Why Didn't Anderson Cooper Keep Suhail Khan Honest?

Last night, in the “Keeping Them Honest” segment of his “360” program on CNN, Anderson Cooper broadcast a debate between me and Suhail Khan, a self-styled “conservative” Muslim. Unfortunately, Cooper seemed much less interested in keeping Khan honest than in dismissing material facts that have come to light in a spate of news reports, op.ed. articles and videos – facts that reveal Khan to be an individual with longstanding and deep family/personal ties with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan), an organization whose professed mission is to “destroy Western civilization from within.”

The central question of the segment was whether the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to insinuate itself into and subvert or otherwise influence the conservative movement in America? I argued that was the case – as a subset of the MB’s larger, seditious agenda in this country – and that Suhail Khan is playing an important role in that initiative.

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Khan’s attempts to contend otherwise (primarily by attacking me) rested on a series of claims so demonstrably false as to substantially make my case – and discredit his, and him. For example:

• In response to a direct question from the host, Suhail Khan declared that his father was not in the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, it is a matter of record that, after his arrival in this country from Pakistan, Mahboob Khan became one of the founders of the first MB organization in the United States: the Muslim Students Association (MSA). He went on to serve in prominent roles in the largest MB front in this country, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). His contributions to ISNA are so revered that it gives out a service award in his memory.

Now, as it happens, when he asked the question, Anderson Cooper had in hand a 14-page memorandum that I had sent to the American Conservative Union board a week ago. Among other things, it quoted Suhail Khan himself describing his father’s ties to the MSA and ISNA to the latter’s annual convention in 1999:

It is a special honor for me to be here before you today because I am always reminded of the legacy of my father, Dr. Mahboob Khan, an early founder of the Muslim Students Association in the mid-60s and an active member of the organization through its growth and development in the Islamic Society of North America.

For good measure, my memorandum points out that, in a presentation to the ISNA convention in 2001, Suhail Khan enthused about the supporting role his mother, Malika, had also played in launching a number of known Muslim Brotherhood organizations:

She worked with her husband to establish organizations like the MSA, ISNA, CAIR, American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice. She worked hard to establish an Islamic center in Orange County. She worked hard to establish an Islamic center and the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, and she still works hard today. And, inshallah, I work for my mother and I work for you. There’s a dream that is America. And, inshallah, with your work and your help, we will make that dream a reality. Inshallah.

Cooper ignored one other data point about Suhail Khan’s lineage in the Muslim Brotherhood: My memorandum reported that Malika Khan continues to this day to serve on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) – one of the organizations proven in federal court to be a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian franchise, the U.S.-Designated Terrorist Organization known as Hamas.

If Anderson Cooper had truly been interested in keeping Suhail Khan honest, he might also have noted a point made by Paul Sperry yesterday pointed out in his excellent essay about Khan yesterday at Front Page Magazine: Mrs. Khan’s “chapter last week put up a poster on its website advising Muslims: ‘Don’t talk to the FBI,’ and ‘build a wall of resistance’ against law enforcement.” Interestingly, that message – which was roundly and properly condemned last week – was promoted as long ago as October 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, by (among other Brotherhood fronts) the American Muslim Council, the organization founded and long led by Suhail’s “supporter,” Abdurahman Alamoudi.

• Anderson Cooper also allowed Suhail Khan to simply deny that the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American Islamic were, in fact, Muslim Brotherhood organizations. We know this statement is an outright falsehood because, not least, the Muslim Brotherhood’s own documents show them to be among “our organizations and organizations of our friends.” fCAIR’s progenitor, the Islamic Association for Palestine, is listed in an attachment to the 1991 MB strategic plan called the “Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group,” as were the Muslim Students Association and the Islamic Society of North America. This memorandum was introduced uncontested into evidence by the Department of Justice in the course of the Holy Land Foundation trial in 2008 – the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history.

• At one point in the interview, when Khan was audible but off-camera, I heard him second Cooper’s suggestion that he did not even know Abdurahman Alamoudi when the latter presented Khan with an award at an American Muslim Council convention in June 2001. In fact, in a video made on the occasion it is clear that Alamoudi – at the time a top Muslim Brotherhood operative and currently a convicted felon serving a 23-year sentence on terrorism-related charges – knew Suhail Khan and his father well, and vice versa. Here’s how Alamoudi introduced Suhail Khan at the AMC event:

We have with us a dear brother, a pioneer, somebody who really started political activism in the Muslim community. And somebody different. A young man, not old and grumpy like many of us, but a young man who pioneered from many, many young men and women who started political activism when it was a taboo for the Muslim community, no doubt about it.

When Suhail Khan started not too many people were aware that we had to do something. I am really proud to be with Suhail Khan. Some of you saw [him] in today the White House but, inshallah, soon you see him in better places in the White House. Inshallah. Maybe sometimes as vice-president soon, inshallah. Allahu akbar.

Suhail Khan is the son of a dear, dear brother who was a pioneer of Islam work himself. Many of you know his late father [Mahboob Khan] who was part of all kinds of work and…Suhail inherited from his father not only being a Muslim and a Muslim activist, but also being a Muslim political activist.

After that introduction, the younger Khan actually told the audience at the time: “…Abdulrahman Alamoudi [was among those who] have been very supportive of me and I want to give them thanks.”

It is predictable that the more Suhail Khan sallies out for the purpose of dissembling, misleading and perpetuating the stealth jihad through false denials, evasions and deflections, the more his efforts to influence and subvert the conservative movement will come a cropper. That highly desirable outcome will be facilitated and accelerated, though, if journalists like Anderson Cooper actually try to keep him honest.