Fired Ohio security official’s ties, past omitted by media

By Chris Carter

The Jawa report did a full investigation on an Ohio security official's ties and his past.(Screen snip of Jawa site]
National Public Radio featured a story about a Muslim homeland security official who was fired after a  photo showing him with members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations was featured in an anti-terrorism seminar.

The official in the photo, Omar Alomari, a 60-year-old Jordanian-American, served as a multicultural relations officer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

The Jawa Report has taken credit for Alomari’s firing. Jawa is a site aimed at investigating Islamists. Jawa has surfaced  a number of stories ignored by media,  such as Jihad Jane and the doctoring of photographs by Reuters.

The NPR article implied that Alomari lost his job because of the seminar, but that is not accurate.

Alomari was dismissed for not fully disclosing his employment history when filing his background check and then allegedly lying to investigators.

Alomari left out his tenure as a college professor where he was fired due to what Jawa said was an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student. Alomari also allegedly failed to disclose that he had previously worked for the Jordanian Minister of Labor.

Jawa has posted numerous details of the investigation of Alomari online.
 
Apart from appearing as a witness for a 2010 Congress subcomittee hearing, Alomari’s most notable work involved two pamphlets on Islam he wrote as a member of Ohio Homeland Security.

In a guide to Islamic and Arabic culture, Alomari defined jihad as “The utmost effort one should exert to achieve excellence” and he claimed “Jihad does not mean holy war, as many people are led to believe.”

Zuhdi Jasser, fellow Muslim and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, calls Alomari's pamphlets “classic Islamist propaganda” and says they are “full of factual inaccuracies.”

The other pamphlet, Agents of Radicalization, was actually destroyed before it could be distributed. Under “organizations we are working with,” Alomari listed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America, Islamic Society of North America, Muslim Alliance of North America, Muslim American Society, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim Student Association.

All of these groups allegedly have, in varying degrees, some association with Islamist groups.

There are far too many inaccuracies in Alomari's pamphlets to properly address within this article. But having seen his soft-soaped definition of jihad, it is worth correcting.

Dr. Andrew G. Bostom, the author of The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, defines jihad using the Koran rather than perpetuating a false narrative.

“Jahada, the root of the word jihad, appears 40 times in the Koran.” said Bostom in an interview with Liberty and Security Journal. “With four exceptions, all the other 36 usages in the Koran as understood by both the greatest jurists and scholars of classical Islam […] and ordinary Muslims – meant and mean, 'he fought, warred or waged war against unbelievers and the like.'”

John Brennan, the top counterterrorism official in the nation, shares Omari's ahistorical interpretation, saying jihad is “to purify oneself or one’s community.” This would be funny if Brennan wasn't responsible for our national security.

Many Americans saw firsthand what al Qaeda's interpretation of jihad is, though, and theirs apparently stems from one of the 36 violent mentions in the Koran. In fact, with more than 17,000 terrorist attacks one anti-Islamist website said have been committed by Islamic terrorists since 9/11, it appears that Alomari and Brennan's interpretation isn't widely accepted.

“It is common knowledge in our office that Omar is definitely not on our team,” a former co-worker of Alomari told The Jawa Report. “He hangs out with these same terror-linked groups and even brings them into meetings he arranges to give them legitimacy.”

The co-worker also said, “It is no secret to anyone who knows him that Omar Alomari IS a radical, but he is great at playing the ‘moderate’ when he needs to be.”

Does Alomari associate with terrorists or sympathetic groups? It is impossible to tell without seeing the seminar organizers' intelligence. Jawa has provided facts NPR and others omitted from their accounts.

However,  Americans must understand that terrorist groups like al Qaeda and political Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood actually share the same goals, such as subjugating the U.S. under sharia law. Whether this is accomplished via suicide bombers or by political advocacy makes little difference.

Neither al Qaeda nor the Muslim Brotherhood might be successful without apologists like Alomari.

(July 22, 2011)

Chris Carter, TUSR associate editor, is also managing editor for Liberty and Security Journal.