Former CAIR Lobbyist Hired to Report on Muslim Issues for NY Times

By Alana Goodman
Thu, 06/10/2010 - 10:59 ET
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/alana-goodman/2010/06/10/former-cair-lobbyist-hired-report-muslim-issues-ny-
times
A journalist hired by The New York Times to report on a controversial mosque at 9/11's Ground Zero and the
failed Christmas Day bomb plot previously held a government lobbying position at the Council on American
Islamic Relations.
The Associated Press and ABC News also enlisted former CAIR workers to cover stories involving the Muslim
community, raising concerns over whether it's ethical for objective media outlets to hire ex-advocacy group
employees to report on the issues they previously championed.
Sharaf Mowjood, who helped pen the Islam-focused articles for The New York Times and the Times' world-
affairs paper the International Herald Tribune in December of 2009, worked as a government relations
coordinator for CAIR up until at least March of 2008.
Mowjood's gushing, 1,200-word article on the controversial mosque planned for construction near the former
site of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks was titled "Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero." All
eight of the sources cited in the piece said they approved of the project or lauded its advocate Imam Feisal Abdul
Rauf.
"Those who have worked with him say if anyone could pull off what many regard to be a delicate project, it
would be Imam Feisal, whom they described as having built a career preaching tolerance and interfaith
understanding," read the enthusiastically pro-Rauf article, which was double bylined with reporter Ralph
Blumenthal.
The proposed ground zero mosque has elicited anger from family members of 9/11 victims who said the project
would be disrespectful to the thousands of people murdered in the name of Islam during the 2001 World Trade
Center terrorist attacks. However, Mowjood's article made no mention of legitimate criticism against the planned
mosque. Instead, it portrayed opponents of the prayer center as sources of potential anti-Muslim violence.
"[T]here is anxiety among those involved or familiar with the project that it could very well become a target for
anti-Muslim attacks," wrote Mowjood and Blumenthal. "Joan Brown Campbell...who is a supporter of Imam
Feisal, acknowledged the possibility of a backlash from those opposed to a Muslim presence at ground zero."
The article's approving tone was consistent with the views of CAIR, an adamant supporter of the ground
zero prayer center. "[B]uilding this mosque is the solution, not the problem, because Islam calls for ... a
culture of moderation," CAIR's executive director Nihad Awad told the Arab American News on May 22.
But the reporter's background might conflict with the Times ethical standards. The Times' code of ethics says
that reporters "should be vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of
interest and thus threaten the newspaper's ethical standing." The Times has not yet responded to requests for
comment on whether Mowjood's prior lobbying past constituted a conflict of interest.
CAIR, which calls itself a "grassroots civil rights and advocacy group," has come under fire in the past for its
alleged ties to international terrorist organizations. Lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate, as well as Federal
Bureau of Investigation officials have accused CAIR's founders of supporting Palestinian terror group Hamas,
which controls the Gaza strip. CAIR has also sparked criticism for refusing to fully condemn Islamic extremism.
In an article Mowjood wrote for ABC News on the FBI shooting death of a Detroit imam, he even quoted other
CAIR members, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). IPT reported that CAIR "has been
ginning up allegations about the shooting for months."
The Times and ABC News are not the only media outlets that have hired a former CAIR employee to write on
controversial Muslim issues. The Associated Press also employed former CAIR Canada spokeswomen Hadeel
Al-Shalchi to cover subjects like Israel-Palestine relations, the Goldstone report that condemned Israel, the
Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic radicalism.
Al-Shalchi was assigned by AP to cover a dispute over the Qatari-based website Islamonline in March of 2010,
reported the IPT. Islamonline is a website tied to the radical Islamic political group the Muslim Brotherhood.
"The [Muslim Brotherhood] website described Islamonline as ‘the most prominent voice of the global Muslim
Brotherhood,' wrote the IPT. However, Al-Shalchi's story "cast the Brotherhood as moderate and Brotherhood
spiritual leader and Islamonline founder Youssef al-Qaradawi as a ‘relative moderate.'"
Still working as an Egyptian correspondent for the AP, many of Al-Shalchi's articles do not include the word
"terrorist" to describe terrorist organizations, and instead use the words "extremist" or "militant." In the past,
CAIR has campaigned against linking the term "terrorist" with Islam.
In a June 1, 2009 article on U.S.-Middle East relations, Al-Shalchi referred to Palestinian land as being
"occupied" by the Israelis - and she included the Gaza strip, which Israel withdrew from in the summer of 2005.
"If Obama wants to rally Muslim support to rein in Iran, analysts say, he will have to prove his good intentions
elsewhere," she wrote. "In particular, he needs to move to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and
east Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians want for a state."
In the same article, Al-Shalchi refers to the George W. Bush presidency as "one of the darkest periods in U.S.-
Muslim relations."
Al-Shalchi also fails to hide her condemnation of the prison at Guantanamo Bay in an article from Nov. 7, 2008
titled "After years of Bush, Arabs see hope in Obama."
"Over past years, the bloodshed in Iraq, fears of war with Iran, abuse at Abu Ghraib and prisoners at
Guantanamo convinced many that the United States was an anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bully. A feeling of despair
and hopelessness became widespread and few believed U.S. policies would ever change," she wrote.

