Fight on the Right: 'Muslim outreach' and a feud between activists

National Review, April 7, 2003 by Byron York

For example, after the White House took heat for the September 26, 2001, meeting with the president, administration officials are said to have pledged to be more careful in the screening process in the future. But, in January of this year, CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper and Jason Erb, communications director and government-affairs director, respectively, were back in the White House for a briefing on immigration policy. (Not long after, a former CAIR employee who had done community-relations work in Washington was arrested in New York on terrorism-related charges.)

Gaffney and others have urged the administration to concentrate outreach efforts on more moderate Muslim groups. They worry that the inclusion of groups like CAIR in White House events gives them a credibility they could find nowhere else, making it easier for them to meet with officials in the cabinet departments and on Capitol Hill.

What particularly worries some observers is the possibility that White House contacts with some of the Muslim groups and leaders might be more extensive than is publicly known -- and that the president's political opponents will try to exploit them. Indeed, on February 27, California Democratic congressman Henry Waxman wrote a letter to the Secret Service requesting all electronic records of visits by Sami al-Arian to the White House complex. Waxman also asked for "all requests, whether granted or denied, by White House employees that Sami al-Arian be admitted to the White House complex." And he asked whether the Secret Service had identified al-Arian's alleged terrorist connections and objected to his visit, only to be overruled by White House officials.

Administration officials say they will try to "accommodate" Waxman's request. Perhaps nothing will come of it, but they cannot simply dismiss his concerns. Waxman functions as a sort of lead scout for Democrats, a congressman willing to make inquiries into topics that might bear fruit politically but that other politicians are too timid to broach. For example, he took a leading role in demanding that Vice President Cheney release documents from his energy task force; even though some Republicans did not take it seriously at first, Cheney ended up facing a lawsuit from the General Accounting Office over the matter (the suit was dismissed).

So there is a much bigger conflict going on behind the ugly battle between Frank Gaffney and Grover Norquist. Conservatives might wish that it would go away -- or at least that Norquist would stop calling people racists and bigots -- but they first have to worry about the administration's Muslim outreach program, which gave rise to the conflict in the first place.