Dangerous accommodations

Scott Brown can’t get to Washington soon enough.  In his victory speech on Tuesday night, the newly elected Senator from Massachusetts underscored a central plank in his campaign platform:  "Let me say this: with respect to the people who wish to harm us, I believe – and I know all of you believe – that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation.  They do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. And the message we need to send in dealing with terrorists: Our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, and not lawyers to defend them."

This commonsensical approach to dealing with our enemies clearly found resonance with the voters of one of the most liberal states in the nation.  Polls suggest on related questions about closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay and bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial in New York City, Americans across this country are of a similar mind. Yet, with each passing day it is evident that the Obama administration is committed to a very different course, one that is likely to get more of us killed.

For instance, we discovered yesterday that neither the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency nor the Secretary of Homeland Security were consulted before the decision was taken to allow Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab to lawyer-up in Detroit.  We are told that, for some reason, local FBI agents – who had gotten a wealth of valuable intelligence in the course of a few hours with the alleged Christmas Day pantybomber before they told him he had the right to remain silent – believed they needed to Mirandize the terrorist before he went into surgery.

With that, on advice of counsel, Abdulmuttalab clammed up and – despite claims by the President’s Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, that plea-bargaining will elicit more cooperation from this jihadist – it now seems unlikely that such help will be forthcoming and, if it is, that it will be "actionable."

Then, we learn that the State Department has decided to offer 14,000 of its  "diversity visas" to Nigerians wishing to immigrate to this country.  Never mind that Abdulmuttalab exemplifies a portion of that nation’s Muslim population that has embraced the supremacist, totalitarian ideology called "Shariah" by authoritative Islam, the same program that obliges its adherents to engage in jihad (or holy war).  Randomly allocating visas to such folks assuredly increases the probability of inviting more of jihadists into our midst.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the State Department announced that Secretary Hillary Clinton had personally exercised her authority to waive a prohibition on the entry into the United States of two prominent Islamists, Tariq Ramadan (the Swiss Islamist who is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, the son of a preeminent Brotherhood propagandist and a professor at Oxford) and Adam Habib, a professor at the University of Johannesburg.  As spokesman Darby Holladay put it, "Both the president and the secretary of state have made it clear that the US government is pursuing a new relationship with Muslim communities based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

The chief State Department press flak, P.J. Crowley, added: "As we look at it, we do not think that either one of them represents a threat to the United States. We want to encourage a global debate. We want to have the opportunity potentially to have Islamic scholars come to the United States and have dialogue with other faith communities in our country."

In the case of Ramadan, this action reverses a decisions taken as long ago as 2004 by George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security.  At the time, one of America’s leading experts on Islamism, Daniel Pipes, reported that a "DHS spokesman, Russ Knocke, explained that this had been done in accord with a law that denies entry to aliens who have used a ‘position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.’  The revocation, Mr. Knocke added, was based on ‘public safety or national security interests.’"

Interestingly, in his prepared statement, Clinton spokesman Holladay claimed that the two professors "were denied admittance after making statements counter to U.S. foreign policy."  For Ramadan, at least, the grounds for exclusion were very different: Daniel Pipes points out that he did not get a visa because the Swiss Islamist had "funded two Hamas-related groups."

In an article in the New York Sun  published on August 27, 2004, around the time of Ramadan’s exclusion, Dr. Pipes went on to enumerate a number of Ramadan’s other, publicly reported ties to terrorism:

• He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam."
• Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris.
• Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999.
• Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan.
• Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11.
• He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement.

While the President and Secretary of State gloss this decision with platitudes about "mutual interest and mutual respect" between Muslim and non-Muslim communities, Americans will get no genuine "respect" from Ramadan – nor will he encourage his co-religionists to give it to others considered "infidels."

In fact, Ramadan is, as Caroline Fourest documented in her marvelous book, Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, a man gifted at saying one thing to non-Muslims and something altogether different to Muslim ones.  If admitted into the United States, he will engage in his sophisticated "double discourse," sounding the quintessential moderate in settings where that will serve his cause, yet espousing Shariah and the Islamic supremacism it demands when speaking to the faithful.

In each of these instances, and too many others to mention in the space available here, the Obama administration is acting in ways that intensify the risk to Americans at the hands of those who adhere to Shariah.  It can only be hoped that the more prudent and responsible attitude towards our enemies endorsed by the people of Massachusetts with their election of Scott Brown will translate into a vigorous rejection of Team Obama’s priorities and conduct with regard to those who practice Islam pursuant to Shariah and who seek to impose it on the rest of us.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and host of the nationally syndicated radio program, "Secure Freedom Radio."