jawa | March 21, 2004 4:59 PM

Rauf is imam of a mosque that is just 12 blocks from where the WTC center stood. He is also the
imam of the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, 835 Brush Hollow Road. Larry Cohler-Esses
of the Daily News wrote about anti-Christian, anti-Jewish textbooks coming out of the Crescent
School, same address as mosque. When pressed about the hateful content of the textbooks, "What
Islam is All About", Rauf said the books should be changed. They haven't been to date. Yahiya
Emerick is the publisher of the books and a teacher at the school. Ghazi Khankan of CAIR is also at
this mosque, along with Faroque Khan, head of NY American Muslim Alliance and affiliated with
Islamic Society of North America. This is the same mosque Congressman Peter King had cut ties with
after 9/11 due to disparaging statements they made about all of us.

Islamic Association of Long Island, Nayyar Imam, CAIR NY Bd member

ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION OF LONG ISLAND
Phone: 631-732-1235
Fax: 631-732-6657
Email:info@seldenmasjid.org MASJID IMAM (DIRECTOR):
• ABDUL RAZZAK AZIZ
LEGAL COUNSEL:
• MAQSOOD SIDDIQUI
PRESIDENT
• JAVAID AKTHAR
PRESIDENT-ELECT
• IQBAL CHAUDHRY
VICE-PRESIDENT
• NAWAB FARIDI
SECRETARY
• SYED HAFIZ UR RAHMAN
TREASURER
• BILAL MALIK

BOARD OF TRUSTEE
• CHAIRMAN - TAHIR QURESHI
• VICE-CHAIRMAN - OVAIS SHEIKH
• MEMBERS: ABDUL ABUMUSALLAM, FARRUKH BAIG,TAHOUR CHOWDHURY, IQBAL SAYED

For Island's Muslims, a Time to Be Wary

By LAURIE NADEL Published: September 4, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/04limusl.html?pagewanted=all
IN the four years since Sept. 11, Muslims on Long Island say, they have been waging jihad. And they
are saddened, but not surprised, when non-Muslims misunderstand what that means.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Haq Kauser, the imam (in black, foreground), leading a Friday afternoon prayer service at the Bait ul-
Huda mosque in Amityville. "If anyone is involved in any kind of terrorist activity, he is not involved
in Islam," he said.

