08/23/10: Suhail Khan talks about Ground Zero Mosque controversy on Rachel Maddow Show

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Transcript:

RACHEL MADDOW:

We begin tonight with what has fast become the most embarrassing non-Justin Beaver related obsession of the summer of 2010. It is the proposed building of an Islamic community center in downtown New York City. Now this story—this talking point, maybe—has quickly become a study in political awkwardness for many conservatives. [BEGIN GLENN BECK CLIPS]

GLENN BECK:

The imam from the Ground Zero mosque apparently wants shariah law in America.

GLENN BECK:

The imam of the proposed Ground Zero mosque won’t even denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization.
GLENN BECK:

Let me ask you this, would a moderate imam, a peaceful Muslim, employ another imam who told an Arabic language website that quote only the Jews could have perpetrated the 9-11 attack?

RACHEL MADDOW:

Here’s what I mean about awkwardness with this story on the political right. That host that you just saw there in those clips, this guy here, Glenn Beck, before spending this summer inveighing against the imam and what Mr. Beck calls the Ground Zero mosque, before this became this summer’s scare story talking point, Mr. Beck himself appeared on TV with that very same imam. Not to inveigh against him, but to join him in promoting a moderate vision of Islam. Former Bush Administration official, Karen Hughes, is having the same kind of awkwardness with her own record in this story. Miss Hughes has now written an op-ed arguing that the planned cultural center of downtown New York City should be moved further away from the World Trade Center site, calling the plan to build there especially contentious, because, she says, quote, it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th, 2001. An Islamic community center goes to heart of who is to blame for the attacks of September 11th? If that does not make any sense to you, rest assured it probably does not make any sense to Karen Hughes either. Because Karen Hughes also knows the imam behind the proposed Islamic center she is arguing shouldn’t be built or should at least be moved. In fact, she worked with him on Muslim outreach during the Bush Administration. They in fact traveled together side by side to promote a moderate vision of Islam.

So how’s he such a radical now? What explains the sudden turnaround? What explains the fact that people who have had dealings in the past with this specific person—with the imam behind the proposed Islamic center in downtown Manhattan and know him to be a moderate and who have said so out loud, what explains why they suddenly have decided that the man is so dangerous? The difference is that now this moderate imam’s community center has been declared this month’s new scare white people story. So the truth about the imam doesn’t matter anymore. The truth about the cultural center that they want to build downtown doesn’t matter anymore. It’s time to scare white people for political profit. And this formula should be pretty familiar by now. We’ve already been through episodes of the scare white people game recently. There was the one about Van Jones, who was smeared on Fox News as a violent convicted felon. Of course that wasn’t true. But he still lost his job as a White House environmental adviser. Be afraid. Be afraid of policy wonk dorky guy, Van Jones. Of course, there was also ACORN, a mostly minority, community based organization attacked as a group of criminal thugs. Based largely on cooked-up, deceptively-edited videotapes created by right wing activists. Be afraid. Be afraid of the minority community organizing group made up of poor people. There was the completely ginned-up new Black Panthers episode. White people, be afraid of two whacked out guys who braid their beard hair and hang outside a polling station on election day a year and a half ago. We dug up the old tapes so you can be afraid.

And also, don’t forget Shirley Sherrod who, thanks again, to video-editing designed to be misleading, was portrayed as a racist Obama administration official. Racist in that she was out to make sure that white people didn’t get any help from the Department of Agriculture. White people, be afraid. Be afraid of Shirley Sherrod. After all of these other very recent  chapters in the scare white people political playbook, a, we should have been ready for it. But, b, it’s quite clear that it’s time for a new one. So the Ground Zero mosque controversy was born. What’s worth noting about all of these different scare white people stories is that they’re not really actual news stories. I mean, no real news organizations started running with this story as actual news. The best scare white people stories are invented out of whole cloth. From inside the conservative media world. So they can be just the right kind of scary in just the right kind of way in order to drive just the right political consequences. So, ultimately, if the conservative media drives this to make it big enough, then normal news organizations pick it up, too. Sometimes because they’re guilted into it by conservatives. But no non-Fox, non-conservative media outlet ever starts these things. The problem is, once they get going,  some people get caught up in them. Take, for example, poor Laura Ingraham, the conservative talk show host who had the misfortune of talking about the mosque in non-scary terms. Before everybody got the memo that this was the new scare white people story. Poor Karen Hughes, poor Glenn Beck. They’ve all been caught doing an about-face on this story since it has been named the new scare white people story of the summer.

