

…

Alikhan rose to chief of the Cyber and Intellectual Crimes Section and worked as a senior adviser to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in Washington. Now, after two years as L.A.’s deputy mayor for public safety, the 40-year-old returns to the nation’s capital as assistant secretary for the Office of Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security.

Alikhan: This is the main sort of think tank and policy analysis shop that provides advice to the secretary, the deputy secretary, and spans over all of the different component departments of the Department of Homeland Security.

Stoltze: His first briefing book was a 90-page list of acronyms he’ll use on his job. He says a big part of his job will be fostering communication between agencies. Alikhan also wants to help improve America’s image with Muslims around the world.

Alikhan: I think a lot of people have learned from me about being Muslim, how diverse it is, how there is no real monolithic Islam out there, how Islam clearly, clearly prohibits any type of extremism or violence and absolutely condemns that.

Stoltze: He may get that opportunity to teach again at some of the highest levels of the federal government.

Wow. Is that the kind of blatant untruths we want taught at the highest levels of federal government, particularly DHS – a group created to protect us from terrorism – borne out of attacks on the U.S. by Muslims? Outright lies? More on Alikhan from Discover the Networks:

During his years in Los Angeles, Alikhan was responsible for derailing the Police Department’s plan to monitor activities within the Los Angeles Muslim community, where numerous radical mosques and madrassas existed, and where some of the 9/11 hijackers had received support from local residents.

Strongly anti-Israel, Alikhan has referred to the terrorist organization Hezbollah as a “liberation movement.” An affiliate of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Alikhan opposed President George W. Bush’s prosecution of the war on Islamic terror.

More from Atlas Shrugs:

Back in 2007, Alikhan was instrumental in removing the Muslim terror tracking plan in LA.

The controversial Muslim ‘Mapping’ Plan of the Los Angeles Police Department is now “dead on arrival” according to Chief William Bratton.

“It is over and not just put on the side,” said Chief Bratton in a meeting with the Muslim leadership of Southern California on Thursday, November 15th. The meeting was moderated by Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, Arif Alikhan and attended by Deputy Chief Mike Downing.

Chief Bratton acknowledged the hurt and offense caused to Muslims and agreed to send a letter to the Muslim community announcing the official termination of the ‘mapping’ plan.

A major reason for the termination of the ‘mapping’ plan was the Muslim community’s vociferous opposition and active civic engagement in making themselves heard beyond Los Angeles. Muslim organizations demonstrated a strong unity of purpose and message on the issue of ‘mapping’ that led to a position of strength for Muslims in the meeting. Those involved in the initial phases of this controversy were the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and Muslim Advocates.

…

Muslim Democrats welcome Alikhan’s appointment

At a banquet/fundraiser for the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California last weekend, the first speaker was Arif Alikhan (Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles – in charge of public safety for the city). He bid farewell, as he is going to take a post asAssistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. Arif Alikhan is a devout Sunni and the son of Pakistani immigrants (here).

….speakers included Arif Ali Khan, the former Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles. He bid the attendees farewell as he prepared to leave the Los Angeles area for Washington, D. C. There he will serve as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Professor Agha Saeed of the American Muslim Task Force (AMT) spoke of the aftermath of 9/11 and the struggle of the Muslim Community against the pervasive atmosphere of Islamophobia and hatred. It was a struggle against the tide – a very strong tide – to prevent Muslims in America from being marginalized and silenced.

Professor Saeed ….issued five demands from Muslims to the Department of Justice. These demands included a cessation to the infiltration by spies of mosques and an end to the introduction of agents provocateur. In addition there was to be a cessation of attempts to undermine Muslim groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

This is where Alikhan spoke? He was comfortable with this terror talk?

Why Alikhan? DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano noted Alikhan’s “broad and impressive array of experience in national security, emergency preparedness and counterterrorism.” I am not sure what she is talking about (neither is she, I am sure.)

Arif Alikhan was appointed Deputy Mayor of LA - picked from relative obscurity.

He began his career seven years ago, when he took a job with the Department of Justice hunting down computer hackers, crooks who were selling merchandise on Ebay at rock-bottom prices. In his former position as an assistant US attorney, Alikhan consistently did his work accurately and silently, never producing any headlines. But then he suddenly became one of the most important men in Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city after New York.

He took the position of Deputy Mayor in November 2006. The year that the Congress went Democrat and history and America took a disastrous turn. How does an obscure bureaucrat and a devout Muslim come to the position of Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles – in charge of public safety for the city? And now Assistant Secretary to DHS?

Un-indicted co-conspirator CAIR was thrilled at the appointment:

CAIR-LA Congratulates Calif. Muslim Appointed to DHS Post , Arif Alikhan will serve as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development

Related: Another Jihad Nominee at Dept of Homeland Security – Napolitano adds adviser with ties to terror backers

Last week, Napolitano swore in Damascus-born Kareem Shora, the ADC’s national executive director, to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, an outside-the-department group of national security experts that advises the secretary. Shora is the first Arab rights advocate on the panel.

