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Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) issued the following statement regarding the vicious and malignant attack by the New York Times and the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) on the NYPD and Chief Raymond Kelly:

“The American Islamic Forum for Democracy unequivocally supports the efforts of the New York Police Department and its Commissioner Raymond Kelly to fight the insidious ideology of militant Islamism. The NYPD has been an international leader in this fight and has paid a heavy price for being at the forefront of the ideological war that must be waged. Lost in the shoddy and biased reporting was the most basic fact that NYPD’s counter-terrorism programs have protected New Yorkers and Americans from a vast number of increasing threats like Faisal Shahzad, the Time Square Bomber, who embodies the radicalization described in the Third Jihad.

This week’s attacks on the NYPD and now Chief Kelly are yet another example of the depths of deception that groups such as CAIR are willing to go in order to suppress any criticism of the organization. This attack has nothing to do with the rights of American Muslims and everything to do with the efforts of CAIR to use American Muslims as a tool to suppress dissent and frame our communities as victims of American society.

The editorial board and reporter Michael Powell of The New York Times should be ashamed of themselves. They have abandoned any journalistic standards in their factless regurgitation of the CAIR mantra. The New York Times seems to care little about genuine Muslim diversity or addressing the root causes of terrorism. This latest attack is simply part of a systematic attempt to dismantle the efforts of NYPD to address the root causes of radicalization within American Muslim communities.

In 2007 the NYPD released a landmark report entitled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. This report was a seminal piece of research now used around the world on how radicalization occurs. As an American Muslim I embraced this research as a blueprint which Muslims should have initiated to confront the threat knocking on the door of our communities every day. Groups like CAIR saw it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between American Muslims and law enforcement and to preach a victim mindset within our community. Interestingly the behaviors that CAIR is illustrating are eerily similar to the models laid out in the NYPD report.

The story that the New York Times ran this week is over a year old. It didn’t gain momentum last year primarily because it is an insignificant story and its merits paled in comparison to world-wide attention brought to bear on the revolutions in Egypt which erupted shortly thereafter. America’s attention span for the Middle East has worn thin and when a new kernel of information was released CAIR seized that opportunity to reignite the furor. The “shocking” evidence was that 1,500 NYPD officers saw a film that is readily available to the general public and probably already viewed by millions.

This effort by CAIR is a blatant attempt to punish the NYPD and Chief Kelly for doing their job and to strike fear in the heart of anyone that does legitimate work in exposing their lifeblood of Islamism. Political correctness has made mere claims of discrimination and racial bias irrefutable and removed the ability for Americans to have honest discourse on religious issues. The Third Jihad is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. If it were I would not have been a part of it.

“It was an opportunity for me, said Jasser, “to speak with co-religionists about the threat that exists to our children and our very way of life. It is a wake-up call for our community to accept our responsibility to fight against an ideology within our communities that seeks to strip us of our Constitutional freedoms. CAIR’s victimization of American Muslims emboldens that sinister ideology.”

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The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org.