The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has identified its chief enemy. At a conference on “Countering Religious & Political Extremism” held on December 18 (and later televised on C-Span), it distributed a 48-page booklet attacking not bin Laden, or Zawahiri, or Zarqawi, but anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson. Entitled “Counterproductive Counterterrorism,” the booklet sought to frame opposition to Emerson as a national security issue: “In order to enhance the security of our country, it is necessary to expose the vocal minority of Americans who continue to exploit the tragedy of September 11 to advance their pre-existing anti-Muslim agenda.”

For months now, MPAC has been touting its new “National Anti-Terrorism Campaign” (NATC), garnering uncritical publicity in the media and even praise from government officials. The Campaign’s glossy brochure proclaims that “It is our duty as American Muslims to protect our country and to contribute to its betterment.” But like the old Whip Inflation Now campaign of the Ford Administration, the NATC is long on style and short on substance. It recommends, for example, that “All activities within the mosque and Islamic centers should be authorized by legitimate, acknowledged leadership…” That sounds great until one realizes that if a mosque is involved in terrorist activity, it is most likely with the complicity of mosque leadership — as per the Naqshbandi Sufi leader Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani’s 1999 testimony before a State Department Open Forum that eighty percent of American mosques were controlled by extremists.[1] The rest of MPAC’s recommendations are in the same vein, appearing to be more concerned about misbehavior by non-Muslim law enforcement officials in mosques than about the possibility of terrorist activity in those mosques. WIN buttons are one thing, but the consequences of false advertising by MPAC are much more deadly. Now with the publication of this new report, MPAC’s counterterrorism agenda seems to boil down to one substantive point: Steve Emerson, not Islamic terrorism, is the enemy...

...This is why MPAC’s attack on Emerson has much larger implications than the work of Emerson himself. MPAC excoriates Emerson for asserting that “political correctness enforced by American Muslim groups has limited the public’s knowledge about the spread of radical Islam in the U.S.,” but their anti-Emerson report is an example of just that. MPAC pines for a world in which the critics of radical Islam are silenced, and groups with shadowy ties to the global jihad will be able again to operate unimpeded. We can be thankful that the voices that have consistently warned us of the threat posed by militant Islam will not cower under MPAC’s pressure. But it is crucial to understand the real agenda underlying MPAC’s attack on Steve Emerson: MPAC’s agenda is to make the world safe — safe for terrorists.

Of course, MPAC is entitled, under our freedoms, to deceive — as any self-respecting militant Islamic group would if it wanted to acquire political influence. But the real danger lies in the consequences of falling for that deception. Do all those elected officials, law enforcement agents and journalists who dutifully attended MPAC’s most recent conferences, touting MPAC’s “moderation,” really understand that they are granting legitimacy to a group whose agenda is exactly the opposite of “countering religious and political extremism?”