With thanks to Creeping Sharia

DHS Deputy Secretary Keynote at Arab Anti-Defamation Lunch

By Pamela Geller

I have seen the enemy and he is us. Is it any wonder that the 'new' DHS considers veterans, Jews, Christians and patriotic tea partiers the real terrorists?

Check out the map and the list of notorious attendees. DHS should be monitoring this event rather than sitting at the head table. Sick. Ellison, MPAC, Dingle, J street -- all the usual suspects. They are going to club us to death inverting the Constitution.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is proud to announce that Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Jane Holl Lute will deliver the keynote remarks during this year’s Civil Rights Awards Lunch headlining an outstanding program of awards and speakers at one of the anchor events during the ADC Annual National Convention.

The Deputy Secretary, the second-ranking official at DHS after Secretary Napolitano, has over 30 years of dedicated military and executive experience and has served as Assistant Secretary General to the United Nations responsible for the support of international peacekeeping operations. ADC is pleased to welcome Deputy Secretary Lute to discuss the ongoing challenges facing law enforcement and the post-9/11 communities and the struggle to maintain and promote civil rights and security simultaneously. Read more ...

Source: Atlas ShrugsJane Holl Lute
DHS
Latest recipients of The Dhimmi Award

Top Takes on National Security Do 'less offensive' terms regarding national security issues help or harm us?

With almost two dozen attempted attacks thwarted since 9/11 by terrorists either already here or trying to come here to kill Americans it makes no sense to minimize the threat.

- James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is a leading expert in defense affaires, intelligence, military operations and strategy, and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation.

By Dr. Candace de Russy

To lump the terrorist scourge in the catch-all category of "man-caused" disasters, as Napolitano does, effectively obscures its Islamofascist origins and specific destructive consequences.

Such pussy-footing around terror amounts to cynical word games intended to propitiate the Obama Administration’s anti-anti-terrorist supporters.

Napolitano’s trifling dismissal of “the politics of fear” is more of the same. Neither politics nor fear caused 9/11, or the bloody parade of related attacks. Islamofascism did. Read more ...

Source: FSM

Janet Napolitano
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award

Homeland Security Appeals Qatanani Ruling

The Department of Homeland Security has appealed a judge's order granting permanent residency to a New Jersey imam with ties to Hamas. Mohammad Qatanani's failure to report a 1993 arrest and detention by Israeli officials when he applied for his green card is at the heart of the government appeal, the Hackensack Record reports.

Qatanani denies having Hamas links and said that, while he was detained by Israel, he did not include the information on his application because he was not convicted of a crime. A federal judge sided with him last September.

Qatanani had widespread support in New Jersey, despite a record of condemning Christians to eternal hellfire and his attendance at numerous radical conferences in the United States. For example, Qatanani spoke at the 1999 Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) conference in Chicago. The IAP served as a Hamas propaganda arm in the United States and was part of a secret Muslim Brotherhood committee assembled to help Hamas politically and financially.

The appeal is before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Source: IPT Blog

Misplaced Criticism of U.S. Immigration Security Efforts

According to its recent press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explain its 2004 operation conducted prior to that year's national elections. In doing so, it dismisses the legitimate pursuit of intelligence leads and seems to beg immigration agents to look the other way when they stumble into someone who turns out to be in the country illegally.

Reporting about the recent release of documents related to the 2004 operation, an October 30 New York Times story states that the DHS action focused on some 2,500 foreign nationals, most from Muslim countries of origin. They were questioned by federal agents about their background and potential involvement in security threat activities, and any knowledge they might have had related to such activities. About 500 of the interviewees were arrested for immigration law violations, but none were arrested for any national security charges.

CAIR asserts that the 2004 operation amounted to religious or ethnic "profiling" since the majority of the aliens interviewed were Muslim.

The Times article cites government sources who say that the operation was based on "priority leads" generated by intelligence information garnered from a variety of U.S. agencies, indicating that those selected for interviews may have had links to, or knowledge of, security threat activities, particularly those that may have related to the 2004 elections. The process of generating those leads, per the government sources, included analyzing intelligence provided by the CIA. Read more ...

Source: IPT News

Imam's victory short-lived

BY ELIZABETH LLORENTE

What was expected to be a day of jubilation at the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson Friday turned into one of bitterness as news spread that the mosque's spiritual leader must renew his fight against deportation.

"We thought it was over," said Awatif Abadrabbo, referring to the announcement by Homeland Security officials that were appealing an immigration judge's ruling last month granting Imam Mohammad Qatanani permanent U.S. residency.

"We want him to stay," she said. "He has been good for us, for our children."

Other congregants said the appeal would taint a relationship between the mosque and federal officials developed since Sept. 11, 2001, when Qatanani was one of the first imams nationwide to condemn the attacks and invited the FBI to the mosque to address the congregation.

