Muslim sham?

Behind recent reports of Muslim cooperation in the war against radical Islam is a more sobering story, as reported today in The New York Post:

The Anti-Defamation League last week said new efforts by American Muslim groups "to root out radicalization" were "a sham." As an example, it pointed to a Chicago convention staged by the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America last month -- which, ADL National Director Abe Foxman said, was "nothing more than a cover for the dissemination of hateful anti-American and anti-Israel views and anti-Semitism."

Participants accused America of attacking Islam and targeting US Muslims at home and abroad. On sale, ADL reported, were books and CDs by such firebrands as Anwar al-Awlaki -- the Muslim cleric linked to al Qaeda.

The ADL's not alone. Another law-enforcement source tells me CAIR and other groups have been worse than useless: To this source's knowledge, US Muslims have played virtually no role in foiling local plots.

Indeed, in some places, imams have reportedly withheld useful info and threatened to oust congregants who aid law-enforcement. Officials say Ahmad Afzali, the Queens imam helping agents probe Najibullah Zazi (the coffee vendor charged in a New York terror plot), later double-crossed them and alerted Zazi.

"I know of no investigations" in which Muslims have been helpful, Rep. Peter King (R-LI), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, tells me. He says law-enforcement and counterterror officials invariably tell him Muslim cooperation doesn't exist. Sometimes agents say they're met with hostility.

For folks who "understand the nature of the threat" and watch officials from "CAIR and the Muslim Public Affairs Council on major [TV] networks, it's incredibly demoralizing," a former FBI special agent says.

A reluctance to even acknowledge pro-terrorist sympathies persists even beyond official Muslim groups. At universities, for example, Muslim students have blocked speeches by people like Nonie Darwish -- an anti-terror activist who calls herself a "former Muslim" and who speaks about the Islamic links to terror. In the last two months, scheduled Darwish talks at Princeton and Columbia were canceled at the last minute, after Muslim objections. At Boston University, someone lit a fire in a building where she was to speak.