For many years now, the New York Times has sanitized radical Islamic groups, militant Islamic leaders and even Islamic terrorist attacks. The paper has does this by deliberately omitting critical details that would discredit Islamist groups. For example, the Timesroutinely describesthe Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) as either being a civil rights or a Muslim advocacy group. In reality, CAIR was started as a front for Hamas and continues to serve as one. But over the course of more than two decades, the Timeshas never reported on any of the many government documents and official transcripts that prove CAIR’s role as a front group for Hamas.
And when reporting on many of the Islamic terrorist attacks that have occurred in Europe in recent years, the Times has often omitted the key fact that the Islamist attacker often yelled out “Allahu Akbar” before committing his terrorist atrocity, despite no such reluctance by European media to report such critical facts.
Last week’s Times‘ reporting on the arrests of Muslim extremists in a compound with 11 starving children who were being taught to carry out school shootings offers a glaring case in point.
Local authorities searching for a missing special needs 3-year-old boy discovered his body, and 11 starving children, on a remote New Mexico compound loaded with weapons. In a story on the discovery and resulting arrests of the adults involved, the Times omitted a key statement the local New Mexico sheriff made earlier in the week who said, according to the Associated Press, that the “adults [arrested] at the compound were considered ‘extremist of the Muslim belief’ adding that it was part of the investigation.” The AP reported those comments; why didn’t the Times?
And when the Times described Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the father of one of the adults arrested, it provided a glaringly incomplete and inaccurate picture:
The elder Mr. Wahhaj has for decades been the imam of Masjid at-Taqwa, which several people connected to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center either attended or visited around the time of the attack. During the investigation of the bombing, the elder Mr. Wahhaj was named on a list of several dozen potential conspirators in the plot, though he was never charged in the case and the list was later criticized for being overly broad, some former terrorism prosecutors said.
To be clear, there is no information connecting Imam Siraj Wahhaj with his son’s alleged crimes or his New Mexico camp.
But the Times ignores a key factor, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, one of the lead prosecutors in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy cases, explained to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The trial court asked prosecutors for a list of unindicted coconspirators, a standard procedure before trial, he said. This is a technical matter, allowing statements that otherwise might be prohibited as hearsay into evidence.
“The point is to alert defense counsel of people whose statements might be offered by the prosecution under the coconspirator exception to the hearsay rule (Rule 801(d)(2)(E)). Under this rule, an out-of-court statement by a member of the conspiracy, made during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy, may be admitted against the defendants,” said McCarthy, who served on the IPT’s board from 2009 to 2011.
Consequently, the point of the coconspirator list is not to make an accusation against anyone. It is in part to alert defense attorneys if they want to prepare any impeachment material to rebut coconspirators whose statements are admitted into evidence under this rule.
The government did not make the list public, McCarthy said. Defense attorneys did. Wahhaj never being charged in the case is irrelevant to his inclusion on the mandated coconspirator list.
Later, Wahhaj testified as a defense witness, praising Omar Abdel Rahman as “a respected scholar” and “a strong preacher of Islam.” Abdel Rahman died in prison last year after being convicted in 1995 of terrorism and seditious conspiracy for masterminding a blot to blow up New York landmarks and murder hundreds of people.
“These lists, moreover, are always overly inclusive, for two reasons,” McCarthy said. “First, they are not filed publicly; the point is to help the defense prepare for trial, not to smear uncharged people. Second, if the prosecution fails to put a name on the list, and then tries to offer a hearsay statement by that person under the coconspirator exception, the court may suppress the statement on the ground that the prosecutor failed to provide notice to the defense.”
Now, why would the Times not name one of these prosecutors let alone all of them? It’s misleading at best to toss out a phrase like “overly broad” without identifying a source or providing any context. It’s not too late. Let the Times belatedly name the “former prosecutors” and explain how the list was “overly broad” in light of the juridical mandate given to the prosecutors as explained by McCarthy.
In selectively omitting the role of militant Islam in the New Mexico arrests or the role it played in the life of the elder Wahhaj, the Times went on to report:
In Brooklyn, a spokesman for the mosque, Ali Abdul-Karim Judan, said in a video posted on Facebook Thursday that the news media and the authorities were engaging in ‘propaganda’ by wrongfully injecting mentions of international terrorism and school violence into what amounted to ‘a domestic situation’ in New Mexico. ‘They’re not bringing up accurate events — they’re bringing up false narratives,’ Mr. Judan said. ‘Look how this case has turned from a domestic situation, and now they’re trying to create an atmosphere where his son is involved with an extremist radical group.’