But here’s where it gets really embarrassing for our friends on the right. It’s not just about having to walk back their earlier comments that made it seem like they’re now trying to create a controversy where they admit there wasn’t one just a few months ago. It’s that the way, way, way, way, way, way right wing really wants this fake controversy to be about more than just this one Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan at the hallowed ground that is the former Burlington Coat Factory. The really, really really, really right wing that’s very excited about this story has latched on to this opportunity to make their draconian anti-Islam message try to resonate around the country. They are trying to start a nationwide protest movement not against just this one Islamic cultural center, but against all mosques. Against all Muslims. And the problem with that plan is that they are overplaying their hand. Yeah. So now instead of having this narrowly-focused ridiculous outrage over one Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan, generated out of whole cloth like these other stories designed to scare white people in advance of elections, instead of that—you’ve got a broad anti-mosque crusade. And it’s kind of falling apart because the pros aren’t in charge of this anymore. This thing got too big and there were too many people on the very far right wing of American politics ready to run with this in a direction that is sort of off the cliff.  [ROLLS CLIP]

PAMELA GELLER:

It is a triumph. It’s triumphal. We know that Islamic pattern is to build giant mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.

PAMELA GELLER:

We know from research done by [UNCLEAR] that four out of five mosques preach a hate and preach incitement to violence.

RACHEL MADDOW:

That was one of the driving forces behind this story. Pamela Geller of the group Stop Islamicization of America. Citing statistics live on television. Four out of five mosques preach hate and preach incitement of violence. Now, as she said, that statistic comes from a group called, ironically enough, SANE. The Society of Americans for National Existence. It was one of those groups that was named after a drunk game of Boggle. This group is famous previously for claiming that black people—black Americans, specifically, are inherently violent. And that, yes, there was discrimination written into this country’s founding documents, but maybe that’s why this country turned out so great. Think about it.  They also say they want to outlaw Islam. Not symbolically or hyperbolically, they actually want to make it illegal to be a Muslim in America. And they’ve put it in writing. Here’s their proposed resolution to criminalize Islam in this country. I am not making this up. I didn’t Photoshop this thing. It’s the real thing. And without any adults around to hit the brakes, these are the folks who are being allowed to drive the national discussion in this country on the current scare white people political tactic. Joining us now is Suhail Khan. He’s the chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition. He’s a former aide in George W. Bush’s White House. Mr. Khan, thanks for joining us again tonight. It’s nice to see you.

SUHAIL KHAN:

Good to see you, Rachel.

RACHEL MADDOW:

Suhail, I know that you have a history with folks like Pam Geller. In fact, they went after you at one time. What can you tell us about that?

SUHAIL KHAN:

Well if you remember growing up those Christmas specials with the islands of the misfit toys—well, Pam Geller, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson, Robert Spencer, these guys are these misfits who they couldn’t really make it in mainstream politics, so they kind of went away, got together, and they started kind of talking to each other about their conspiracies and their wanting to sew mistrust and hatred towards other religious minorities. And, unfortunately, after, you know, playing with themselves for a long time and putting their stories up on the internet and attacking people serving their government, serving their country, they’ve now morphed into something of a mainstream effort, kind of latching on to this furor around the so-called mosque at Ground Zero and have tried to get into mainstream politics and, unfortunately, they’ve had some attention and have had some success just because of the emotional nature of this issue.

