Michael Coren: John Rossomando is co-author of 'A Red Carpet for Radicals at the White House,' which you are going to hear about, and he's also a senior analyst with the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Welcome to you sir.
John Rossomando: Thank you Michael for having me.
Coren: Now, you've co-written this piece. You've found out who has been visiting the White House, and the results are worrying. Explain all, please.
Rossomando: Back in February we started combing through millions of White House log records, and we discovered disturbingly that hundreds of meetings have been participated in by radical Muslims since Barack Obama became president. Many of these individuals belong to groups identified in court and in internal Muslim Brotherhood documents as fronts for the terrorist group Hamas and for the Muslim Brotherhood itself.
I mean these groups include the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the International Institute for Islamic Thought, and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
These groups have, among other things, called for the destruction of Israel, condoned terror attacks by Hamas and Hizballah, sought to obstruct terror investigations by telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement and … tried to provide the idea that the United States was somehow at war with Islam.
Canadian intelligence said a few years back that's the leading cause for radicalization of Muslims.
It would seem to us that this is a rather disturbing turn of events. We shouldn't be having a Muslim outreach that panders to groups that condone terror attacks against our allies or any sort of terror attacks, while at the same time moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and others get put out in the cold.
Coren: Let me interrupt you for a moment because I just want to play for people out there. We have some audio. We have subtitles here because although most of it's in English. It's not always entirely clear, and some is in Arabic. But this is someone who went and had a lovely meeting in the White House.
Let's go and listen and have a look at that now please. (Audio of Esam Omeish: "Bullets and bombs are going off on our brothers in Filistin, and we are sitting here and saying (Arabic phrase), instead feeling that it is our tax money and it is our dollars that killed our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. ) And other lyrical poetry of course.
What about the argument though that the administration is reaching out to people to invite them in to tell them that you have got to change your way. They are not saying, "Well done guys, carry on." They are saying, "We don't agree with you."
Rossomando: I think what we have here is they are more interested in getting Muslim votes and going to these radical groups, and … they are legitimizing them. I don't see how we can moderate them. There are a lot of moderate Muslims out there like Sufis who don't believe in violent jihad or anything of this sort. The document in Arabic that you referenced talks about a quote endquote "civilizational jihad," which thanks to this administration, the FBI and other law enforcement can't reference because it's considered to be Islamophobic.
I mean, how can it be Islamophobic when the Muslim Brotherhood activists who crafted it themselves, and we caught it in a 2004 raid of an activist that came to light in the Holy Land trial?
Coren: Some of these I am aware of. Hussam Ayluosh, for example, director of CAIR's Los Angeles office. He's a very well-known figure listed, and there were many by the way, listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror trial in your history. Esam Omeish, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, - the Muslim American Society – which is clearly Muslim Brotherhood. I think he was the one who called for jihad on Jerusalem Day.
These people are not ambivalent. It is not unclear where they stand, and as you say, there are many other moderate Muslims who are under constant attack from radicals. You wonder why they were not empowered.
Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it.