As President Bush prepares to host Ramadan feasts at the White House this week to bolster Muslim support for the war on terrorism, he is shadowed by criticism of the administration's outreach efforts to American Muslims during the past two months.
Jewish groups and some conservatives have been lobbying the president to stop courting certain Muslim leaders who, they say, have equivocated on terrorism by condemning the Sept. 11 attacks but praising Hamas and Hezbollah. Those two groups, which are fighting Israel, are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
"It's a very simple proposition," said Phil Baum, executive director of the American Jewish Congress. "The White House ought to be certain that the people they associate with don't defend, excuse or condone suicide bombing."
The pressure presents the administration with a problem. Many of the Muslim leaders being criticized are popular in their communities. Their visible support for the president is critical to Bush's contention that the war is against terrorism, not Muslims, and certainly not American Muslims. And even before the war, Arab Americans had proven themselves good friends to Bush -- they supported him en masse in the 2000 election.
The White House has rejected the idea that any Muslim leader would be excluded for statements he made in the past, and sources there say the White House is expanding its list of Muslim contacts. At the same time, these sources say, the White House has begun to vet more carefully leaders who appear with the president.
Two weeks ago, the administration ran a list of 25 prospective guests for an event past some of the critics, according to two sources. Among the additions on the list were people affiliated with the Islamic Institute, a key Republican ally. Among the better-known organizations absent was the Council on American Islamic Relations. The sources said CAIR had "lost the P.R. battle," meaning it was omitted from that list because of the criticism.
After they learned of the list earlier this month, CAIR leaders released a statement calling for an end to an "Islamophobic smear campaign." They said the media and some politicians were allowing "themselves to be used as unwitting tools" of pro-Israeli analysts and Jewish groups such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Defense League.
"We do not support terrorism in any way, shape or form," the release said.
A recent skirmish in Florida reflected the same issues at play at the White House. After the Florida Human Relations Commission invited a CAIR representative to a meeting on civil rights, local Jewish groups, led by the Anti-Defamation League, boycotted the meeting on the advice of their national offices.
The ADL gave the state commission the same rationale it gave the White House: "On the subject of terrorism, they are two-faced," said Art Teitelbaum, executive director of the southern area of ADL.
To support the accusation, the ADL cited CAIR's 1996 report on anti-Muslim discrimination, which quoted attorneys for Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman as saying that his trial was unfair. Rahman is serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up bridges and tunnels in New York. In addition, Teitelbaum said, CAIR board member Sari Wahaj was mentioned by a prosecutor as a possible co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"It makes my blood boil to hear these same accusations over and over," CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. CAIR's 1996 report made a one-paragraph mention of Rahman's attorney, he said, and Wahaj is "one of the most respected leaders in the community."
"The prosecutors gave hundreds of names, anyone within 100 miles of Sheikh Rahman," Hooper said.
The ADL came back with more recent evidence, an Oct. 12, 2001, interview that Al-haj Ghazi Khankan, executive director of CAIR's New York office, had given the Jewish Week.
"From a religious point of view, [Palestinians] have the right to defend themselves. Such self-defense cannot be equated with [Osama] bin Laden," Khankan was quoted as saying. "The people of Hamas who direct their attacks on the Israeli military are in the correct position. Those who attack civilians are wrong."
When asked whether he considered Jewish settlers as civilian or military, he added: "Who is a soldier in Israel and who is not? Anyone over 18 is automatically inducted into the service, and they are all reserves. Therefore, Hamas in my opinion looks at them as part of the military. Those who are below 18 should not be attacked."
Teitelbaum said he asked Hooper to characterize Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another group that supports suicide bombers. He said that he asked four times and that finally Hooper hung up on him.
Hooper acknowledged hanging up. "We resent this whole inquisitional position that you have to answer this and that and then we'll let you into society," he said. "It's not our job to go around denouncing, that when they say jump, we say how high."
Muslim leaders under less pressure will acknowledge that they disagree with the State Department's designation as terrorists some of the groups fighting Israel. Many particularly disagree with the new anti-terrorist legislation's expansion of that definition.
Hezbollah, the group fighting in southern Lebanon, is "a legitimate military operation," and many of its activities are social, such as running hospitals and schools, said Hussein Ibish, head of the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee.
"You will have a tough time convincing Arabs that Hezbollah are terrorists while the tactics of the Israeli military are not, whether it's kidnapping, bombing of civilians, torturing or shooting people."
Ibish said he knew that the pro-Israeli critics were exaggerating because they had called him a fundamentalist. "I couldn't be more hedonistic, debauched, and I'm proud of it," he said. "These people just want to have a monologue when it comes to Israel. They just want to play a game of gotcha!"
The pressure on the administration is not coming just from Jewish groups. A split is emerging between two wings of the Republican Party -- libertarians who consider Muslims the party's greatest immigrant asset and conservatives who conceive of the war exactly the way Bush tries to avoid, as a cosmic one between Islam and the West.
The emerging spokesmen for the latter group are Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation.
"There is no such thing as peaceful Islam," Lind said. "Islamics cannot fit into an America in which the first loyalty is to the American Constitution. They should be encouraged to leave. They are a fifth column in this country."
On the opposite side are people such as Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist calls Muslims "natural conservatives." After the election, Norquist wrote an article in the American Spectator headlined: "George W. Bush was elected president of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote."
Bush had campaigned at mosques and spoke out against a 1996 law permitting secret evidence to be used in deportation proceedings. He won the endorsement of most major American Muslim groups.
In predominately Arab American precincts in working-class Dearborn, Mich., for example, voters switched dramatically from voting 3 to 1 for Bill Clinton over Robert J. Dole in 1996 to backing Bush over Al Gore by ratios of more than 3 to 1.
In 1998, Norquist co-founded the Islamic Institute with lobbyist Khaled Saffurri. The institute is credited with giving the Arab American community, including many of those invited to the White House since Sept. 11, entree to the Republican Party. This networking is what had led to the White House's current problem.
For example, Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was chosen by the White House to attend a prayer service with the president, said at a Washington rally last year that "we are all supporters of Hamas." Saffurri once worked for him when Alamoudi was president of the American Muslim Council.
White House sources expressed frustration at this "guilt by association," where any Muslim leader who worked with someone who once said something objectionable is automatically deemed unsuitable to appear with the president.
"You can always dig for a quote somewhere," a White House source said. "They [the critics] are asking for moderates. But I'm not sure the moderates they want have any following."