[Reader-list] Obama’s New OIC Envoy Defended Activist Who Aided Terrorist Group

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

*Obama’s New OIC Envoy Defended Activist Who Aided Terrorist Group*

Monday, February 15, 2010
 By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
*(Editor's note: This story was updated on Feb. 16, 2010.) **

(CNSNews.com)* – President Obama’s newly appointed envoy to the Organization
of the Islamic Conference was quoted in 2004 as saying an American who aided
a Palestinian terrorist group was the victim of “politically motivated
persecutions” who was being used “to squash dissent.”

Rashad Hussain was quoted as telling a Muslim students’ event in Chicago
that if U.S. Muslims did not speak out against the injustices taking place
in America, then everyone’s rights would be in jeopardy.

The *Washington Report on Middle East Affairs* (WRMEA) cited Hussain as
making the remarks in connection with Sami al-Arian, a university professor
and activist sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison (including
time already spent in custody) after he had

pleaded guilty <http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/22871> to conspiring to
aid the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

The U.S. government designated the PIJ as a foreign terrorist organization
in 1997, and in 2003, then Attorney-General John Ashcroft described it as
“one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad has killed more than 100 Israelis in suicide
bombings and other attacks. Its victims include American citizens Alisa
Flatow, a 20-year-old New Jersey college student killed in a 1995 suicide
bombing in Gaza, and 16-year-old Shoshana Ben-Ishai, shot dead in a bus in
Jerusalem in 2001.

In sentencing al-Arian, Judge James Moody of the U.S. District Court for the
Middle District of Florida described him as a “leader of the PIJ” and a
“master manipulator.”

Al-Arian remains under home detention in Virginia pending contempt of court
charges relating to his refusal to testify in an unrelated case involving an
Islamic think tank. Sympathizers view him as a victim of post-9/11 law
enforcement zeal and anti-Muslim prejudice. (The WRMEA article described him
as “an innocent man targeted for free-speech activities, whose rights were
stripped thanks in part to the PATRIOT Act.”)

Among those sympathizers, evidently, was Rashad Hussain, who at the time of
the cited remarks was a Yale Law School student and an editor, from
2003-2005, of the Yale Law Journal. He went on to serve as a Department of
Justice trial attorney and in January 2009 was appointed White House deputy
associate counsel.

On Saturday, Obama named the Texas-born, 31-year-old Indian-American as his
envoy to the OIC, the 57-member bloc of Islamic states. The appointment is
in line with the president’s goal, expressed in his speech in Cairo last
June, to reach out to the Islamic world.

Obama made the announcement in a video address at a U.S.-Islamic World Forum
meeting in Qatar, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Hussain
attended over the weekend.

“Rashad has played a key role in developing the partnerships I called for in
Cairo,” Obama told the gathering in the video message. “And as a hafiz of
the Koran, he is a respected member of the American Muslim community, and I
thank him for carrying forward this important work.” (A hafiz is someone who
has memorized the Islamic text.)

*Article edited*

Around three years after the WRMEA article quoting Hussain first appeared,
it was edited to remove all references to him.

A copy of the original 2004 article, retrieved via the Nexis news database,
includes the following sentences:

*Al-Arian’s situation is one of many “politically motivated persecutions,”
claimed Rashad Hussain, a Yale law student. Such persecution, he stated,
must be fought through hope, faith, and the Muslim vote (…) Along with many
others, said Yale’s Hussain, Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been “used politically to
squash dissent.” The Muslim community must speak out against the injustices
taking place in America, he emphasized. Otherwise, everyone’s rights will be
in jeopardy.*

But in the version of the same story currently available on the WRMEA Web
site those sentences – and only those sentences – have disappeared. An
Internet archive search indicates that the edits were made sometime after
October 2007.

Contacted by email on Sunday, the writer of the original article expressed
surprise but said she no longer worked at WRMEA and could not explain the
edit. Queries sent to WRMEA editors brought no response. They were asked
whether either Hussain, or anyone else, had asked for the archived story to
be altered (see the revised
pages<http://www.cybercastnewsservice.org/cns/webuploads/OICenvoy3.pdf>
).

*(Editor's note:  The point concerning the mysterious edits in the WRMEA
article and details about Rashad Hussein's background were
initially reported on the Web site of The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily
Report <http://globalmbreport.com/?p=2173>, on Feb. 14, 2010.)
*
*How to combat terrorism*

Some of Hussain’s views on how the U.S. should deal with terrorism and
extremism can be found in his writings.

A lengthy 2007 article in the *Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil
Rights* examined anti-terrorism initiatives in the U.S. in the post-9/11
era, such as a requirement that nonimmigrant visitors from specified
countries register for fingerprinting and questioning. Of 25 countries
identified, all but North Korea were Islamic, and 17 were Arab.

“Some policies appear to be based on the notion that certain characteristics
make one more likely to be a terrorist: e.g., membership in a particular
religious group, having a particular national origin, and membership in a
particular racial group,” Hussain wrote.

Not only was selective enforcement unconstitutional, but it might also be
“counter-productive from a national security perspective,” he argued, noting
for instance that aliens from non-Muslim nations where al-Qaeda had an
active presence, such as Britain and Spain, were not targeted.

Hussain concluded: “Federal law should adopt a standard that protects
national security while forbidding the targeting of non-citizens solely on
the basis of their racial, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.”

In another article, published by the Brookings Institution in 2008, Hussain
and co-author Al-Husein N. Madhany explored the role of Islam in U.S.
counterterrorism policy.

They said policymakers should understand that people attracted to terrorist
ideology would be less persuaded by calls to Western-style freedom and
democracy than by “calls to Islam.”

“[B]ecause the vast majority of Muslims view Islam as fundamentally opposed
to terror and many Muslims associate American freedom and democracy with
immorality and impermissible secularism, does it make sense to advertise our
efforts as anti-‘Islamic terrorism,’ ‘pro-freedom,’ and ‘pro-democracy?’”
Hussain and Madhany asked. “Or, might it be more effective, to focus on the
notion that terrorism is antithetical to the teachings of Islam?”

Hussain will be the second U.S. envoy to the OIC; President Bush first
appointed one in 2008, naming Pakistan-born Texas businessman Sada Cumber to
the post.

Headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the 40-year-old OIC has become increasingly
visible in recent years, thanks to its activism at the U.N., where it
continues to promote a campaign
<http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/45697>against the “defamation” of
Islam.

The Islamic bloc says there is a need to combat “Islamophobia” that has
reared its head since 9/11; critics of the campaign include free speech
groups and religious freedom advocates, who call it an attempt to shield
Islam and Islamic practices from legitimate scrutiny.