From the “Only in America” department:
* Hesham Islam, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, with his ridiculously cooked CV, should have never been given a security clearance. Hesham Islam is your picture book mole:
Hesham Islam is responsible, according to earlier reports, for the firing of Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s only expert on Islamic law. But now the questions about Islam himself, and what his intentions really are, are increasing.
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an “influence operation” on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to deputy Defense secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military’s leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism.
After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin’s contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Islam, who was born and raised in Egypt, is heavily involved with one of the groups – the Islamic Society of North America, which U.S. prosecutors last year named as a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror-funding case.
Islam has persuaded his boss, England, to conduct various outreach with ISNA, including hosting the group’s leaders in the Pentagon and speaking at its annual convention.
More from World Net Daily
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Sheik Yer’mami reported earlier that Hesham Islam is -and always was- a lobbyist on behalf of rabid jihadists to provide mosques, Koran’s and halal food for the Koranimals in Gitmo and also organized the Wahhabi-trained Muslim chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam who catered to al-Qaida detainees at Guantanamo and fought to establish the first mosque in Marine Corps history.
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But now the story got into the MSM, thanks to the bloggers:
By Bill Gertz – Islam probed
The Pentagon is looking into conflicting statements about the background of Hesham Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England who was the focus of a dispute with a Joint Staff counterterrorism analyst.
Mr. Islam faced tough questions about his background posed by veteran journalist Claudia Rosett, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the United Nations oil-for-food scandal with Iraq. Last week, Miss Rosett took the Pentagon to task by uncovering serious discrepancies about the Egyptian-born Islam that no one at the Pentagon seems willing to answer.
Writing in National Review Online, Miss Rosett revealed that certain claims about Mr. Islam’s background don’t fit.
Shortly after she wrote about the discrepancies contained in a Pentagon-written article on Mr. Islam’s background, the Pentagon removed the biography from its Web site, DefenseLink.mil.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said “that piece was taken down in an attempt to reduce the rhetoric and the emotion surrounding this issue while we try to determine the facts.”
The Pentagon does not comment on such personnel matters, he noted. “That said, we are looking into the matter and trying to reconcile conflicting statements.”
Mr. Morrell called later to clarify that the conflicting statements being probed relate to whether or not Mr. Islam used the term “Christian zealot with a pen” in describing Mr. Coughlin, and not about discrepancies in Mr. Islam’s background.
Mr. Islam has come under fire from supporters of Stephen Coughlin, the Joint Staff analyst on counterterrorism whose contract was not renewed. The action followed a meeting between Mr. Coughlin and Mr. Islam several weeks ago when the two clashed over Mr. Coughlin’s views on the Islamic law roots of terrorism.
After refusing comment to Inside the Ring, Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for Mr. Islam, now says that reports in this space that Mr. Islam called Mr. Coughlin a “Christian zealot with a pen” did not take place during the meeting.
Queries to other Pentagon officials familiar with the issue said the phrase was used by Mr. Islam after the meeting, not during it.
No action was taken against Mr. Islam, a Muslim adviser and confidant of Mr. England, for the anti-Christian comments.
Mr. Islam could not be reached for comment.
Miss Rosett tried — and failed — to get straight answers from Mr. Wensing about why Mr. Islam claimed that when he was 7 his family was bombed by Israeli jets at his home in Cairo, when there is no evidence the Israelis bombed the Egyptian capital during the 1967 war.
Also, Mr. Wensing could not explain why Mr. Islam said in his biography that he was on a freighter sunk by an Iranian torpedo in the Persian Gulf when there is no record of the ship being sunk.
According to his 1992 master’s thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School, Mr. Islam is highly critical of Israel and the influence of American Jews on U.S. politics, noting that U.S. ties to Israel have harmed relations to other states in the Middle East.
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Diana West: A defining moment
George of ArabiyaÂ
Analyzing the GWB befuddlement:
In 2007 Mr. Bush highlighted the aggression of “Sunni extremists” and lor=”#0000ff”>”Shia extremists.” In 2006, he warned against “radical Islam.” In 2008, the president merely decried “assassins,” “bombs,” “extremists” and “terrorists.” Why the fuzzy focus? Why declare a “defining ideological struggle” without defining the ideologies involved?
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“TO OUR GREAT DETRIMENT”:Â
IGNORING WHAT EXTREMISTS SAY ABOUT JIHADÂ
Stephen Collins CoughlinÂ
Major, Military Intelligence, USARÂ
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