Muslim Group Objects To McCain's Terminology

From this article in the April 21, 2008 edition of the Washington Times:

A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

[...]

Michael Ledeen, a terrorism analyst at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, backed Mr. McCain's definition of the enemy.

[...]

Of ISNA's criticism, Mr. Ledeen said, "They're just silly. What a silly thing to say. I talk of Marxist extremists and nationalist extremists. They just don't want people to say there are Islamic terrorists, which there are. Too bad."

The WaPo article also contains this surreal information:

The publication Jewish Week, in an April 2 article, quoted a rabbi as praising ISNA for reaching out to the Jewish community in the United States. "They feel strongly it is time to move forward," the rabbi said.

Information about ISNA, from Discover The Networks.org, clearly explains what ISNA is all about:

...ISNA focuses heavily on providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. Many of these mosques were recently built with Saudi money and are required, by their Saudi benefactors, to strictly follow the dictates of Wahhabi imams -- an edict that affects the tone and content of the sermons given in the mosques, the selection of books and periodicals that may be read in mosque libraries or sold in mosque bookshops, and the policies governing the exclusion or suppression of dissenters from the congregations.

Through its affiliate, the North American Islamic Trust -- a Saudi government-backed organization created to fund Islamist enterprises in North America -- the Saudi-subsidized ISNA reportedly holds the mortgages on 50 to 80 percent of all mosques in the U.S. and Canada. Thus the organization can freely exercise ultimate authority over these houses of worship and their teachings....

The entire article is HERE.

Here's to hoping that Senator McCain understands what ISNA really is and really stands for. In any case, Hillary and Obama aren't taking a strong stand against Islamic terrorism.

(crossposted to The Astute Bloggers)