"This is vindictive," said Aref Assaf, spokesman for the imam. "The implications for relations between our community and the federal government are damaging and far-reaching." Read more ...

Source: The Record

Homeland Security Official Addresses American Wing Of The Muslim Brotherhood

By BEILA RABINOWITZ and WILLIAM MAYER

September 23, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - According to the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] website, Dan Sutherland, the Department of Homeland Security's Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties spoke at the group's recently concluded annual conference. [source, http://www.isna.net/Conferences/pages/Annual-Convention.aspx]

Sutherland's presence at the event is difficult to justify, given that ISNA has been declared an unindicted co conspirator in the U.S. vs. Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding prosecution and is widely recognized as being closely associated with the Egyptian terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sutherland participated in a panel discussion entitled," Promoting Civic Engagement," the goal of which was as described by ISNA, "d]efine and describe civic engagement, and to explain its importance in a post 9/11 environment. Speakers will explain the many ways Muslims can participate in civic life and will highlight the benefits of such participation..." [source, ibid] Read more ...

Source: PipeLine News

An Act To Protect First Responders Fighting Terrorism

By Jerry Gordon

The mainstream media has copped out on an important story that, post 9/11, is a threat to the counterterrorism effort. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood (MB) front groups, cited by the U.S. Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case to be retried in the Dallas Federal District Court in September, have thwarted federal, state and local counterterrorism training by objecting to it as ‘racist’ or as ‘religious hate’ and in many cases forcing discontinuation of such training. The result has been workplace harrassment of the important first responders charged with protecting us. Federal agencies like the FBI and DHS and local police departments in Los Angeles, New York, and Fairfax County Virginia have been intimidated by false charges by these MB groups. In some instances they have been forced under threat of civil law suits to abandon counterterrorism training. The result is that our front line in the war against radical Islamic groups looks like a deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Worse yet, we are allowing the MB front groups to get away with this under the guise of ‘hate speech, religious profiling, civil rights’ and obsessive political correctness by federal, state and local political leaders and the department heads of these front line first responder agencies. Read more ...

Source: New English Review

Charlie Allen, DHS intelligence chief decries 'war on terror': tip toes around Islamic war doctrine

By Jerry Gordon

We posted this past week a commentary by Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal on the new DHS lexicon authored by Daniel Sutherland of the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, who is the architect of the Muslim outreach initiative. Stephens correctly called it “Orwellian Newspeak”. The DHS lexicon eschews words like ‘Jihad’, ‘Islamist’, ‘Sharia’ and with it the 800 pound gorilla in the room-the canon of Political Islam and the Islamic Law war doctrine that Steve Coughlin has been briefing the military on to great effect at the field level and below. The higher ups at the Pentagon are simply are blind to the doctrine because the White House is ‘oh so’ politically correct.

Now comes the venerable Charlie Allen, former national Intelligence officer at the CIA and now Undersecretary for Intelligence and analysis at the DHS. Allen is prattling the dhimmitude line offically laid down last year by President Bush and former press aide Karen Hughes, the undersecretary for public diplomacy at State on the occasion of a visit to the Washington Islamic Center and announcement of an Ambassador to the 56 nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, last June. I wrote about that occasion and its consequences in an article entitled : “Bush and Islamofascist detente in DC?”. Read more ...

Source: American Congress for TruthCharlie Allen
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award

Daily Kos and Others on Jihad

By Jeffrey Imm

What do the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC), and the Daily Kos all have in common? They are all seeking to define the enemy as other than "jihadists". Read more ...

Source: Counterterrorism Blog

Investigative Project Releases Gov't Memos Curtailing Speech in War on Terror

By Steven Emerson

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is refusing to identify the "influential Muslim Americans" and "leading U.S.-based scholars and commentators on Islam" who met with Secretary Michael Chertoff in helping shape a softer approach to government lexicon about terrorists and their ideological motivations.

"Our policy is we don't comment on the Secretary's private schedule," spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told the IPT. Nor would she identify any of the participants' organizational affiliation.

DHS and the State Department's Counter- terrorism Communications Center each issued reports urging government employees to avoid words like "jihad," "mujahedeen" or any reference to Islam or Muslims, especially in relation to Al Qaeda. The Investigative Project on Terrorism is making the documents available for the first time.
As we reported last week, the memos say a change in language from the U.S. government is needed to win the hearts and minds of moderate Muslims and avoid glamorizing terrorists motivated by religious ideology. "Moderate" is also frowned upon in the memos, though, with "mainstream" or "traditional" suggested as replacements.

Among the recommendations not reported previously:

* "The experts we consulted debated the word 'liberty,' but rejected it because many around the world would discount the term as a buzzword for American hegemony."
* "The fact is that Islam and secular democracy are fully compatible – in fact, they can make each other stronger. Senior officials should emphasize that fact."
* The USG [U.S. government] should draw the conflict lines not between Islam and the West, but between a dangerous, cult-like network of terrorists and everyone who is in support of global security and progress. Read more ...

Source: IPT News