Beware of Sheep in Wolves' Clothing

The Detroit Free Press on Tuesday published two editorials on the long-overdue release of the investigation that exonerates FBI agents in the shooting death of the radical Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah. Would it surprise you to learn that both opinion pieces call for further investigation, and question the use of government informants?

Jeff Gerritt wrote the blog version, and we expect he may have written the print version, too. Gerritt has been CAIR’s chief water carrier at the Free Press on the Abdullah case since about the time the imam’s rigor mortis started setting in. Now, when CAIR’s tattered battle flag has fallen in the campaign to transform Abdullah’s death into an FBI assassination, Gerritt has scooped it up again.

His blog article, (“Blazing big government? Don't forget Abdullah case”), is meant to needle the “Tea Party set,” whom he tongue-in-cheekily advises ought to be asking some hard questions about the government excess involved, like “how many millions of dollars did the feds spend on the Abdullah case, including two years of infiltrating the mosque with undercover informants?” We’ll see if Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin take the bait.

But what Gerritt really cares about is not government waste, but “the use of informants” by federal investigators. This is the real hobbyhorse Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR and the ISNA have been riding non-stop the past couple of years. As soon as President Obama, in his speech to the Turkish Parliament shortly after taking office, betrayed his weakness to the Islamic world, the Ikhwan in America, including the “American Muslim Alliance (AMA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society-Freedom Foundation (MAS-FF), Muslim Student Association-National (MSA-N), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),” issued a joint statement demanding an end, among other things, to “1. Infiltration of mosques and systematic manipulation of Muslim religious affairs, 2. Use of agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”

Steve Emerson relates how:

This message was made crystal clear by Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - Los Angeles last year at an Anaheim, California mosque:

"We're here today to say our mosques are off limits. Our Koran is off limits. Our youth, who they [the FBI] try to radicalize, are off limits. Now is the time to tell them, 'We're not going to let this happen anymore.'" (“New Interactive Terror History Map”).

Michigan-CAIR’s Dawud Walid has been wearing out the same theme, using the media (like Jeff Gerritt) to describe “agent provocateurs who entice people into criminal activities.”

CAIR even got Congressman John Conyers in on the act, making him agree to call “for the DOJ to review the FBI’s current usage of confidential informants in houses of worship.”

Comically enough, CAIR’s Ayloush:

has claimed that the FBI is "paying convicted felons to 'infiltrate' mosques to radicalize Muslim youths and instigate talks about terrorism." In an interview with Southern California Public Radio, Ayloush said the FBI has been "hiring shady characters and individuals to try to instigate against the Muslim community. And instigate acts of violence to ruin the reputation of the Muslim community."

Abdullah was a convicted felon radicalizing Muslim youths and talking terrorist trash. The FBI sting that led to Abdullah’s death was about receiving stolen merchandise, which Abdullah told an informant would be good to sell at his mosque. Abdullah had previously been to prison for felonious assault and weapons violations, and he was no less violent or hateful after he got out. He vowed to his Muslim flock that “he would not go peacefully should law enforcement ever come to get him.” And we all know Abdullah, 53 at the time of his departure for Paradise, wasn’t a “Muslim youth.” So was he really enticed into that warehouse? It’s not as if the FBI offered him 72 brown-eyed virgins.

The point is, it would be hard to find a character any shadier than Abdullah. If he had been the one who turned informant against his crooked colleagues, you can bet Walid would be complaining that a guy with Abdullah’s criminal history was an agent provocateur. As it is he was widely praised as a martyr and a spiritual model for Muslims.

The Freep’s second editorial, (“Feds should review imam shooting”), criticizes the use of government informants, too. But instead of using the “government excess” gag it takes the position that the AG report, in spite of clearing the FBI agents of any wrongdoing, “does not close the book” on the matter. This regardless of the editorial’s own admission that the AG’s office did “a thorough and honest job.”

Well, if a thorough and honest investigation cleared the agents of wrongdoing, then the book ought to be closed, n’est-ce pas? But if you’re at all familiar with liberal ways, or for that matter with children wanting bedtime stories, or even with the 2000 presidential election, then you know how this works. Liberals never want the book to be closed, no matter how late it is, or no matter how many times you’ve read them Green Eggs and Ham. Because once the book is closed they’ll have to get under the covers and go to sleep. Read it again. Maybe it ends differently this time.

The Freep’s last-ditch hope for staying up past bedtime is to scoff that “Nothing short of a complete and independent investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice will restore credibility to ongoing fact-finding.”

How can the Freep be unaware that the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under President Obama is a political cesspool that has driven out all vestiges of either independence or integrity?

Oh, that’s right: because it wasn’t reported in the media.