President Obama has appointed Arif Alikhan a devout Sunni Muslim to assistant secretary for the Office of Policy Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Alikhan was instrumental in taking down the LA Police Department’s plan to monitor its Muslim community.br /Alikhan is affiliated with a title=”http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=” href=”http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6177″ target=”_blank”MPAC, the “Muslim Public Affairs Council”./a From its inception, MPAC presented itself as inclusive, and open to peaceful coexistence with Jews and Christians, and sought to make Americans comfortable with Islam by showing how much the religion embraced core American values.br /However, MPAC’s Senior Advisor, Maher Hathout, has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and espouses the radical brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. After the September 2000 launching of the Second Palestinian Intifada the Council severed its ties to the Jewish community and issued one-sided condemnations of Israel’s response to Arab violence.br /This group actively opposed Bush’s military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as his “excesses” in the war on terror. In 2003, MPAC joined a Moslem coalition to repeal and amend the Patriot Act, which these organizations depicted as an assault on the civil liberties of Americans, particularly Muslims.br /Holding Israel entirely responsible for the “pattern of violence” in the Mideast, MPAC asserts that Hezbollah “could be called a liberation movement.” They liken Hezbollah to American “freedom fighters hundreds of years ago whom the British regarded as terrorists.”br /This makes one wonder if Mr. Alikhan’s primary focus will be protecting Americans. I have no problems with members of the Moslem faith holding positions anywhere. I do have problems with people with ties to terrorist support groups holding any office anywhere. MPAC does support terrorists.
