Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > State Department Pushing Islamist Imam Khalid Latif, As Builder Of "Communities of Faith and Diversity"
State Department Pushing Islamist Imam Khalid Latif, As Builder Of "Communities of Faith and Diversity"
September 19, 2008
State Department Pushing Islamist Imam Khalid Latif, As Builder Of "Communities of Faith and Diversity"
State Department Pushing Islamist Imam Khalid Latif, As Builder Of "Communities of Faith and Diversity"
By WILIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
September 19, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - As if more evidence was needed to question the direction of the U.S. State Department's Muslim outreach we note their current effort to elevate Khalid Latif, director of NYU's Islamic Center and the New York Police Department's Muslim chaplain.
In a flowery puff piece penned for the State Dept. by Howard Cincotta, Latif is characterized as, "deeply committed to interfaith dialogue and community service as integral parts of what it means to be Muslim in a modern, multicultural world." [source, http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2008/September/20080918112042maduobbA0.7461511.html]
In reality, as these authors have pointed out in a 2007 piece Khalil Gibran School Advisor Threatened NYU With Jihad Over Danish Cartoons that Latif, "During the height of the Danish cartoon controversy imam Khalid Latif - an advisory board member of New York's proposed Khalil Gibran school [and chaplain at NYU, NYPD and Rutgers University] - protested a NYU student group's intent to display the drawings by drafting an incendiary letter to the university's president John Sexton which contained veiled threats of violence."
Latif's actions urging censorship of the controversial cartoons was effective, with NYU buckling under and refusing to allow their display on campus.
We are continually amazed by the willingness of agencies of the federal government to apply a double standard when dealing with looming, near protected classes such as members of the Islamic faith, out of some missplaced sensitivity. Rather than being deserving of emulation, Mr. Latif's successful effort to suppress freedom of speech at NYU should be condemned as being emblematic of an essential component of Islamism, adopting the adversarial position that any criticism of Islam is inherently racist, a corrolary of which is that the West must therefore be forced to "respect Islam" as dictated by the Quran.
Mr. Latif's efforts to push and justify what can't be disguised as anything but a recognition of Shari'a in the public sphere is in stark contrast to the type of true diversity and interfaith dialogue which the Department of State says it wants to advance. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=latifid=9.19.08%2Ehtm
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