Anderson Cooper, the master of the TV match-up, had on both terrorism "expert" and sharia alarmist Frank Gaffney and Suhail Khan, a board member of the Amercian Conservative Union whom Gaffney has accused of being an operative of Muslim jihadists.
Earlier this month, Gaffney took to World News Daily to accuse Khan, a Republican who served in the second Bush administration, of being a jihadist infiltrator to the Conservative Political Action Conference. Gaffney said Khan was an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood, a catch-all group that no longer operates in the United States, but which Gaffney and others connect to prominent Muslim groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Muslims For America.
In an interview with TPM, Khan described how "every few months there's a different iteration of [Gaffney] and his cohorts' wild accusations," but it is simply untrue, and a part of Gaffney's "temper tantrum" that he has been marginalized by the conservative movement.
But in an article yesterday on World Net Daily called "Now look who else is infiltrating CPAC," Gaffney "told WND that Islamism has infiltrated the American Conservative Union, the host of CPAC, in the person of Washington attorney and political activist Suhail Khan and a group called Muslims for America."
Gaffney has been a go-to shariah "expert" on the right for some time -- he even testified against a proposed mosque project in Murfreesboro, TN, and then said on CNN that the purpose of mosques "is to destroy western civilization from within."
"What's going on in conservative circles should give everyone real cause for concern," Gaffney told World Net Daily. "What it bespeaks is an effort to penetrate and influence conservatives, who are the most likely and perhaps only community in America who will stand up to and ultimately help ensure the defeat of this seditious totalitarian political program."
Khan, a former appointee in the Bush Administration and now a Senior Fellow for Christian-Muslim Understanding at the Institute for Global Engagement, dismissed the article in a phone interview with TPM today. He described how after September 11 the claim was that he was "an Al Qaeda operative in the Bush Administration," now it's that he's a member of the Muslim Brotherhood -- "next week I'll be a closet girl scout."
"Every one of his assertions is completely untrue," Khan said, adding that Gaffney "doesn't want to let a few silly facts in the way of good story."
Khan also described how Gaffney has "become completely marginalized in the conservative movement," and describes the article as a "temper tantrum given that he is being ignored."
One of the claims, which Khan called "laughable," was that his late father was a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood. His father was from South India, while the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt. "It's very annoying, and especially sad that he would besmirch the memory of my late father."
As for CPAC, Khan does serve on the ACU board, and said he might spend some time volunteering in the Muslims For America booth, but he has no official role in the group.
It's good TV. Watch:
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Friday, January 21st 2011 at 12:11PM
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