The letter goes on to state that these concerns were raised by "preliminary inquiries" by their staffs. But it appears that the only preliminary investigating performed by their staffs was to read a March/April Washington Monthly article titled
"How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam."
And that article was clearly inspired by a report titled
"Manufacturing the Muslim Menace"
produced by Political Research Associates (PRA).
PRA's report slams almost every counter-terrorism expert speaking to cops in this country. And because we covered many of these events, myself and managing editor Melanie Basich appear in the bibliography. The report even uses a photo I shot of
investigative reporter Steven Emerson
at last year's POLICE-TREXPO East (without permission, I might add).
The report is full of names that many law enforcement officers will recognize. People like
"Terror at Beslan"
author John Giduck; the aforementioned Emerson; Long Beach, Calif., detective Ebrahim Ashabi; Walid Shoebat; Dr. Zuhdi Jasser; and many more. It argues that all of these people are teaching police officers to be Islamophobic. It also argues that each of these speakers is wrong in their conclusions by essentially saying other experts disagree with them. And those experts-mostly academics-know better. This is the intellectual equivalent of saying: Nu-huh, you're wrong. So there.
I cannot speak for all of these presenters because I haven't seen them all. But I can say that I never heard Giduck, Emerson, or Ashabi slam all Muslims. To tell you how flimsy this 80-page report is: It slaps Ashabi for showing a video of a torturous beheading at
POLICE-TREXPO
, saying that doing so is inflammatory. Ashabi doesn't do this to inflame the audience, he does it to show what the enemy is capable of. And it's sickening.
PRA is a self-described "progressive think tank" and lead author Thomas Cincotta is the former head of the Denver chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. Nope. No bias here. Move along, folks.