Edward I. Koch
Saturday, June 5, 2004

Last week in Saudi Arabia, terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida took more than 50 foreigners captive at one of the major foreign worker compounds situated in Khobar on the Persian Gulf. Before Saudi commandos could counterattack, 22 of the hostages were killed, of which nine had their throats cut when they tried to escape. One captive was murdered and his body dragged for a mile behind a car.

An Iraqi-American was spared after being asked to prove he was Muslim. “Don’t be afraid, they told me. We won’t kill Muslims – even if you are American,” reported Abu Hashemed in the New York Post.

The favorite method of killing infidels – Christians, called “Crusaders” by the terrorists, and Jews – is apparently by ritual throat-slitting. That was done in Pakistan to Danny Pearl and in Afghanistan to Nicholas Berg, both of whom were videotaped having their throats slit by their killers for worldwide distribution.

Where is the worldwide condemnation of these latest killings by the political and religious leaders of Muslim countries? Where are the U.N. resolutions sponsored by France and Germany condemning what occurred?

Can you imagine the denunciations from world leaders if the U.S., Britain or Israel perpetrated acts even half as savage? Of course you can. The vilification of the U.S., in addition to the opprobrium directed at the individuals who actually perpetuated the tortures at the Abu Ghraib prison, continues week after week with pictures old and new in nearly constant rerun – not only in the Arab media but also on American television by American reporters and commentators.

We are appalled at what took place in our name at Abu Ghraib, and the U.S. military command is bent on identifying and punishing all who participated in the tortures, from top to bottom. Compare how the Muslim world reacts to outrages committed by their own.

Not only are terrorists often not punished by Moslem governmental authorities, they are, to the contrary, treated as freedom fighters by hundreds of millions of Muslims throughout the world.

There are more than a billion Muslims, and the hundreds of millions who regard Osama bin Laden and his followers as heroes may still be a minority. Nevertheless, it is shameful that Muslim governments permit the teaching of hate against foreigners in schools and mosques, which leads to the killing of innocent civilians simply because of their religion.

The FBI has been called to task – unjustifiably, in my view – for arresting an American lawyer when that agency mistook his fingerprints for those found by the Spanish police in connection with the Madrid bombings. Those bombings resulted in 191 deaths and 1,800 injuries. When the FBI discovered its identification error – which was made not only by FBI experts but also by an outside consultant, who agreed with the FBI’s original conclusion – the individual arrested was released from custody.

The lawyer and his supporters now allege discrimination and racial profiling because he had converted to the Muslim religion, and he had represented as a lawyer persons who were alleged to have contacts with terrorists, a lawyer-client relationship that he had every right to engage in.

Nevertheless, shouldn’t the FBI in protecting this country from acts of terrorism use these factors along with the fingerprint match? I think if they had not, it would have been a dereliction of duty.

Writing in the New York Sun this week, Daniel Pipes listed seven reasons why the profile of Brandon Mayfield, the lawyer arrested and later freed, reasonably caused the FBI to wrongly arrest him. Two points were especially compelling:

“He prayed in the same Bilal Mosque as did several individuals – Maher Nawash, Ahmed Ibrahim Bilal and Muhammad Ibrahim Bilal – who pleaded guilty in 2003 to conspiring to help the Taliban. The mosque’s website contains links to militant Islamic organizations, including some ‘charities’ closed down by the American government for funding terrorism.”

Pipes is not alone in his reasoning. According to Pipes, Saudi specialist Stephen Schwartz claims that Bilal is “a fairly typical Wahhabi-controlled mosque.” Furthermore, “while studying law at Washburn University in Kansas, Mr. Mayfield helped organize a branch of the Muslim Student Association, a group described by analyst Jonathan Dowd-Gailey as ‘an overtly political organization’ espousing ‘Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism – and expressing solidarity with militant Islamic ideologies, sometimes with criminal results.’”

Mayfield – in understandably protesting his arrest, and he was innocent – said: “I am an American Muslim. I have been singled out and discriminated against, I feel, as a Muslim.”

The American Civil Liberties Union agrees with him. The New York Times, writes Pipes, “disapprovingly notes that the decision to detain Mr. Mayfield was clearly influenced by his Muslim ties.” Of course it was, and under these circumstances, the FBI was right to do so.

Edward I. Koch is the former mayor of New York City. His commentary for Bloomberg radio is republished here. You can hear his weekly radio show by clicking here.