MPAC on Steven Emerson and Me

The Muslim Public Affairs Council yesterday held a much-hyped meeting (see coverage in the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Star News, and the Press-Enterprise) at which Maher Hathout unveiled a "mosque to mosque" campaign to provide Muslims with tools to fight terrorist activity. Sounds good, no? But Hathout throughout his talk kept disparaging Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project and me, calling the two of us "self-professed terrorist experts who make all us Muslim look like terrorists." (I, by the way, have never declared myself an expert on terrorism.)

When queried why MPAC does not anyway work in unison with the two of us to root out terrorists, that presumably being our common ultimate objective, an MPAC person answered that it cannot do so because Emerson and I make "lay persons believe that all Muslims are terrorists."

In saying this, of course, MPAC is lying through its collective teeth. Emerson and I routinely and repeatedly make the point that Muslims in general are not the issue, only those radicalized ones who support the militant Islamic program. But he and I can say this until we are blue in the face; the totalitarians at MPAC and the other Islamist organizations continue unabated to spread their Big Lie. (July 12, 2004)

Dec. 18, 2004 update: Note the charming poster MPAC put out for its annual conference, "The Faces that Are Always Talking about Terrorism." Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Pat Robertson, Steven Emerson, and I are equivalent to Osama bin Laden, according to MPAC.

MPAC poster.

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