RACHEL MADDOW:

And they—to be clear, Suhail, they have come after individual Muslims who are working in the U.S. government, outing people as if it’s some sort of scandal that you could be both Muslim and serving your country?

SUHAIL KHAN:

Absolutely. And just—you started out, they feel that Islam is a threat, that being Muslim should be made illegal and a federal crime. So when they find Muslim-Americans serving in government, they want to go out there and they try to smear their name, smear their backgrounds, and sometimes in a politically sensitive time, that can be enough to ruin people’s careers. You can imagine, if you’re a loyal American-Muslim working in a government agency or serving your local community, and suddenly there’s all these horrible stories printed on the internet, and you don’t have time to, you know, respond and your family goes through incredible heartache—and this is the real tragedy of these guy’s effort. And what’s worse is not only are they spending time going after innocent Americans, but they’re really distracting the country from the real enemy that we face that we all have to join together in fighting as Americans regardless of our background.

RACHEL MADDOW:

In terms of the radicalness of these anti-Muslim extremists—and, yeah, we’re talking about Pamela Geller, we’re talking about Frank Gaffney, we’re talking about other people who have been out there for a long time and we’ve known about them—they sort of percolate up to the surface every once in a while when one of their conspiracy theories gets latched on to by a more respectable person. We’re now seeing them operate in more influential circles than we’ve really ever seen them before. As far as you can tell, is this sort of a high-water mark for them in terms of how much access they get to mainstream conservatives?

SUHAIL KHAN:

I hope so. I hope so. For years, you know, they were kind of marginally tolerated if that—you know, when they made presentations in meetings around Washington, D.C., people would check their Blackberry or kind of, you know, talk and whisper among themselves and figure out what they’re going to have for lunch. But now these guys—they’ve found an issue and just as you said, they’re getting—they’re not opposed to the mosque at Ground Zero per se, they’re opposed to any mosque anywhere. They’re opposed to Muslims serving their country. They’re opposed to Islam, period. And they just happened to have latched onto this issue and because it’s the silly season right before the elections, unfortunately, some were duped into getting involved in this issue. But thank God, the grownups have come back into the room and people like Governor Christie and Ted Olson, who happened to have lost his wife on 9-11, are standing up and saying, enough. We’ve got to stop this. We have a Constitution. We have individual rights of religious liberty and all Americans should be able to practice those rights freely.

RACHEL MADDOW:

Suhail, let me just ask you one last question about what sort of—I guess, responsibility in a time like this. George W. Bush spoke publicly at a time of incredible national emotion on the issue of religion after 9-11, calling for essentially tolerance and respect. And for distinguishing between radicals who do things in the name of Islam and people who are—who happen to be Muslim who practice their faith in a peaceful way. George W. Bush seems to be staying out of this argument right now. I personally was surprised to see Karen Hughes, who had been such a visible figure in this administration, in terms of reaching out to the Muslim world, decide that she wanted this cultural center moved as well. Do you expect that George W. Bush  may change his mind about this or that somebody else, quite highly-ranking from the Bush Administration might step in and try to be an adult here?

SUHAIL KHAN:

I can’t tell and predict what will happen. I can tell you that a lot of people from the Bush Administration, people like former solicitor-general Ted Olson, Jim Glassman, who was the head of our diplomacy at the State Department has come out and said, this is not only un-American, but this is giving us a black eye around the world. Other people—and as I said, people like Governor Christie, future heroes within American politics, are standing up and saying this is enough. And that gives me great hope, that again, our democracy, our Constitution, will be protected in the days ahead.

RACHEL MADDOW:

Suhail Khan, chairman of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition, a former aide in George W. Bush’s Administration, a guy who I’m sure gets no shortage of grief just for being on this show—which makes me very grateful. Suhail, thanks a lot for joining us.

SUHAIL KHAN:

Thank you, Rachel.

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