Furthermore, the Times reported that the “elder Mr. Wahhaj has had a long career as a clergyman, traveling the world and delivering lectures on Islam, and even once gave a religious invocation in Congress.”
But as we showed in our documentary The Grand Deception, Siraj Wahhaj’s invocation at the House of Representatives in 1991, contrary to proving his peaceful legitimacy as the Times clearly suggested, was in fact a ruse to cover up his true militant Islamic beliefs that he had preached before and after his Congressional invocation.
The following video is a 3-minute compilation of clips of Siraj Wahhaj beginning with the clip mentioned above from The Grand Deception and two other clips from radical speeches among many dozens that exist.
[a full transcript of the video above is posted at the end of this article.]
The video shows that Wahhaj was spouting poison as far back as 1982, when he called it “bullshit” for Muslims to pledge allegiance to the American flag. He later called the United States “filthy and sick.” And in 1991, the same year he gave a congressional invocation, Wahhaj called it “an honor to die in Jihad.”
The omissions of key facts and erroneous statements of unidentified sources in this Times story are not the worst in the world. But they are indicative of a much larger and longtime pattern in the Times‘ reporting about incidents involving radical Islam.
This is not only unfair to its readers; it is plainly dishonest.
To be sure, the Times is not the only mainstream media outlet guilty of this de facto cover up in sanitizing radical Islam in the United States and around the world. It is even done by governments. But the Times holds itself to the highest of journalistic integrity. The Times historically has played a prominent role in uncovering corruption and injustice. But when it comes to radical Islam, it has been blinded by a corrosive political correctness that has infected the entire paper. And that’s not only a scandal but a tragedy.
Transcript:
[Siraj Wahhaj – American Muslim Council (AMC) – Washington, DC, 1991]
Siraj Wahhaj: “In the name of God, most gracious most merciful, guide the leaders of this nation, who have been given a great responsibility in worldly affairs, guide them, and grant them righteousness and wisdom.”
Narrator: “Siraj Wahhaj, a sometime leader and prominent speaker at events hosted by American groups connected with the Muslim Brotherhood, was chosen to give the first Muslim invocation before Congress in 1991.”
Narrator: “Here’s Wahhaj in front of his own congregation… long before his congressional appearance.”
[Siraj Wahhaj – Imam Masjid Al-Taqwa – Brooklyn, NY, 1982]
Siraj Wahhaj: “Every day they would go to school and they would put American flag in front of these little babies, Muslim babies…’I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands’… Bullshit!”
Narrator: “Here he is after his congressional appearance.”
[Siraj Wahhaj – Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) – Brooklyn, NY, 1995]
Siraj Wahhaj: “You wanna defend this country? You know what this country is? It’s a garbage can. It’s filthy, filthy and sick…”
[Here is another sermon by Wahhajin 1991, the same year as his congressional invocation.]
[Siraj Wahhaj – The Afghanistan Jihad – Toronto, Canada – September 28, 1991]
Siraj Wahhaj: “Americans and Canadians. Hear it well. Hear what I’m telling you well. The Americans are not your friends, hear what I’m telling you, hear it well. The Canadians are not your friends, hear what I’m telling you, hear it well. The Europeans are not your friends. Your friend is Allah, the Messenger and those who believe. These people will never be satisfied with you until you follow their religion. They will never be satisfied with you!”
“Allah won’t promise you that you’re not going to die in Jihad. It is an honor to die in Jihad. Yes, an honor. Allah doesn’t. Even when you fight, sometimes they win, sometimes you win. This is the way it is with Allah. That’s the way [we’ve] always done it. So that Allah will know the believers from the disbelievers.”
[And yet still that same year, he gave another sermon revealing the real reason why Muslims should get involved in politics—to establish Islamic hegemony in the US.]
[Siraj Wahhaj- The Muslim Agenda in the New World Order – Dallas, Texas November 15, 1991]
“Wherever you came from, you came to America. You came for one reason and one reason only, to establish Allah’s deen, as a servant of Allah SWT.”
“As long as you remember, that, if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful, that your niyyah (arabic – meaning intention) is for Allah. You don’t get in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”
End Transcript.
This article was originally published at The Investigative Project on Terrorism.
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