Phil Marino for The New York Times

Imam Ahmed Yuceturk, right, of the United American Muslim Association mosque in Dix Hills, and
Gunal Gunacar at afternoon prayer.
"We do not believe in jihad the way suicide bombers do," said Bushra Butt, the president of the Ladies'
Auxiliary at the Bait ul-Huda mosque in Amityville. "We teach other people who are not Muslims what
the truth of Islam is. That is our real jihad."
The word literally means struggle, but properly used, it connotes a struggle for spiritual improvement,
not a holy war born of hatred, said Dr. Faroque Khan, the president of the Islamic Center of Long
Island, in Westbury. The name Islam itself means peace. But the continuing terror attacks committed in
Islam's name by Al Qaeda and others - in the Middle East, in Madrid, in London - keep renewing
"Islamaphobia," the obsessive fears, suspicions and prejudices that many people of other backgrounds
harbor toward Muslims, religious leaders on the Island say.
And though a similar term has not yet been coined for it, many Muslims on the Island respond with a
collective fear and suspicion of those outside their faith, and of the motives behind some of the post-
9/11 security efforts that seem aimed at Muslims.
"The community feels under siege," said Dr. Khan, 63, a physician who lives in Jericho and who
emigrated from Kashmir in 1966. "There is a lot of worry. The concern is that the laws as they have
been implemented are chipping away at what we cherish so much here: civil rights."
As a result, many of the estimated 75,000 Muslims on Long Island keep as low a profile as they can. Of
the 20 or more mosques on the Island, only 4 list their telephone numbers in the Yellow Pages and
other directories. Most of the Island's mosques did not respond to letters and repeated phone calls
seeking comment for this article.
Leaders like Dr. Khan, who spoke of hostile treatment of ordinary Muslim-Americans after Sept. 11,
expressed doubt that anyone who experienced such incidents firsthand would be willing to discuss
them with a reporter. "After the London bombings, the anxiety level is high," Dr. Khan said.
Renaire Frierson, the executive director of Nassau County's Human Rights Commission, agreed.
"These people are very reticent to come forward," she said.
One 36-year-old Egyptian who works as a pizza chef in Long Beach spoke only on the condition that
his name not be published. "After 9/11, police came to my house and asked some questions," he said.
"They went away, and I understood. It was O.K. But I don't want trouble."
In truth, it appears that there has not been much trouble lately on Long Island. While scores of anti-
Muslim incidents and hate crimes occurred in Nassau and Suffolk in the weeks immediately following
9/11, the police recorded only one minor case in each county last year: a vandalized car in Hicksville
with an anti-Muslim note left on it, and a drunken commotion at a Stony Brook University dormitory,
with shouted slurs and threats that led to two arrests.
The trend is different nationally, Muslim groups say, with the hate-crime count up significantly in the
last year. But a survey of 2,000 people conducted after the July 7 bombings in London indicates that
Islamaphobia may be ebbing nationally, too. The number of respondents who said they thought Islam
encourages violence fell to 36 percent, from 44 percent in 2003. By contrast, a majority said they had a
favorable opinion of Muslim-Americans.
The telephone survey was conducted from July 7 to 17 by Princeton Survey Research Associates
International for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, part of the nonprofit Pew Research
Center in Washington. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Pew supplied the first names and phone numbers of the four Long Islanders included in the survey. One
of them, Kevin Loudy of Selden, said that his views were merely common sense. "Most religions
encourage tolerance and peace," said Mr. Loudy, 42, who works as a school social worker in
Farmingdale. "Extremists, no matter who they are, carry things too far."
The other three participants on Long Island did not return phone calls seeking interviews.
But others on the Island expressed less tolerance, and more willingness to suspect all Muslims of
complicity in terrorism. "Why couldn't they find a sleeper cell on Long Island - they found one in
Queens, they found one in New Jersey," said Cathy Costello, 63, a Hampton Bays legal secretary. "We
should loosen up our laws just the way they do in Britain. They don't worry about the A.C.L.U. - they
shoot first and ask questions later. Which is what I think we should do here."
Margie Miller of Baldwin, whose husband, Joel Miller, worked for Marsh & McLennan on the 97th
floor of One World Trade Center and died in the 9/11 attack, said she struggled to feel compassion for
Muslims. "As a Jew, I should be more sensitive to the victimization that the Muslims say they are
experiencing, but Pollyanna has left the building," said Mrs. Miller, 55, a recently retired Hebrew-
school teacher. "If your house is burglarized, you change the locks so the burglars can't get in again.
But I don't see that we've done that."
Muslim leaders on Long Island try to take such antipathy in stride and are quick to dissociate
themselves from the terrorists whose crimes, they say, have unfairly tarred Islam's reputation.
"We see our religion being hijacked," said Ahmed Yuceturk, 26, an imam who lives at the United
American Muslim Association mosque in Dix Hills. "How many terrorists are there who are Muslim?
Maybe 100,000? But 1.6 billion people live in peace, harmony and treat their neighbors nice," he said,
referring to the Muslim population worldwide.
"Islam cannot be used in the same sentence as terrorists," Mr. Yuceturk said. "They are opposites to
each other, like fire and water in the same place."
That view was expressed most recently in a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by a council of 18 leading
Islamic scholars on July 28, condemning extremism and terrorism in strong terms. Dr. Khan of the
Westbury mosque acknowledged that such a decree would have no effect on Al Qaeda, "but if
somebody is on the margin, the fatwa may cause them to think differently."
The hope is that it may also cause non-Muslims to think differently. "People think that every Muslim is
