Opinion Forum

Credit to an Anti-Terrorist Muslim

January 1st, 2010

Umaru Abdul Mutallab, father of the “Christmas Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, needs to be recognized as a very brave man and a true friend of America. Up until now he has only been briefly mentioned for his deed, but an article at Politics Daily by Jeffrey Weiss not only corrects that, it asks a very important question: “Why Don’t Moderate Muslims Police Their Own?”

Why is Umaru Mutallab being portrayed as brave? Mr. Weiss explains:

So what do we think we know about the father? He’s a Muslim, one sophisticated enough in the technical aspects of Islamic law to run an Islamic bank. And he was willing to put himself, his reputation and the rest of his family at risk by letting American authorities know that his son had been radicalized.

At risk? No doubt. I imagine that crossing al-Qaeda is something like crossing the Mafia. Particularly if you live in a country where sheer numbers — 75 percent of Nigerians are Muslim (I’m finding a range of estimates, but I’ll now defer to several commenters who say the figure is more like 50 percent) — make it at least somewhat likely that someone sympathetic to al-Qaeda is in the neighborhood.

By doing everything he could to alert American authorities (short of taking out an ad in the New York Times) that his son had been radicalized and could be a danger to Americans, and by doing it in person, Umaru Mutallab has painted a large target on his back; but I would bet that Umaru Abdul Mutallab is intelligent enough to realize that and is also very determined to stop the corruption of his religion and the unnecessary evil of terrorism.

That also provides a possible answer to the key question: Why does the mainstream Muslim community allow the terrorist activity that has killed as many Muslims as it has non-Muslims? They, except for a precious few, are afraid of consequences and therefore powerless to act.

Think closer to home: Why did the Italian American community allow the Mafia to hold their neighborhoods hostage and generally stain the image of Italians? Same reason.

It took an organized government effort to devastate the Mafia, and it will take an organized effort by Arab governments to do that to terrorist organizations.

Yes, you’re right, that’s very unlikely to happen in the Middle-East, but I’m told that miracles do happen!

(This article was also posted at My View from the Center.)

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: al-Qaeda, anti-terrorism, Arab, Mafia, Middle East, Muslim, terrorism
Categories: Life, News | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “Credit to an Anti-Terrorist Muslim”

Tom | January 1st, 2010 at 9:21 am

Interesting. I’d thought about what he did before I read your article, and I agree that it was remarkable and commendable. One can suppose that he and his son may not have been on good terms, but it still takes a lot of courage and a strong sense of what’s right to report him to the authorities.

There’s an interesting article on the father at Wikipedia. The would-be bomber is one of his 16 children and the son of the second of his two wives, who is a Yemeni. Just as a guess, there may have been some maternal tolerance of extremism that the father didn’t share.

Harvey | January 1st, 2010 at 4:49 pm

Tom,

The bio info was interesting and your “guess” even more so.

Elizabeth | January 12th, 2010 at 10:50 pm

Indeed, there are Muslims policing each other, but not in the way that you mean. At our workplace, I had one Muslim ask me not to tell another one that he wasn’t fasting during Ramadan. Another time, a woman was “caught” having a coffee in our cafeteria during Ramadan. I blame myself a little for that–I wish I’d thought to tell her that she couild send me to get it for her.