NPRgate and the King Hearings

Yesterday’s videotaped revelations by the intrepid James O’Keefe provides welcome grist for many mills. Most obviously, it offers irrefutable evidence that National Public Radio employs elitists who are hostile to Republicans, Tea Party activists, and others derided as gun-toting, white “racists.”

The principal focus of the expose filmed last month, Ron Schiller, the network’s now-departed vice president of development and president of the NPR Foundation, declared that his organization would be “better off in the long-run” without government underwriting.

Presumably, such sentiments will make it impossible for members of Congress to justify continued public funding of the organization when the Senate considers the decision taken by the House of Representatives to zero out NPR in the latest stopgap funding measure.

What is particularly instructive, however — and highly relevant to the hearings that Rep. Peter King will convene in his House Homeland Security Committee tomorrow — is the subtext of the new O’Keefe undercover videos: NPR seems to have had no problem sitting down with, and apparently entertaining the offer of $5 million from, representatives of a group that explicitly described itself as a Muslim Brotherhood organization and that promoted the “acceptance worldwide” (read, imposition) of shariah (the Islamists’ totalitarian politico-military-legal program).

Chairman King has made the focus of his first hearing what he calls “extremism” in the Muslim American community. A more accurate term for what ails that population would be shariah, for it is the adherence to that supremacist doctrine that obliges its followers to engage in jihad.

As a distinguished group of national security experts observed in a new book published by the Center for Security Policy, titled Shariah: The Threat to America, we must be concerned about more than just the threat of violent jihad. After all, according to shariah, where violence is impracticable, jihadists are supposed to use stealthy (or pre-violent) means to advance the cause that O’Keefe’s fictitious Muslim Education Action Center and the myriad real Muslim Brotherhood fronts share with al-Qaeda and its ilk: the imposition of shariah everywhere and the establishment of a global Caliphate to rule pursuant to it.

In tomorrow’s hearing and, those that will presumably follow it, Mr. King and his colleagues will have an opportunity to explore the role the stealth jihadists are playing in the Muslim American community. Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have, with Saudi money and that of other enablers of jihad, created organizational infrastructures.

With help from successive U.S. administrations, they have been legitimated in their bid to be seen as the sole representatives of American Muslims. Most recently, that message was communicated tangibly by the visit paid to a prominent shariah-adherent mosque in the Washington, D.C., suburbs by the deputy national security advisor to the president, Denis McDonough. In his prepared remarks, McDonough extolled one of the top Muslim Brothers in America, Imam Mohamed Magid, president of ISNA, the largest MB front in the country.

Worse yet, this top U.S. national security official actually parroted talking points pushed out by CAIR and its ilk to suppress expression concerning the threat Rep. King knows needs to be addressed. McDonough warned that, if we choose to criticize those in the American Muslim population who encourage shariah, “we risk feeding the very feelings of disenchantment that may push some members of that community to violent extremism.”

No examination of the “response” of the Muslim-American community to the “extremists” in its midst — which is the self-described purpose of Rep. King’s hearing tomorrow — would be complete without exploring the role being played by the Muslim Brotherhood and its operatives. Here’s hoping that the evidence James O’Keefe has provided of how open to penetration and influence operations are key elements of our society will provide fresh encouragement to the chairman and his colleagues to identify and root out the Brotherhood and other shariah-adherent “extremists” in the Muslim American community.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is president of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org) and host of the syndicated weeknightly show, “Secure Freedom Radio” (www.SecureFreedomRadio.com).