against Western society," said Nayyar Imam, 50, a member of the Suffolk County Commission on
Human Rights. "That kind of perception they get from the media."
Mr. Imam, who emigrated from Pakistan in 1982, lives with his wife and family in Mount Sinai. He
operates a pharmacy in Coram and serves as a trustee of his mosque in Selden.
He frequently gives talks about Islam in schools, houses of worship and community centers in Suffolk.
"The more we educate people, the more we will be better off," he said. "I give police officers who are
graduating from the academy a copy of the Koran in English."
On a recent Friday, 30 men and 26 women assembled for afternoon prayers at the Bait ul-Huda mosque
in Amityville, housed in a former Knights of Columbus hall. Separated from the men by a thick velvet
curtain, the women covered their heads with silk scarves and prostrated themselves on a double layer of
thick wool carpet. A crackling audio system piped prayers, chants and sermons into their section of the
mosque.
"We pray for peace for all mankind, for all nations, for all races," said the imam, Haq Kauser. "We
Muslims are the peacemakers. If anyone is involved in any kind of terrorist activity, he is not involved
in Islam."
Bait ul-Huda means "house of guidance," and it is a gathering place for followers of the Ahmadiyya
movement, who believe that Mirza GhulamAhmad, born in northern India in 1835, was a prophet or
messiah foretold by Muhammad. The group, established in the United States since 1920, is accused of
heresy and persecuted in some Asian and Middle Eastern Muslim countries, but Rizwan Alladin, the
president of the mosque, said there had been no friction with other Muslims on Long Island.
Not so, occasionally, with non-Muslims. Last October, five women from the congregation, including
Mrs. Butt, 55, were flying back to New York from a convention in Chicago. "We were sitting in the
front rows of the plane, and it was time for our evening prayer," she said, but when they began to pray,
"a couple of people got uneasy, and the attitude of the air hostess was hostile."
The flight attendant refused to serve them for the rest of the flight, she said, and a woman with a young
child who was seated nearby moved to another part of the plane.
Mrs. Butt, who works in one of the libraries at Stony Brook University, said she and her companions
tried to be philosophical. "We figured out people are uneasy because of the 9/11 incident," she said.
"We don't mind it at all."
Mr. Alladin, 31, a project manager for Symbol Technologies who lives in North Babylon, remembered
attending a function soon after Sept. 11. "A friend was playing with my PalmPilot, and 90 percent of
the names in my address book were Muslim," he said. "And this person, whom I knew very well, said,
'If I ever find out you're a terrorist, I will kill you.' "
His friend later apologized, Mr. Alladin said, telling him with tears in his eyes, "I know you have
nothing to do with that."
After Friday prayers, Mr. Alladin and eight other men at the mosque joined a conversation with a
reporter about how Muslims are perceived. "I really understand that Americans feel the next terrorist
attack will be from a Muslim," said Naeem Ahmad, 61, an engineer from East Meadow. "Of course, I
can't blame. It puts a burden on us to say there is a distinction. Every religion, every society has its own
share of maniacs. People do understand that all Muslims are not the same."
Some do. Others, like Mrs. Miller of Baldwin, question why the Muslims they see on television,
demonstrating and speaking out publicly, always seem to be the ones cheering for Al Qaeda.
Dr. Khan said Mrs. Miller's question was "very valid." There has been an outcry by Muslims who
oppose terrorism, he said, but "it hasn't reached the guy on the street." He criticized the news media for
paying little attention to developments like the July fatwa condemning terrorism, or to terrorism
directed against Muslims in many parts of the world.
Mr. Ahmad of the Amityville mosque noted a more practical problem: the pacifist strictures of
Ahmadiyya Muslims forbid them from joining any kind of street demonstration. "We have special
prayers, moments of silence," he said. "This is our way."
To Mr. Yuceturk of the Dix Hills mosque, the habit of keeping a low profile contributes to the problem.
"Muslims are not that organized," he said, and for that reason have not tended to speak out as a group.
"We haven't done this before."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national advocacy group, is trying to get the word out,
particularly since the London bombings. "Usually we hear people saying, 'Muslims never condemn this
stuff,' " said Wissam Nasr, 26, the director of the group's New York office. "We condemn it."
Mr. Nasr said that the denunciations would soon grow louder, because committees were being formed
to encourage and approve Muslim rallies against terrorism. He said his group was also trying to
dissuade some local Muslim groups from distributing anti-Western literature.
Long Island's Muslims include a strong contingent of first-generation immigrants who are willing to
cooperate with law enforcement and Homeland Security agents. Recently, Suffolk police found a copy
of the Koran with a verse that had been marked and took it to Mr. Yuceturk at the Dix Hills mosque for
help in interpreting it.
When he was done, the detectives asked him if the matter was worth investigating. Mr. Yuceturk said
he told them: "This is not a big deal, but for all our sakes, please find this person. We don't want our
religion to be hijacked. We don't want anyone to die."
That was not the sentiment that Judy Grimner of Baldwin recalled hearing a few weeks after Sept. 11.
Mrs. Grimner, 53, teaches sixth grade at W. Tresper Clarke Middle School in Westbury; her husband,
Dave Grimner, worked on the 98th floor of One World Trade Center.
"Everyone knew my husband had been killed," she said. "About one month after 9/11, a sixth grader
came up to me and said he was happy the terrorists had blown up the World Trade Center. I was
shocked and upset."
Mrs. Grimner said she had heard that the student's father had taken him to Pakistan for a month over
the summer, when he could have been exposed to anti-American sentiments.
"I know only a small number of Muslims are like that," she said. "In the end, they're just people."