When it rains, it pours. Yesterday, Ben Bowles reported on an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security who is a Syrian-born Muslim and tweeted in 2014 that “9/11 changed the world for the good.”
Astonishingly, that individual, named Laila Alawa, is not the only adviser to the DHS who is Muslim and harbors un-American ideas about the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson notes that Salam Al-Marayati — who does double duty as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s (HSAC) Foreign Fighter Task Force and of the council’s Subcommittee on Faith Based Security and Communications — has accused Israel of masterminding the 9/11 attacks and accused the U.S. of doing Israel’s “dirty work.”
Al-Marayati, who is also president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (busy, busy!), is quoted as having told the New York Times shortly after the attacks, which killed 3,000 innocent Americans:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.
Hasson further cites a special report compiled by Judicial Watch in 2013, which quotes Al-Marayati telling attendees at a 2005 conference for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA):
Counter-terrorism and counter-violence should be defined by us. We should define how an effective counter-terrorism policy should be pursued in this country. So, number one, we reject any effort, notion, suggestion that Muslims should start spying on one another.
As for MPAC, the advocacy group Al-Marayati heads up, Kyle Shideler, director of the Center for Security Policy’s Threat Information Office, notes that the organization “has historically co-sponsored events in support of the very kinds of extremists he’s been appointed to help oppose, which is no surprise given that the organizations roots lay with men who literally studied at the foot of Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan Al-Banna.”
The Homeland Security Advisory Council, which employs both Al-Marayati and Laila Alawa (the subject of yesterday’s post), is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Which is to say that both are paid with American taxpayers’ dollars.
