An American Story
Sheik Kabbani warned about letting militants hijack Islam's mike

The Wall Street Journal - REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Friday, September 28, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

You don't have to tell Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani
what Arab- and Muslim Americans are going through in
the aftermath of the World Trade Center killings.
Invited by the president to attend the prayer service
at the National Cathedral, Sheik Kabbani was told by
U.S. officials on the way out that he might do better
to avoid airports by driving back home to Detroit.
That is how he came to be on the Pennsylvania
Turnpike, where he found himself subjected to obscene
gestures from other drivers and motorists and pulled
over by a police officer who said he was checking out
something "fishy."

What lends this tale a bitter irony is that Sheik
Kabbani is not part of the victimist choir that views
such ugly incidents as evidence of an America just
itching to break out the white sheets and hoods. To
the contrary, this is a man worth listening to.
Indeed, if people had listened to Sheik Kabbani
before, things today might have been very
different--not least for the thousands of innocent
American families now burying their dead and the
equally innocent Muslim Americans who find themselves
blamed for it.

Mr. Kabbani is a Muslim scholar and leader of the
Naqshbandi order of Sufis in North America. Back in
January 1999, when we thought the terrorists had given
the Twin Towers their best shot and lost, Sheik
Kabbani went to the State Department to deliver an
address titled "Islamic Extremism: A Viable Threat to
U.S. National Security" (now posted at here.). In what
today appears to be almost prophetic language, he said
that an extremist ideology had openly declared war on
America; he noted that extremist elements were well
financed by "outside regimes"; and he specifically
warned about thousands of "suicide bombers being
trained by Bin Laden in Afghanistan who are ready to
move to any part of the world and explode themselves."
So how was Sheik Kabbani rewarded for his courage?
Well, a group of organizations denounced him, ranging
from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the
Islamic Circle of North America to the American Muslim
Council--and issued a statement twisting his words and
portraying him as feeding Islamophobia rather than
fighting it. But the sheik has stood his ground. In
sharp contrast to a coalition of "progressive" pastors
who have now issued a statement telling Muslims "don't
talk to the FBI," the sheik emphasized on the "Today"
show last week how important it was to cooperate with
authorities, to help them get the men who have so
monstrously blasphemed the Islamic faith.

Indeed, as we peer into the future, we'd say that, far
from looking to purge our shores of our immigrant
citizens from the Mideast, America is going to need
them. And we need them not simply to cooperate with
authorities but to become authorities themselves,
bringing to the nation's police forces, military
services and intelligence agencies the skills only
Arab- and Muslim Americans can provide about a
critical part of the world we clearly don't yet
understand.

The difficulty, Sheik Kabbani tells us, is that voices
such as his have trouble being heard because the
extremists have been successful at "hijacking the
mike." But he reminds us, too, that while many of the
self-appointed spokesmen for American Islam have
verbally attacked him, thousands of ordinary American
Muslims have phoned, faxed or e-mailed their support.
In the aftermath of the worst attack on our home soil
in American history, we might do well to heed a leader
who did his best to warn us before.