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Is America's Legal System Islam's Best
Friend
MPAC, CAIR, and Praising Osama bin
Laden
By Daniel Pipes
The Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Council on American-Islamic
Relations each have a problem. As perhaps the most prominent and
effective Islamist organizations in the United States, they have
distinct stylistic and ideological characteristics but work together
effectively as a one-two punch. Their problem concerns two of their most
prominent staffers, Edina Lekovic of MPAC and Hussam Ayloush of CAIR.
Lekovic, who serves as MPAC’s communications director, appeared on
CNBC’s Kudlow & Company with counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson
on May 23, where they discussed a Pew Research Center poll on U.S.
Muslim attitudes. The following exchange took place at the end of their
segment (which can be viewed here):
STEVEN EMERSON: … this [text] is something that Ms. Edina Lekovic should
be very familiar with. “When we hear someone refer to the great Mujahid
…, Osama bin Laden, as a ‘terrorist,’ we should defend our brother and
refer to him as a freedom fighter; someone who has forsaken wealth and
power to fight in Allah’s cause and speak out against oppressors.” This
statement was made after the ’98 bombing [in Kenya and Tanzania], and
this was made in Al-Talib magazine.
EDINA LEKOVIC: That’s absolutely absurd.
EMERSON: And that was Edina’s—she was editor of the Al-Talib magazine
when this statement was made.
LEKOVIC: Absolutely no. No, I was not. These are lies.
EMERSON: That’s not a lie! You were an editor.
LEKOVIC: No, these are absolute mischaracterizations. Mr. Emerson, your
research is—your research is sloppy.
EMERSON: No, you were managing editor of the newspaper.
LEKOVIC: Your research is sloppy.
EMERSON: No. Were you not a managing editor of that newspaper?
LEKOVIC: And for you to—no. No, I was not.
EMERSON: You were not?
LEKOVIC: For your research...
EMERSON: You were not on the byline as a managing editor?
LEKOVIC: For your research—for your research to point out and to conduct
this kind of character assassination is quite ridiculous.
EMERSON: Wait. Edina, were you a managing editor?
LEKOVIC: What we are talking about here...
EMERSON: Edina, were you a managing editor of Al-Talib magazine?
LEKOVIC: I was a student at UCLA and I was the editor of the Daily
Bruin.
LAWRENCE KUDLOW: All right, we’re going to have to leave—we ‘re going to
have to leave it there.
LEKOVIC: So that was the campus newspaper. What we’re talking about
here. …
Later in the day, Emerson provided evidence of his claim at “MPAC in
Denial about Radicalization of Muslim Youth?”:
in July 1999, she is clearly listed as the Managing Editor of Al-Talib,
in the upper right hand corner. This column was published almost a full
year after the Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. At this point,
the role of Bin-Laden in these bombings was widely and publicly known.
Do click on the link to the July 1999 issue of Al-Talib: The Muslim
Newsmagazine at UCLA. The masthead clearly lists Edina Lekovic as one of
its two managing editors. And the text, written by “The Al-Talib staff,”
contains the passage Emerson quoted: “When we hear someone refer to the
great Mujahid …, Osama bin Laden, as a ‘terrorist,’ we should defend our
brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter.”
Such sentiments come as less than a total surprise, for Al-Talib has
linked to an Al-Qaeda website, www.qoqaz.net, and is published by the
branch of the Muslim Student Association at the University of California
at Los Angeles. (Writing in the Middle East Quarterly, Jonathan Dowd-Gailey
has called the MSA a voice “espousing Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and
anti-Semitism, agitating aggressively against U.S. Middle East policy,
and expressing solidarity with militant Islamist ideologies.”)
Two days after the CNBC show, Lekovic sent a long, angry e-mail to
Emerson in which she announces that in “no way” does she now support the
sentiments in that editorial, concedes having “briefly” worked for Al-Talib,
and claims her name appears on that masthead due to a “printing
mistake.”
Oh really? Unfortunately for Lekovic, Emerson has a back run of Al-Talib
issues. Between October 1997 and May 2002, it turns out, her name
appears at least eleven other times on the masthead, in such capacities
as “managing editor,” “assistant editor,” “copy editor,” “writer,” or
the recipient of “special thanks.” And some issues of the magazine, it
turns out, contain other noteworthy views.
* Lekovic is listed as assistant editor of the September 1999 issue in
which an article, “Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman – Tortured in Prison
Cell,” claims the Blind Sheikh was “falsely accused” of having a role in
the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
* She is listed as managing editor of the May 1999 issue in which an
article on “Commercialization of the Holocaust” states that “of course
there are libraries of compelling evidence to indicate that the numbers,
accounts, and narratives [of the Holocaust] are either exaggerated, or
in some cases, wholly imaginary.”
The mastheads reveal further connections between MPAC and Al-Talib. The
December 1997 issue, for example, lists Aslam Abdullah, MPAC’s former
vice chairman, as a writer while extending “special thanks” to Maher
Hathout, MPAC’s senior advisor.
So, MPAC, what now? After Edina Lekovic’s disgrace, her remaining on
your staff means you implicitly endorse her fabrications, you call Osama
bin Laden a “freedom fighter,” you exonerate the Blind Sheikh, and you
promote Holocaust minimization.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations comes into the picture because
that July 1999 Al-Talib masthead also conveys “special thanks” to Hussam
Ayloush, long-time head of its southern California office. What now,
CAIR? This information connects you too to denying bin Laden’s
terrorism; do, please, explain Ayloush’s role in the July 1999 issue.
That these two individuals work in leading positions for MPAC and CAIR
reveals those organizations’ true nature, one usually hidden from
gullible Westerners. Now exposed, if these tainted employees stay on,
they implicate their institutions in lies, in bin Laden adulation, Blind
Sheikh exculpation, and Holocaust minimization. Let us watch to see the
next moves.
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