“Your city, in the 1980s, gave birth to Al-Qaida in America,” terrorism expert Steven Emerson stated before an audience of nearly 500 at the Tucson Jewish Community Center Monday. The statement referred to the Tucson connection found in FBI agent Kenneth Williams’ “Phoenix memo,” warning of the existence of a group of radical Muslims in Arizona, some of whom were attending flight school in the state. According to Williams, terror suspects had lived in Tucson even before the establishment of Al-Qaida and had helped create the organization.
Emerson’s visit to Tucson was marked by controversy, and attendees were greeted by a group of demonstrators bearing large sign with the words “SCAPEGOATING HURTS US ALL.” Regarding the protesters, Emerson said, “My attempts to expose the threat of radical Islam is now the subject of a protest outside [and] these protestors would be better served if they would spend their energy opposing terrorism.” His remark drew a wave of applause from the audience.
Critics have argued that Emerson’s writings, which include the bestseller Jihad in America: The Terrorists Living Among Us, have helped foment a climate of Islamophobia in the United States. Well aware of these criticisms, he acknowledged the existence of “Jewish, Christian, and Islamic terrorists.” However, he continued, “in recent years, the preponderance of terrorist attacks have been carried out by Muslim extremists.” He argued that “while not all Muslims are terrorists, the radical Muslim Brotherhood has taken control of the established Muslim community in recent years.”
Emerson also charged that the Council on American-Islamic Relations, along with other mainstream Islamic organizations, “has a modus operandi which is to allege hate crimes” which are mostly “exaggerated, misrepresented, or fabricated” in order to create allegations of a “war on Islam.” He went on to denounce CAIR’s “fatwa against Muslim extremism and terrorism” as a media campaign aimed at diverting attention from what he said is the organization’s indirect support of radicalism.
According to Emerson, this indirect support comes in the form of “cultural jihad,” and the portrayal of organizations such as Hamas as organizations of “resistance” rather than “terrorism.” He referred to the gathering of demonstrators outside as examples of the phenomenon, for their “support, implicit or explicit, of terror attacks as part of resistance against the West.”
Following Emerson’s presentation, Near Eastern Studies professor and Muslim convert Scott Lucas gave a 5-minute rebuttal. “My first point,” he said, “is that alliances change.” Just as the U.S. once supported the Taliban and the Hussein regime, Lucas argued, the majority of Muslims who lent support to radical Islam in the 1990s have since changed their minds due to repression on the part of radical governments. He went on to say that “the vast majority of American Muslims believe that the killing of civilians is wrong,” whether in the form of terrorist attacks on Americans and Israelis or in the form of Muslim civilians killed in military operations. “Here is my modest suggestion,” he said, concluding “Muslims need to learn more about Judaism and Jewish culture, and I hope this series will accomplish just that.”